"The majority of the world’s service providers succeed in keeping spammers off their networks and work to maintain a positive anti-spam reputation, but their work is undermined daily by the few networks who, out of corporate greed or mismanagement, choose to be part of the problem," says Spamhaus.

The Register notes that Microsoft was previously in fifth place on the list, but has made some improvements evidently, and is not on it all now. They quote Spamhaus CIO Richard Cox, "Microsoft got rid of the bad guys, and off they went to Google, which is now hosting a lot of the stuff that was on Microsoft’s domains."

You can see Spamhaus’s list for IPs under the responsibility of Google.com here, as well as some details about each entry. It will be interesting to see how quickly Google follows Microsoft’s lead in correcting these problems, and how it ranks on the next edition of the list.

British Spamhaus initially ignored court appearances and a default judgment against the company, asserting that an Illinois court had no jurisdiction over a UK-based company.

e360 filed suit against Spamhaus claiming that the anti-spam outfit had wrongly placed e360 on a spammer black list, effectively blocking its email from over 80,000 US IP addresses.

When the default judgment called for domain suspension, ICANN immediately put forth a statement that it had neither the ability nor the authority to suspend Spamhaus. Their protest was, apparently, unnecessary as Judge Kocaras denied an overly-punitive motion from e360 on appeal.

e360 filed a motion asking Spamhaus to be held in contempt for refusing to comply with an injunction which included:

From the judge’s ruling:

From an amateur judge’s standpoint (that is, from mine), Spamhaus has made a more sensible case for itself, according to the vicious press releases both companies have issued against the other.

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Last month, an Illinois awarded $11.7 million to e360, and issued a permanent injunction against the Spamhaus’ email-blocking technology.

Spamhaus, headed by chief executive Steve Linford, refused to show for the hearing, claiming Illinois lacked jurisdiction over a British company that has no offices or operations in the United States. On the same objection grounds, Spamhaus refused to pay the judgment or to obey the court orders.

The courts petitioned ICANN and domain registrar Tucows to suspend the Spamhaus domain if they did not comply. ICANN responded quickly saying the company had neither the ability nor the authority to suspend.

In what appears to be an effort to deter any future lawsuits, and to guard against possible domain suspension, Spamaus is appealing the judgment. Chicago-based law firm Jenner & Block took up the nonprofit organization’s cause pro bono.

Both sides are spitting venom at the other. Spamhaus called e360 “a one-man bulk email marketing outfit” run by David Linhardt, who Spamhaus says filed a “SLAPP” lawsuit and made false claims under oath without any attempt by the court to corroborate.

Spamhaus says the default judgment illustrates “that U.S. courts can be bamboozled by spammers with ease, and that no proof is required in order to obtain judgments over clearly foreign entities.”

In two separate releases about the case:

“Spamhaus advises Mr. Linhardt to re-file his case in a British court when he can prove jurisdiction, but advises Mr. Linhardt that British courts do not accept US-style ‘SLAPP’ suits and impose penalties for lying to the court.”

“Spamhaus understands that David Linhardt does not wish to file in the United Kingdom because his activities are illegal here.”

In addition, the company defended itself against Linhardt’s accusations of being a “fanatical, vigilante organization operating in the United States with blatant disregard for U.S. law.”

Spamhaus links to a Google Groups page it says lists the type of email messages sent, all of which have quite spammy subject lines.

They say Lindhardt’s site www.bargaindepot.net violates U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, sending emails with false routing information, from compromised computers on ADSL lines in Vietnam, China, Korea, Taiwan and Norway. They also claim Linhart is a “Partner-in-spam” of professional spammer Brian Haberstroh (aka Atriks).

But also, Spamhaus used a US Supreme Court opinion as well as European and US law to refute claims that the company was preventing e360 from sending mail and to reinforce that it had the right to block mail on behalf of clients.

Spamhaus does not seem to have denied e360′s claims that the company blocked messages from 86,622 unique domains in the U.S. alone. In Linhardt’s estimation, US companies collectively pay Spamhaus $1.8 million annually to specifically block messages from e360, which constitutes doing business in the U.S.

An observer basing his judgment from arguments presented in the competing press releases would seem hard pressed to favor e360′s version of the case over Spamhaus’. When lawsuit rhetoric is peppered with dramatic and reaching phrases like “fanatical” and “vigilante” are used, it’s hard to take the rest seriously.

But Spamhaus does seem to have, at least outside the courts, some pretty solid evidence and support for their actions so far.

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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:

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