British anti-spam organisation Spamhous has been sentenced to pay alleged spammer David Linhardt damages of USD11,715,000 plus court costs of USD2M by an Illinois court. Spamhous was also prohibited from placing IP addresses associated with Linhard's companies on its spam blocking lists.
The outcome of this case was a given because Spamhaus, recognising that US jurisdiction not yet includes the UK (though we are getting dangerously close), failed to attend the case in Illinois. Consequently, Linhardt's sites still figure in Spamhaus' lists, which are used by a large number of US-based ISPs.
Spamhaus is a generally well respected voluntary organisation, which e.g. has helped Microsoft with prosecutions against several spammers. Nevertheless the wisdom of not attending court in Illinois must be questioned. Doing so prevented this case from being informed and judged on its merits, and this is not helpful in a period, where strong opposed forces seek to define how to tell spam from legitimate direct marketing (is such an animal exists).
Not surprisingly, the accounts of the case as presented by the two sides differ quite substantially...
--Ed
Related links: (Open in a new window.)
www.spamhaus.org/legal/answer.lasso?ref=3
www.e360insight.com/case_history.html
Taken from Information Security Bulletin.