A U.S. court has threatened to shut down the Spamhaus Project, a volunteer-run antispam service, for ignoring a $11.7 million
judgement against it.
In a proposed court order dated Friday Judge Charles Kocoras of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
calls on the organizations responsible for registering the Spamhaus.org Internet address to suspend the organization's Internet
service. Both the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Tucows, the Spamhaus.org registrar, are
named in the order. The proposed order can be found here (PDF).
The proposed order follows a Sept. 13 ruling in which Spamhaus was required to pay damages and stop listing an e-mail marketing
company called E360Insight in its database of known spammers. Spamhaus, based in London, has said that it ignored the judgment
because it cannot be enforced in the U.K.
Though the order is not yet final and may be part of "the judge's gambit to get Spamhaus to come back to the table," there
is nothing to prevent it from ultimately being finalized, said Matthew Prince, CEO with Unspam Technologies, and an adjunct
professor of law with the John Marshall Law School, writing in a blog posting.
"In other words, there may be some time before ICANN is formally ordered to shut down the Spamhaus domain, but make no mistake
... ICANN's lawyers will be considering their options," he wrote.
ICANN is the nonprofit organization set up to manage the domain name system of the Internet. It is based in Marina del Rey,
Calif.
The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.
