In a somewhat unbelievable turn of events, Susan Wilson, aka Shiksaa, granted an interview with Magilla Marketing last week.
Why is this unbelievable? Well, Wilson is a fairly well-known anti-spam activist, largely as a result of being prominently featured in the page turner “Spam Kings” by Brian McWilliams—although she has publicly protested her high profile in the book.
Until today, she was a volunteer for anti-spam blocklister Spamhaus. She resigned for personal reasons. She is also an active participant in the Nanae anti-spam discussion group, a place where the name Ken Magill is pretty much synonymous with “giant @sshole” as a result of columns I’ve written over the years that have been highly critical of anti-spammers.
Essentially, until quite recently, Wilson wouldn’t pee on me to put me out if I were on fire.
But she kindly agreed to answer a few questions regarding her on-again off-again legal battle with E360 Insight chief executive Dave Linhardt.
Wilson is one of the individuals Linhardt sued three times, inexplicably dropping each complaint.
In the complaints, Linhardt accused Wilson and a varying number of others of causing his e-mail messages to be blocked from reaching its intended recipients by calling him a spammer on Nanae.
Linhardt earlier this month dropped his third lawsuit against Wilson and the others, but this time “with prejudice,” meaning he can’t refile.
Linhardt has sued multiple outfits and individuals in an attempt to get his messages delivered, including Spamhaus and Comcast. The suits against Wilson and the others were related to his battle with Spamhaus. Linhardt recently lost his suit against Comcast.
Wilson agreed to answer some questions about her battle with Linhardt on the condition they be published in full.
Magilla Marketing: To the best of your knowledge, why did Linhardt drop his lawsuit against you and other individuals this last time?
Susan Wilson: Because he had no case. It was entirely based on facts that did not exist or were simply untrue. Since he had no case his intention all along was to drop it each time before it got to trial. I believe there was never any intention of letting it get to trial, it was simply designed to harass. The only reason he filed this case was because he could not get at Spamhaus in the UK so he tried getting at them through me.
My attorney told me that they offered to drop the case against me if I would give them a declaration about Spamhaus. Of course my response was no, but I don't believe they ever called back. Within a few days they dropped the case against me and Kelly [Chien] anyway, and I believed they reached a settlement with Mark [Ferguson].
The one and only true fact was that I am [at the time of this interview] a Spamhaus volunteer, which I've never denied. But the volunteers do research work only and suing one is no different to suing a Red Cross volunteer to try to get at the Red Cross. I am not on the SBL/XBL/PBL or ROKSO [anti-spam blocklisting] teams and I never worked on any records on Linhardt because I'd never even heard of him or e360 until after he started threatening to sue Spamhaus.
Magilla: What was different about this particular round from the other two?
Wilson: Not much different from my perspective. All three of their lawsuits are rife with things that never happened and are, therefore, completely untrue.
Magilla: And why, as far as you know, did he drop it in such a way that closed off his ability to refile?
Wilson: I'm not a lawyer, but I would guess that a judge may not look too favorably on a plaintiff who wants to drop basically the same case for the third time and still wants to preserve their right to refile it. You'd have to ask Mr. Linhardt that question as my guess is exactly that. [For the record, I have asked, and Linhardt declined to comment.]
Magilla: Is the matter over legally as far as you're concerned?
Wilson: As far as the case in federal court, yes. The fact that Linhardt's lawyers are sending me subpoenas in the Spamhaus case, and which my attorney informs me are invalid, makes the question difficult to answer. You'd have to ask Linhardt or Daniel Peters [Linhardt’s lawyer].
Magilla: What kind of financial hardship has this placed on you?
Wilson: The third case alone cost more than $12,000, although it was paid by an anonymous benefactor. Judge Virginia Kendall didn't see fit to award costs to me because she said it wasn't "oppressive" enough to have three meritless suits filed against me.
One of the most surprising things to me was I had several former SBL & ROKSO listees [people who had been blocklisted by Spamhaus] approach me and offer help in fighting the second and third suits. I couldn't accept, of course, but I think it's very telling about both the fairness of Spamhaus and the nature of these suits.
Magilla: What is the biggest misconception you believe marketers have about your efforts and those of other Spamhaus volunteers?
Wilson: That's an excellent question. The most common ones are that we're not approachable, or that we're self-appointed "vigilantes" who hate all e-commerce, and particularly email marketing. Nothing could be further from the truth - It's always been about obtaining the recipient's consent.
I find it very ironic that Linhardt sued multiple people for defamation, yet by virtue of the same suits has done himself more damage than an entire newsgroup could ever do. The suit Linhardt lost against Comcast is a case in point, in dismissing his suit Judge James
Zagel said: "Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer". After that I think Linhardt will find it difficult to file any more suits alleging defamation.
Steve [Linford] summed it up very well in Nanae yesterday [June 19]:
If he had taken our advice in 2006 and simply run a permission pass to get all the spam addresses off his “millions” list, things would be so different. To go from “unknown outfit that was not getting spam through to Spamhaus users” to “spam outfit that outed itself from the business” was remarkably silly. On top, to take on Comcast thinking they'd be a pushover and to get “officially” labeled a spammer by Judge Zagel was the most disastrous outcome.
Very silly.
