Geeklawyer has a spammer for a client. For non-Geek lawyers to get the context: this is a bit like saying that one specialises in, and prefers, defending child molesters. Uncool.
The spammer in question is actually a rather decent chap and definitely at the uttermost bottom level of egregiousness: that is, he likes rubbing up against little girls on the bus but does no more - to labour the metaphor. Geeklawyer like the rest of us reviles spammers but understands the base motivation and qualifications of spamming. He would nonetheless slit the throats of nearly all of them so long as no witnesses were around.
Spamhaus is probably one of the more important Internet organisations today. It maintains a database of known spammers and allows subscribing ISPs to junk email based on where it originated from: that is the ISP asks the question ‘is the originator of this email on the Spamhaus spammer database’? If so the email gets junked before it hits your inbox. Given that it is estimated that 80-90% of email sent is spam Spamhaus represents a major impediment to the activities of Spammers. It is not on their Xmas card list. Indeed organised attempts to kill it range from technical denial of service attacks to legal attacks.
The relevancy of this is that there is currently a drama relating to Spamhaus and the spammer e360 who are locked in mortal combat across the great pond dividing the land of the free from the US (yes, irony stupid). The spammer is attempting to drag Spamhaus into the US legal system with the strategic objective of bleeding it to death by 1000 cuts. Spamhaus is a volunteer organisation and cannot afford the vast ruinous bills associated thereto. Spammers have discussed this as a strategy to kill Spamhaus & E360’s conduct seems to be an embodiment of that idea.
Geeklawyer is of the traditional view that US judgments are by default unenforceable in the UK given certain behavioural preconditions. Spamhaus appear to have been given similar advice but with a degree of uncertainty that is looking dangerous. They appear to have decided initially just to ignore the judgement: for a non Internet company this is broadly good advice since the judgement would often not be enforceable in the UK. My normal advice to clients is to confine oneself to submitting to the US court that it has no jurisdiction and hope for the best. It may fail and the US court may say no. No biggy; in a UK court the fact that one made that argument unsuccessfully is not fatal to the ‘lack of jurisdiction’ UK argument.
The problem here is that Spamhaus appear to have tried a fatal strategy: arguing the case in the US court and then moving on to ignoring the US court. Not only will this not work in the US it won’t work in the UK either when the yanks come over here to enforce the US decision. Spamhaus’s lawyers would have a professional negligence liability accusation to answer to on this point, Geeklawyer reckons. According to Matthew Prince there was the option to have a US lawyer make a ’special appearance’ without ceding sovereignty to the US court. If this capability is available in the US one would anticipate that the UK court would follow it; though it is not inevitable.
In an Internet age there is another horrendous complication: that ones critical domain name is under the control of the Evil Empire. The spammers appear to be arguing that given the defiance of Spamhaus to the judgement then their .org domain should be suspended.
Were the domain a .org.uk domain this risk would, of course, be obviated since the US spammers would need to meet a less cooperative UK judiciary.
The major complication is this: if the US court decides that the directors of Spamhaus are guilty of contempt of court then it may seek extradition of the company directors to the US. To a UK lawyer this adds horrid complications to the traditional advice since one must now consider the risk that ones client may be hoiked of to the US. No longer will the UK courts get to examine the arguments.
The biggest legacy of Tony Bliar will be that UK law will now become subservient to US Law; all this for no other reason that a sycophantic Bliar wishes to have a retirement filled with lucrative US speaking gigs.
Geeklawyer hopes that when Bliar retires his security will then be relaxed to the eventual point that Al Queda will be able to give him the retirement gift that he so richly deserves. And, one hopes, his wife and kids too. Let’s spare the gene pool.
The overall point here is to get good advice. I am available.
ICANN in the meantime have apparently said “not our problem guv.”.
Am finding slashdot typically irritating on this story, and Spamhaus really do seem to have cocked it up (on, presumably, rubbish advice: I have heard they were taking advice from two different teams and were following two mutually exclusive strategies at once, a point which the organisation itself may not have actually comprehended). But submitting to the jurisdiction by appearing before the tribunal other than for the sole purpose of saying “we deny jurisdiction” is not exactly a novel point, I’ve had it come up in an offshore trusts case myself, and so far as I’m aware the result when you moan to your home court when the enforcement comes through about how the foreign court had no jurisdiction is usually “tough, too late”.
From the point of view of Spamhaus’ (and the like-minded’s) long term strategy I have to wonder if they are actually hoping that they will be taken down and that the immediate result will indeed be as apocalyptic as they are suggesting: devastatingly, unavoidably, obvious.
Am highly amused to learn you act for a spammer. But someone has to.
Slashdot is rubbish: I’ve stopped reading it now and haven’t commented for years. I prefer Digg.
You are right as well on the denial point. Practically anything other than that is fatal since the general default position at Common Law is for the enforceability of foreign judgements. Riding two horses rarely works!
My spammer is pretty decent - he buys me beer all evening and takes me to his casino to waste his money.
Interesting.
P.S. No ‘e’ in metaphor.
Social pariahs are the best clients:
- They pay well
- They do what you say
- They stick with you once you know their secrets
- They show you their bling
The best client has the worst reputation, but the best work is from the worst client.
In the contradiction there is the light.
There is one ‘e’ in ‘metaphor’ (sorry)
“The best client has the worst reputation, but the best work is from the worst client.”
Absolutely right.
Metaphor? Is that like an uber pr0n site?
no, not an uber pr0n site but if you know of one I’ll review it.
To IPKat: Guess I walked straight into that one. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were getting paid by Geeklawyer.
To Corporate Blawg: clients, by definition, are people with problems. The bigger the problem the more work there is to sort it out, and the more satisfaction to be obtained at getting a result. Without my clients I’d be playing the piano for a living.
But ruthie you’ll note that my slave like adherence to your every word is such that I corrected it to the incorrect spelling just on your say so. So perhaps I’m the bigger tit - I mean trusting you, how dumb is that?
[…] Geeklawyer has met its ugly younger cousin however. Take for example his posting last week about Spamhaus and its US problems. After my speculation the US court has subsequently said that even were it able to make an effective order in the terms requested by the spammer the order would have the unacceptable side-effect of suspending Spamhauses legitimate activities also, and so it declined to grant the order. Geeklawyer is familiar with that line of argument since it and its analogues have been frequently used elsewhere. Geeklawyer did however fail to mention this in his post. Had he done so he could now be insufferably smug and say “what did I say last week? Come on, what did I say?”. […]