Spamhaus failed to show at a hearing in Illinois where it had been accused by one David Linhardt, of causing significant harm to his e360insight business, by putting it on an email blacklist widely used across the Internet, including by Microsoft.
Since Spamhaus didn’t turn up, the judge returned a default judgment, which Linhardt then claimed “clearly establishes the validity of e360insight’s legitimate business practices as a responsible, opt-in marketer.”
The reality is somewhat different however. Spamhaus is heaquartered in London, outside the US courts’ jurisdiction and decided not to fight the case, even informing Linhardt that it would ignore the case and he would have to sue the company in the UK. That is unlikely to happen because under UK law, Linhardt’s bulk email business is illegal. Spamhaus failed to show at a hearing in Illinois where it had been accused by one David Linhardt, of causing significant harm to his e360insight business, by putting it on an email blacklist widely used across the Internet, including by Microsoft.
Note to spam police – show up in court!
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Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2416 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting post on spamming but you sort of repeated yourself. Interesting post on spamming but you sort of repeated yourself.
That’s a harsh settlement for Spamhaus, but I guess it’ll teach people to show up to courts
double post in one post?
It posted 2x
Is it just me or are two of the paragraphs repeated?
Anyways, wonder what is going to happen, will Spamhaus REALLY have to pay? Or is there even a governing body which could force them to?
Ouch!
Note to bloggers – don’t hit ctrl + v twice!
i’m disappointed this lawsuit wasn’t aimed at SPEWS..
Spamhaus didn’t get owned at all, “US default judgments have no jurisdiction in the UK.” They won’t be paying a cent. So where is the ownage?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060915-7757.html
It would be fun if Spamhaus would sue David Linhardt.
This kind of stuff makes a guy want to buy a small island and make up his own laws. I wonder if there are any international laws that could be applied here? If ta company in the UK blackballed http://www.shoemoney.com it seems kind of odd that there is no legal recourse whatsoever.
Oh well, like Dogbert I should make a new country from a series of garbage barges linked together. Any investors out there?
woah, thats insane..
Haha have to totally agree weith ‘Mitemous’ should aim it at SPEWS!!
Why wouldn’t Spamhaus show up? Maybe they didn’t want to hire a bunch of American lawyers to defend themselves on a lawsuit with no consequence.
This ruling was a waste of time. Clearly the judge was bamoozled. The ruling is meaningless in the scheme of things. There is no way they can collect anything on that judgement. The Spamhaus people could go to Illinois and kiss the judge on the cheek and the plaintiff would still not be able to collect a dime on this judgement.
The unfornate fact is with default judgements, it seems the judge has to simply rubberstamp every stupid demand asked for… if this were a real issue it could easily be vacated, but it is not an issue as they have no way to collect on it and nobody associated with Spamhaus or using their list is in the least bit of jeopardy because of this.
Nice controversial title there shoe..
Standard legal practise for many UK companies, if you want to come and sue us then you’ll have to do it on our soil.
e360 may have won the case by default but they still have to pay thier lawyers and they still remain on the blacklist. Still at least they feel like they won..
Not only are they not going to pay, but the ruling states that Spamhaus must put a small banner on its homepage and on the ROKSI list that states that there was a mistake and that 360insight is not a spammer. They have not done this. Basically Linhardt wasted his money on court fees.
Do they have to fork out the 11 mil being outside US Court jurisdiction?
Spamhaus made the RIGHT move, if you make an appearance in US Court, you are admitting that you are subject to their jurisdiction, By not showing up, they lose nothing. I could get default judments against foreign companies all day long in court, but they aren’t worth anything unless the foreign company is stupid and decides to subject themselves to US jurisdiction by showing up.
Is it really a waste of $ on his part? Think of all the exposure and traffic he is getting to his site because of this…