Information about this court ruling can be found on Spamhaus’s website [PDF]. Apparently, at this stage, it is only a proposed ruling. But I am no lawyer.

This story has been discussed before, when Spamhaus, which is located in the UK, was sued in the US by a spammer.

They refused to come before the court as “they do no business in Illinois, and are located in the UK.

Legal issues aside, imagine what would happen if Spamhaus was forced to present itself before courts all over the world, where they don’t even do business. They are a volunteer organization and spammers will stop at nothing to get at them.

After this court ruling, Spamhaus.org was under a DDoS attack, in my opinion for the purpose of preventing users from reaching the information it provided about the court ruling. This was done along-side a Joe Job, sending fake email appearing to come from Spamhaus’s CEO, Steve Linford. This email provided disinformation about the court ruling, claiming that anyone who uses the Spamhaus service can be facing legal action. This was false.

This court order (potential court order) to ICANN is the one of the most dangerous things that could potentially happen to the Internet, and it needs to be squashed. Next, we would see the court going after Spamhaus mirrors, Registrars or RIRs.

ICANN, while being composed of good people who do try and do good, does very little as an organization where it comes to stopping abuse. A lot of this abuse involves millions on millions of domain names. These are used for spam, phishing, CP, botnets and a lot of other such activities.

IF ICANN can now potentially be used to:

1. Attack an organization that keeps a lot of the Internet sane. Not just spam-free, but rather actively helps the fight against CP, phishing, etc.

2. Circumvent International law, forcing a foreign entity to answer the call of a court around the world, which ruled wrongly on business they don’t actually do.

3. Shoot itself in the foot, forcing the formation of a sort of alternate root (we will keep using Spamhaus, folks, no matter what) or a move to a different TLD or a ccTLD. It will no longer be a relevant body. Hey, everybody is talking about how to keep Spamhaus alive. That’s an idea that floats around a lot.

It will be a precedent which will open a can of worms, and there will be no end to it. This court ruling needs to be attacked with all possible force, by ICANN, the community, the news and everyone else who cares.

I still have faith in ICANN’s good people, and I still have faith in the law enforcement officers who use what Spamhaus freely gives to the world. I also have faith in the judges of the Illinois court, and believe they will make the right call.

This Illinois court will meet with a clue stick and clue up, they don’t currently seem to be very tech-savvy to me.

I am not sure at all ICANN can ignore such an order when it comes. ICANN will prevent this legal action, or something else will be done. Otherwise, maybe it IS time for an alternate root, as the alternate evil seems very shiny right now.

This is all yet to be determined, and mostly my opinion beyond the URLs provided. This, however, needs to be addressed. It is serious.

For now, what would be very nice is to see every ccTLD that “cares” provide with a free, courtesy domain name, and point to Spamhaus’s IP addresses. Spamhaus.co.il, Spamhaus.jp, etc.

I am rather inflamatory in this post, but to be honest, the world isn’t going to end, I will still go to Spmahaus’s website even if I have to go to .co.uk instead of .org.