Spamhaus gets its money back

THE US appeals circuit has found that an $11 million judgment against UK firm Spamhaus was 'overbroad' - but has refused to strike down the legal reasoning that found the company guilty of falsely accusing a spammer of, well, spamming.

Spamhaus maintains a black list of companies that are known to send junk emails for marketing purposes, and those looking to avoid such emails can add its filters to their own to block out junk email. On the list is a company called e360insight, an American company, which was none to pleased at being included, claiming that it only sends mails to those who 'opt in' to receive oodles of total rubbish. Obviously.

The company charged Spamhaus with being a "vigilante organisation", but didn't really present much of a case denying its own spamming tendencies. Since Spamhaus is located in the UK, representatives didn't bother turning up to the US court hearing since there was no enforceability anyway.

In default, the federal judge issued the $11.7m damages order, as well as ordering Spamhaus to publicly apologise to e360insight. The judge also asked ICANN to take the Spamhaus domain offline, but ICANN rightly responded that it had no authority to do so.

Deciding to jump back into the fray, the vigilantes managed to get an Appeals court to overturn the rather outrageous award, and the Seventh Circuit has asked the district court to look again at the appropriate amount of damages. What it hasn't done is overturned the judgment itself, meaning Spamhaus is still guilty under US law of, well, calling a spade a spade. So much for a privacy crackdown, huh? µ