Harris Interactive, Rochester, NY, has voluntarily discontinued its lawsuit against anti-spam group, Mail Abuse Prevention System and a number of prominent Internet service providers.
“We sued to open communication with our respondents and that goal was accomplished,” Gordon S. Black, chairman and CEO of Harris Interactive said yesterday in a statement. “Continuation of the suit is not in our shareholders’ best interests.”
The suit had been filed in July after Redwood City-based MAPS listed Harris Interactive on its Realtime Blackhole List (RBL) of alleged spammers and a number of ISPs that subscribe to the list blocked transmissions to millions of Harris Interactive’s online panelists.
Kelly Thompson, project manager for the RBL, told DIRECT Newsline last night that MAPS was “pleased” that Harris dropped the lawsuit, but that it would remain listed on the RBL.
“Nothing in the company’s press release says that they are going to fix the problem,” Thompson said. “As soon as they are willing to work with us to fix the problem, we’ll be happy to remove them from the RBL.”
It was unclear last night whether legal action was also dropped against Harris Interactive competitor, market research firm, Incon, and its president, Martin Roth, accusing them of “nominating” Harris Interactive for the RBL.
Harris Interactive said that following discussions with the ISPs, 98% of its communications to its panelists had been restored.
“Harris Interactive uses industry standard e-mail practices and we will continue to protect the rights of our panelists to communicate freely with us,” Black said. “We continue to believe that creation and enforcement of e-mail standards by proper public authorities is necessary to the future development of the Internet.”
Prior to Harris Interactive’s decision to drop its lawsuit, several high profile ISPs named in the suit had reversed their decisions to block the firm’s e-mail. Last week, Microsoft’s Hotmail reached a settlement with the online polling company and last month America Online Inc. agreed to restore its service. Both Juno Online Service Inc. and BellSouth.net Inc. reportedly also agreed to restore service.
The combined ISPs had blocked e-mail transmissions to some 2.7 million of Harris Interactive’s 6.6 million online panelists. Other defendants named in the case include Quest Communications International Inc., and Zoomnet Inc.
Harris Interactive filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, seeking injunctive relief and significant monetary damages.
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