e360 Pulls 180 On Spam?

Doug Caverly — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 21:25:09 +0000

As you may recall, e360 Insight wasn’t exactly pleased when Spamhaus labeled it a spammer last year; in fact, e360 Insight’s owner sued the UK-based company. Now, in an ironic taste-of-your-own-medicine twist, e360 Insight is being sued for (allegedly) spamming an individual in California.

William Silverstein “claims in the suit to have received at least 87 spam messages promoting the defendants’ websites since May 2005,” according to the Channel Register’s John Leyden. “These messages violated Federal anti-spam laws and California state laws,” his report continues, and “Silverstein is asking for the court to apply an injunction against the defendants along with the imposition of statutory and punitive damages.”

Considering that the only “news” on e360 Insight’s homepage consists of two developments in the Spamhaus case (and one of those occurred some time ago, in October of 2006), these fresh allegations are sure to grab the company’s attention. Also – if his past behavior is any indication – e360 Insight’s owner, David Lindhardt, may make this a confrontation worth watching.

Leyden’s “bootnote,” in which he characterizes the man’s behavior as “increasing[ly] strident,” provides a humorous sample of Linhardt’s antics. The owner “has entertainingly progressed to describing Spamhaus as ‘nothing more than a vigilante, cyber terrorist organisation with a dangerous God complex,’” Leyden observed.

Uh-huh. Well, in any event, that’s the man whom William Silverstein should soon face in court. There’s some debate (as in the comments section of this Techdirt article) over what it would mean for Spamhaus if Silverstein wins, but a reversal of prior rulings seems unlikely. Just the same, this lawsuit should – for any number of reasons – be a very interesting one.

ICANN Won’t Suspend Spamhaus

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:26:46 +0000

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) posted notice that it had neither the ability nor the authority to suspend the domain spamhaus.org. ICANN was requested to do so after Spamhaus ignored a US court default judgment ordering the company to pay $11.7 million in damages to e360Insight.

e360 filed suit against UK-based antispam outfit Spamhaus in an Illinois court, accusing Spamhaus of wrongfully blacklisting commercial email from the company as spam, effectively blocking email from reaching UK inboxes.

Spamhaus has long been criticized by commercial emailers for being the Internet version of Salem witch hunters – overzealous in their categorization.

Spamhaus did not appear in court for the same reason the company refused to pay the default judgment: Illinois, nor the US, had no jurisdiction over a UK company. The court responded by requesting an permanent injunction against spamhaus.org, suspending the domain, an act the company claimed would result in a worldwide spam flood.

The default judgment found Spamhaus guilty of (1) “erroneously and repeatedly placed Plaintiffs on its Register of Known Spam Operations (the ROSKO list), and then (2) wrongfully coerced Plaintiffs’ business partners to refrain from doing business with Plaintiffs . . . ”

ICANN says it has no direct knowledge of the claims made by e360 nor of why Spamhaus took no action to defend themselves. Further, the decision to suspend is left to the registrar, Tucows.

From ICANN’s statement:

Even if ICANN were properly brought before the court in this matter, which ICANN has not been, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend or place a client hold on Spamhaus.org or any specific domain name because ICANN does not have either the ability or the authority to do so. Only the Internet registrar with whom the registrant has a contractual relationship – and in certain instances the Internet registry – can suspend an individual domain name.

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e360 Pulls 180 On Spam?

ICANN Won’t Suspend Spamhaus