The battle between anti-spam vigilantes and online e-mail hucksters is generally pretty entertaining—er, ugly—but Spamhaus is embroiled in a pissing match that makes for some great reading… um, we mean, serves as an example of how not to peacefully resolve conflict.
An Illinois court on Sept. 13 ordered anti-spam blacklisting concern Spamhaus to pay e-mail marketer e360 Insight and its CEO David Linhardt $11.7 million in damages and just under $2,000 in litigation costs. Spamhaus is ignoring the judgment, claiming the Illinois court has no jurisdiction over it.
In the wake of that decision, someone has been sending e-mail to e-mail inbox providers’ anti-spam teams giving them notice of the court ruling and telling them they “will be next” if they block any e-mail from Spamhaus listed e-mailers, according to the UK blacklisting group.
“If you have received such spam with threats to your company or network, please do not respond to it,” says copy on Spamhaus.org.
According to Spamhaus, the threatening e-mail is the work of William Stanley, a “non-stop spammer and spam host [who] sells ‘bullet-proof hosting’ to other spammers to host spam Web sites.”
During the last day, someone has been posting long, grammatically tortured rants on online anti-spam discussion group Nanae under the name Bill Stanley urging Linhardt to take Spamhaus down.
Because editing would ruin the effect, here is an unedited excerpt with the exception of bracketed material:
“Destroy their reputation on the net. brand them for what they are ‘Spamhaus Terrorists’ you are a marketing guy. you know the power of the brand. When people hear the word ‘spamhaus’ make them Think negative thoughts.
“Enforce your judgment. You and I know what you have can be enforced. there is no way the judge is going to sit back and be called irrelevant and not do anything about it. [Spamhaus’ executive director Steve] Linford made the choice to thumb his nose at the judge and I am SURE he is going to find out what the results of that is going to be.”
Another excerpt:
“Get the Judge to find Linford and spamhaus in contempt. they will not even be able to travel to the USA to defend anything in the future for fear of arrest.
“Get the judge to order the website shut down and enforce it on their upstreams.
“Most of all. Media Media Media. There reputation has gone to shit in the last few months and their power is going away fast. make them a non issue like [another blacklisting concern] SPEWS is.
“Let the hosting companies understand they are next. they have liability, deep pockets and are afraid of lawsuits. They cannot afford to associate themselves with organizations that Thumbs their nose at US Judges and ignore judgments that they cannot afford to ignore.”
Wow. Nanae has always been a little unhinged, but this … Well THIS is positively psychotic. Oops. Sorry. We mean that in a good way, Bill, really. You know: funny psychotic, not mean psychotic. Don’t come after us, please.
An Illinois court on Sept. 13 ordered anti-spam blacklisting concern Spamhaus to pay e-mail marketer e360 Insight and its CEO David Linhardt $11.7 million in damages and just under $2,000 in litigation costs. Spamhaus is ignoring the judgment, claiming the Illinois court has no jurisdiction over it.
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