Spam fighter hit with $11 million judgment

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Spamhaus "knows" their service is ineffective how?

Spamhaus according to their website provides services to larger companies that are fee-based, so any arguments based upon any distinction between "free" and "for a fee" are problematic.

On the other hand, Spamhaus makes it very very clear that what they are providing is solely their OPINION - and that what the end user does with the opinion provided by them is ENTIRELY up to them.

And legally in America an opinion is always "true", even if it's provably wrong. As long as it's made clear that it is an opinion.

Since Spamhaus has a published definition for how they determine what is listed, I believe that e360 would most likely have to convince a jury that e360 was both being falsely and maliciously included in list for their to be much chance of an award in their favor in a "real" trial.

Besides, you are either disingenously or mistakenly introducing the factor of intent with the "knows" in your allegory, even though the two instances are anything but parallel.

I doubt Spamhaus "knows" they have a defective product regardless of whether they provide it for free or not.

I also doubt most administrators who willingly utilize the Spamhaus RBL "know" that they are using a defective product, even though they get it for free and it stops hundreds (or thousands) of spam messages from entering their email systems at a virtually non-existent false positive ratio.

(the above 2 paragraphs are of course tongue in cheek - I wish everything I used on my couputer "didn't work" as well as the SpamHaus RBL does!!!! )

But this is America and you can sue just about anybody for just about anything in civil court ... no matter how rediculous your case is - if you are willing to pony up the dough.

And I wonder too if the judgement might not have been meant in part to be punitive against Spamhaus because Spamhaus apparently chose to simply ignore the suit. It certainly wouldn't be impossible for a judge who felt he was being treated disrespectfully (and in my opinion not even bothering to show up for court is hard to construe much of any other way) reacted harshly.

Posted by: ghastly   Posted on: 09/19/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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