What's New: Update: IL Court Threatens Spamhaus

An Illinois judge rejects a proposed order to shut down the volunteer-run Spamhaus anti-spam service. Last month Judge Charles Kocoras of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled against Spamhaus for $11.7 million, because Spamhaus labelled e-mail from plaintiff David Linhardt and E360 Insight LLC as spam. The new proposed order, submitted by E360 Insight, called for US-based ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and domain registrar TuCows to suspend Spamhaus's domain names. Spamhaus had stated its intent to ignore the original ruling since it is a UK-based corporation, and felt the US court did not have jurisdiction.

Fortunately Judge Kocoras rejected the proposed order, saying that stopping all Spamhaus's activities did "not correspond to the gravity of the offending conduct."

The proposed order quickly rekindled the debate over how much control the US has over the Internet's domain name system. For example, if ICANN is subject to US law, it may have been required to enforce actions against domain names registered to foreign companies.

Spamhaus believes it helps block between 8 and 10 billion spam messages per day.

Friday, Oct 20, 2006 10:20 am CDT

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