E360 Shaking Down the Spamhaus? - The Plot Thickens

Spamhaus failed to respond to the court order, in line with its insistence that a U.S. court doesn't have any jurisdiction over the London-based company. Since e360 didn't get any of the relief it was looking for, it filed a motion to that effect on September 29, and asked that the court suspend Spamhaus' domain name. A hearing was held on October 5, and e360 electronically submitted a proposed order to the court for review. The proposed order would find Spamhaus in contempt and direct the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Tucows, Spamhaus' registrar, to suspend Spamhaus' domain name. That order was not signed; in fact, it was rejected by the judge. But this does not prevent some other "alleged" spammer from trying the same thing at some time in the future if they believe that Spamhaus has given them a raw deal.  

There are enough problems with that order, and other matters surrounding e360's case, to drive the traffic from a T-3 through. Let's leave the jurisdictional issue aside for the moment, and start with e360's actual claims. First, it said that Spamhaus put e360 on its ROKSO list. Spamhaus may not have defended itself in court, but it certainly did on its web site. Here's what it said: ""Neither David Linhardt nor e360 Insight LLC were put on the ROKSO list...nor have they ever been at any time prior to September 2006. [They] are merely mentioned within the ROKSO records of a professional spammer, Brian Haberstroh (aka Atriks) who is on the ROKSO list." Apparently the two companies do a lot of business together, so e360 was listed "solely and specifically as 'Partner-in-spam' of Brian Haberstroh (aka Atriks)." A fine point perhaps, but there it is.

Another accusation e360 made is that Spamhaus "tortiously interfered with Plaintiffs' prospective economic advantage by blocking email Plaintiffs attempted to send..." Anyone who knows how Spamhaus operates knows that that accusation is patently false. As the organization explains, "Spamhaus does not block anyone from sending email. Spamhaus operates a mail filter advisory system which allows Spamhaus users (and ONLY Spamhaus users) to reject incoming email at the point of ingress into their private networks from email senders which Spamhaus advises do not fully comply with Spamhaus' policy for acceptance of inbound email. Mr. Linhardt can send as much email as he likes to anyone on the Internet, just not to Spamhaus users."

If Spamhaus is telling the truth, then e360 and Linhardt could be found in contempt of court for lying under oath. So why didn't Spamhaus answer the charges? It's not because the organization is lying. It's because of that aforementioned jurisdiction issue, and standing its ground on that point could have some bad consequences for Spamhaus.

Next: Whose Court is it Anyway? >>
 

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