A federal judge presiding over a spam dispute rejected a marketing company's request to suspend the domain name of an anti-spam group that ignored an $11.7 million judgment against it.
U.S. District Court Judge Charles P. Kocoras denied a proposed motion from e360 Insight, which sued the Spamhaus Project over its "black list" of spammers. Wheeling, Ill.-based e360 Insight contends it is improperly on the list because it is a direct marketer that does not send unsolicited e-mail.
The Spamhaus Project did not bother defending itself and refused to recognize Kocoras' $11.7 million judgment against it, saying the court had no jurisdiction over the U.K.-based group. So e360 Insight asked that the judge order the spamhaus.org domain suspended.
But Kocoras said Thursday that the requested action was too broad and would cut off all lawful online activities of Spamhaus, not just those targeted by any court order.
Service providers and others use Spamhaus' list to help identify which messages to block, send to a "junk" folder or accept. Spamhaus claims that more than 650 million Internet users benefit from its list of spammers.