A bit of slightly old news: A judge in Illionois awarded [default] $11 million to a person/entity listed as a spammer in Spamhaus’ block list. There are many interesting issues here, primary of which is that of jurisdiction. Below is Spamhaus’ response:

The Spamhaus Project – Answer (2) to David Linhardt aka e360 Insight LLC

David Linhardt (aka e360 Insight LLC) filed a lawsuit in an Illinois court with no jurisdiction over the United Kingdom and obtained a default judgement ordering Spamhaus in the United Kingdom to pay Linhardt damages, to remove Linhardt’s ROKSO record and to cease blocking Linhardt’s spam. Unfortunately Mr. Linhardt was not advised that U.S. court default judgments have no validity outside of the U.S.

Below is ArsTechnica‘s report on the affair:

Spamhaus fined $11.7 million; won’t pay a dime

An Illinois judge has ruled that UK blacklist site Spamhaus must pay $11,715,000 to an alleged spammer. The ruling, issued Wednesday, comes after e360insight sued The Spamhaus Project in the Northern District of Illinois, alleging that it had suffered massive harm to its business as a direct result of Spamhaus’ decision to list e360 on a ROKSO anti-spam blacklist.

How did it happen? After all, the judge, Charles Kocoras, is chief judge of the District Court in Northern Illinois and was last month awarded the Chicago Bar Association’s highest honor, the Justice John Paul Stevens Award. This is not a guy who hands out his verdicts like candy.

The answer is that it happened because Spamhaus didn’t bother to reply.

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