Spammer to yank Spamhaus domain name

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Spamhaus Project is about to lose its the domain name to an email marketing company e360 Insight. The project was tried in its absence by a US court which gave a default judgement of $11.7 million to e360.

Since Spamhaus is not bound to pay up because it is based in the UK, so e360 wants to stuff up its operating by taking its only US asset, its domain name.

It can do this because the Internet is still owned by the United States and therefore subject to US property law.

To be fair to e360, the outfit denies that it is a spammer. But suing a British outfit in the US and then seizing its website using a legal loophole is pretty underhanded. If e360 had proved its case before a British judge, then there would have been no problems. The fact it can only win its case in a foreign country when the other side is not represented sort of suggests they have something to fear.

Meanwhile the Spamhaus Project has warned more junk e-mail could be on the way because people will not be able to find its blacklists for a while.

According to Spamhaus, more than 650 million Internet users, including those at the White House, the US Army and the European Parliament, use the Spamhaus' "blacklist". Of course they are over reacting a bit too. Killing off a domain name isn't the same as suspending a website. Spamhaus is used by people who have mail servers and the outfit can pick a new domain name or just use an IP address.

More here.