Spamhaus defies U.S. court order

A decision made in September by a U.S. District Court judge that was ignored by an anti-spam organization in the United Kingdom may mean a lot more spam will be flooding into Internet users e-mail boxes worldwide. A lot more, like 50 million pieces a day, according to an Internet analyst.

Last month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in favor of e-mail marketing company e360insight, and ordered Spamhaus, a non-profit anti-spam organization, to pay 11.7 million U.S. dollars in damages.

e360insight had argued that the Spamhaus blacklist -- a database of spammers and suspected spammers that is widely used by spam filtering services and software -- erroneously included its domain. Spamhaus did not contest the case, but has refused to pay the fine, issue an apology, or remove e360insight from the blacklist.

Richi Jennings, an analyst with messaging research company Ferris Research, said the next step the judge may take will be to order ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers), the U.S.-based organization which manages domain names, to strip Spamhaus of its domain in an attempt to force the company to comply.

"In the short term, any spam filter that relies on Spamhaus' blacklist will have a problem with its accuracy," said Jennings. "But I don't think it will come to that. Spamhaus will either find a way to make sure that U.S. law can't touch them, or some other group will step in to fill the hole."

Spamhaus claimed that its blacklist blocks 50 billion spam messages daily. Spamhaus said the U.S. court has no jurisdiction and stands by its categorization of e360insight as a spammer. It remained defiant at the news of a possible domain stripping.

"The effect of suddenly not blocking such a large amount of spam would mean that volume of unwanted junk hitting mail server queues all over the world. The effect of 650 million e-mail boxes suddenly receiving a barrage of illegal spam, scams, and bank phishes is extremely dangerous. For this reason alone we believe that ICANN suspending spamhaus.org is almost certainly a no-starter."

"We think it cannot actually happen, due to the effect it would have both on the Internet and on millions of users," Spamhaus said in a statement posted on its website Tuesday.

ICANN also issued a statement Tuesday, saying regardless of any court order, it had no authority to de-list Spamhaus' domain.

"Even if ICANN were properly brought before the court in this matter, which ICANN has not been, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend or place a client hold on Spamhaus.org or any specific domain name because ICANN does not have either the ability or the authority to do so," the group said in an online posting.

"Only the Internet registrar with whom the registrant has a contractual relationship, and in certain instances the Internet registry, can suspend an individual domain name."

Spamhaus' domain is registered with Tucows, which is based in Toronto, Canada. Tucows was not available for comment on whether it would comply with a U.S. court order.

Jennings also said if Spamhaus and its blacklist were to "go dark," it might encourage other countries and international organizations to "wrest control of the Internet from the United States."

Such efforts have included proposals that the United Nations administer the Internet, and has grown out of frustration with some ICANN decisions, such as its May rejection of the .xxx top-level domain.

Source:Xinhua/Agencies