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The battle is heating up between the spammers e360 and the anti-spam warlords Spamhaus, some say the Internet may meltdown if Spamhaus stops its service..
Some estimates say 80% of spam is stopped by Spamhaus and e-mail could suddenly shoot to a server melting rate if their service is pulled.
The legal battle between antispam organisation Spamhaus and David Linhard, of e360 Insight, is heating up, with a court order that could cause a temporary ten-fold surge in spam.
Spamhaus has a user base of around 650 million, and its lists block some fifty billion spams per day, according to the project’s chief executive, Steve Linford.
Linhardt sued the UK-based anti-spammers in an Illinois district court after being listed in Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO).
Although Spamhaus maintains the Illinois court has no jurisdiction over an organisation based in the UK, district court judge Charles Kocoras awarded a total of US$11.71 million (NZ$17.7 million) in damages to Linhardt.
I hope they can escape from this whole mess as although Spamhaus are known for being harsh, they do a good job.
It seems unlikely that ICANN or Spamhaus will accept an order to suspend spamhaus.org without a fight, Cox says. Linhardt may try to have the proposed order changed before issuance, Cox says, to include in it other parties. Should Linhardt be successful, Cox says it means a US District Court will have dictated to a non-US organisation what domain name it can use. This, he adds, is likely to cause great concern to internet users worldwide who resent the imposition of US-based ICANN as the sole governing body in these matters. ICANN is therefore likely to want to stay out of the dispute as much as possible.
I don’t think ICANN should or will intervene, let’s just wait and see as this battle reaches critical mass.
Source: Computerworld