The U.K.-based Spamhaus operates a blacklist, which functions as a database that contains the email addresses of verified spam sources. The list is furnished to companies at no cost to aid email administrators in blocking unsolicited emails.
e360insight sued Spamhaus for unfairly placing it on its blacklist, company CEO David Linhardt said.
Spamhaus declined to defend itself in the suit, saying that a U.S. court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. The company also kept e360insight on its blacklist.
After entering a default judgment against Spamhaus, U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras is considering an order to suspend the organization’s website.
Executives at Spamhaus said they believe Kocoras will sign the order soon.
"If the domain got suspended, it would be an enormous hit for the Internet," Spamhaus CEO Steve Linford said. "It would create an enormous amount of damage on the Internet."
According to Linford, Spamhaus serves more than 650 million Internet users worldwide, including the White House, the U.S. Army and the European Parliament.
Despite Linford’s drastic assessment of what a domain name suspension would mean, Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard and Oxford universities, believes the court order would have little effect on end-users.
"Suspending a domain name isn't the same as suspending a website," Zittrain said. "Spamhaus is intended for use by people who run mail servers — in other words, technically inclined people. If Spamhaus wanted to, it could simply pick a new domain name, or use no name at all.”
Bart Loethen, a lawyer for e360insight, insisted that his client does not engage in spamming and said he had no choice but to go after Spamhaus’ domain.
"They are thumbing their nose at an order of the court," Loethen said. "What else can we do?"
In the meantime, as Kocoras considers the proposed order, officials from Spamhaus have said they don’t believe the judge has the power to compel ICANN, which is ultimately responsible for the domain assignment, to suspend the URL.
“We think it cannot actually happen, due to the effect it would have both on the Internet and on millions of users,” a Spamhaus spokesman said. “We believe a government agency would have to step in before it happened. Before an event such as this could occur, we believe ICANN would fight the order, as ICANN understands both the technical effect as well as the political one.”
