ICANN to suspend Spamhaus' domain?

[pam]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061009-7938.html

A federal court has issued a proposed order which would direct ICANN to suspend the spamhaus.org domain after the spam blacklist site thumbed its nose at a $11.7 million default judgment last month. Spamhaus was sued by e360insight, a company that had been blacklisted by Spamhaus for sending unsolicited commercial e-mail. Although Spamhaus initially filed a response to the complaint, it decided not to participate any further in the case, a decision that led to the default judgment.

Spamhaus believes that as a UK corporation, the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division was the wrong venue to try a case. Its position is that US default judgments have no jurisdiction in the UK and that the case would need to be refiled in that country for e360insight to get any satisfaction. "Although meaningless for Spamhaus, which as a British organization not subject to Illinois court orders is listing Linhardt's company E360 Insight on its SBL spam blacklist as usual, the Illinois ruling shows that U.S. courts can be bamboozled by spammers with ease," said the organization when the default judgment was issued.

Unfortunately, Spamhaus neglected to make the argument that it is not subject to US court orders at the outset the case. Had it done so, e360insight may have been forced to pursue Spamhaus in the UK court system. Instead, when the case was originally filed in state court, the blacklisting group successfully argued that it should be moved the federal court. It was only that after the proceedings began in the District Court that Spamhaus decided not fight it.

Now, Spamhaus is faced with a contempt of court finding, and as a result, is looking at some king-sized headaches. ICANN, which operates in the US under the jurisdiction of the US Commerce Department, will have to at least consider complying with the order, should it become final. With the influence of the US government over ICANN having been hotly debated, ICANN might wish to ignore the ruling in an attempt to demonstrate its independence. However, that may not be a workable option, as the organization is subject to US law.

Having its domain name pulled out from underneath it would put a serious crimp in Spamhaus' operations. It's possible that the organization could try and operate solely via IP addresses, but the court may be able to stop that strategy as well. Shutting down and reorganizing under a new name typically doesn't work too well either—just ask Sharman Networks.

Spamhaus is confident that ICANN won't pull the plug on its domain. Founder Steve Linford told Ars that doing so would have a big effect on "both the Internet and on millions of users" and that the government "would step in" before it happened. More importantly, he believes ICANN will fight the order. "ICANN understands the effect," said Linford. "Spamhaus.org blocks 50 billion spam messages per day. The effect of suddenly not blocking it would mean that volume of spam hits mail server queues all over the world... an effect that would cause serious problems."

It may be that Spamhouse bit off more than it can chew with its decision to pull out of the original court proceedings and ignore the court. The group still has a chance to respond to the proposed order and make a case for the judge to change his mind. That's Spamhaus' plan, according to Linford, who told Ars that "we are working with lawyers to find a way to both appeal the ruling and stop further nonsense by the spammer."

If not, Spamhaus is faced with a multimillion-dollar judgment and the possibility of losing its domain name, outcomes that could have been avoided had it showed up and argued that the US courts had no jurisdiction in the case. At this point, its best chance may be to appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, but being in the position of having to appeal a default judgment is not a good place from which to start.

[typist]

chilling.

[Acro]

Spamhaus had it coming to them.

[typist]

Spamhaus had it coming to them.

why? I'm not trying to argue, I'm just curious. I don't know too much about the issue, but I've noticed spews keeps blacklisting entire class c netblocks even if they only have evidence of spam from one single IP. I always thought spamhaus was more prudent, and that they were the good guys?

[JMJ]

Yeah alot of these blacklist companies make themselves out to be be the internet police. If you've ever been a host you would find that most of your time was spent trying to get your IP's out of them when in most cases the complaint wasn't even really spam in the laws eyes or it was a hacker who spoofed your IPs, etc. Back when I was Hosting SPEWS was the worst of them. They caused me to lose half of my business at one point from spoofed emails.

[Beachie]

The number of times I've been blacklisted by some self-annointed spam police because one of my users has accidently hit the "junk" button in hotmail, or because some spammer has used one of my generic domains as a reply-to address.. arg!

[Dave Zan]

The .org registry is in Reston, Virginia. The judge could've issued his/her order
on them instead of ICANN.

[jberryhill]

Man, it's irritating how legal news is reported.

The first clue that something is wrong with this story is:

A federal court has issued a proposed order

No. A federal court does not issue a "proposed order". Parties, on the other hand, file proposed orders along with motions asking the court to issue them as orders, and explaining why the court should do so.

Here, there was already a final order in the case. Spamhaus, oddly, stopped participating in the suit at one point, and there was a default against them.

The plaintiff has come back and filed a motion to hold Spamhaus in contempt, and has submitted a proposed order which would direct Tucows to suspend the domain name - it's not even directed at ICANN, nor is it directed to any other party in the case. For that reason alone, the court is unlikely to issue it.

[typist]

Man, it's irritating how legal news is reported

this clarification is very helpful.

(I assume legal news is reported like other news. Irritatingly, if you know anything at all about a particular subject).

[jberryhill]

(I assume legal news is reported like other news. Irritatingly, if you know anything at all about a particular subject)

You know, it's funny how that is universally true. You can read news about all kinds of things and feel "informed", but whenever the news reports on something you are familiar with, you are always shocked by how wrong they got the story.

Kinda creepy.

[typist]

You know, it's funny how that is universally true.

...thankfully, the internet provides means to quickly and effectively put "news" into a context. Another view: "I don't think that the pursuit of ICANN over a specific domain name is going to go anywhere."


http://blog.lextext.com/blog/_archiv...9/2402127.html

(copy-paste the url if it doesn't work. it seems as if mr fausett has devised some clever contraption to prevent linkage to his intellectual property)

[Dave Zan]

...thankfully, the internet provides means to quickly and effectively put "news" into a context. Another view: "I don't think that the pursuit of ICANN over a specific domain name is going to go anywhere."

http://blog.lextext.com/blog/_archiv...9/2402127.html

(copy-paste the url if it doesn't work. it seems as if mr fausett has devised some clever contraption to prevent linkage to his intellectual property)

There's an underscore between blog/ and archives. :-D

[typist]

There's an underscore between blog/ and archives. :-D

I edited my post and deleted the underscore. Didn't solve the problem:

http://blog.lextext.com/blog/archive...9/2402127.html
http://blog.lextext.com/blog/_archiv...9/2402127.html

both URLs work if typed. Intriguingly, it looks like (certain) referrals are blocked.

[tonyk2000]

Well, I hate receiving spam and do not send spam, but spamhaus.org operations MUST be stopped or changed. They blocked too many innocent networks/IPs. For example, a few years ago, when I worked for an ISP company, I received a few notices that our networks were blocked by spamhaus for example because we hosted a secondary "reverse DNS" zone for another IP network where one of windows-based enduser workstations had a spam-relaying troyan. Even though, being different company, we had no control over the workstation in question, and our IPs were different technically and legally - we were blocked.
Now I am a domainer not ISP , but I still see that spamhaus evil policy - sometimes I do not receive important non-spam e-mails because of spamhaus actions.
Other blacklists are more or less OK, but spamhaus is something that must be stopped.
Finally... If you are domainer and sell domains... Would you like to miss an offer from possible customer? I bet you already missed some - thanks to spamhaus.org.
You already lost some sales even though your ISP/e-mail provider did not relay spam and also the ISP of your customer did not relay spam.

[Raider]

Well, I hate receiving spam and do not send spam, but spamhaus.org operations MUST be stopped or changed. They blocked too many innocent networks/IPs.

I could'nt agree more, I had a few domains blocked by spamhaus which none of them even had email accounts, why they were blocked I havent a clue, they were then unblocked after a few months, considering I have a small portfolio, I can only imagine how wide spread this is....I hope ICANN complies with the order.

[Dave Zan]

I hope ICANN complies with the order.

http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-10oct06.htm

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.

Emphasis on the 2 bold italic words.

[scorpio]

ICANN: Sorry, we can't delete Spamhaus.org's domain
October 11, 2006 9:21 AM PDT

When last we visited Spamhaus' courtroom fight with a reputed spammer, a federal judge in Illinois was being asked to delete the anti-spam group's domain name.

e360 Insight, allegedly a source of plenty of junk e-mail, had asked U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras to force the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and registrar Tucows, to suspend the registration for the spamhaus.org domain.

Now ICANN is saying it can't comply with any such court order, even if Kocoras were to approve it.

ICANN's statement published Tuesday says: "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."

Translation: Pick on Tucows or, perhaps, dot-org registry Public Interest Registry, but not us.

ICANN's position also makes sense. It's entirely unclear what e360's attorneys were thinking; ICANN doesn't maintain the dot-org registry nor does it have any obvious method to force registrars to delete individual domain name

http://news.com.com/2061-10802_3-6124737.html

[Acro]

Ah, the future of spam in the hands of a Greek (judging by the ...judge's last name, which means "rooster") :-D

[typist]

Ah, the future of spam in the hands of a Greek (judging by the ...judge's last name, which means "rooster") :-D

seems onomatopoeic, to remain within the greek sphere.

[POLiSH]

Spamhaus had it coming to them.

You hit the button, how long had this been going on...lol