Last month Spamhaus, a leading anti-spam company based in the UK, chose not to defend itself when e360 Insight, a US email marketing firm, took them to court claiming damages for illegally blocking their emails. Spamhaus could now be counting the cost in a development that may throw the net neutrality debate wide open.

The original lawsuit was filed by e360 Insight in November 2003 after they alleged Spamhaus 'deliberately interfered and defamed e360' and that attempts to contact Spamhaus resulted in 'threats and insults'. Spamhaus claimed that e360 emails were never blocked and that they were only mentioned by Spamhaus in relation to well-known spammer Brian Haberstroh. They chose not to defend themselves in the US on the basis that any ruling would have no validity in the UK unless jurisdiction was proven to a British Court.

As a result of failing to defend themselves Spamhaus lost the suit by default and were slapped with a $11.7m bill for damages, along with a permanent injunction to stop the firm blocking e360 Insight emails in the future.

Believing that they had no US assets Spamhaus thought that the suit was unenforceable.

What they had overlooked is that their domain name, Spamhaus.org, is registered with ICANN, which is under the jurisdiction of the US government. If it was ordered by a US court ICANN would have to hand over control of the domain. e360 Insight went back to court trying to seize this asset.

A recent ICANN statement on the matter adds more confusion to the situation. "Even if ICANN were properly brought before the court in this matter, which ICANN has not been, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend or place a client hold on Spamhaus.org or any specific domain name because ICANN does not have either the ability or the authority to do so. Only the Internet registrar with whom the registrant has a contractual relationship -- and in certain instances the Internet registry -- can suspend an individual domain name."

So basically you need to speak to the registrar, in this case Tucows, or the registry, Public Interest Registry (PIR). Both of these companies are based in the US and it would seem likely that e360 Insight's lawyers will just re-target their request.

This strikes at the heart of the net neutrality debate where the UN is trying to wrestle control of the internet from the US and set it up as an international entity under the auspices of an international advisory panel.

The prospect of a company, who claim to filter 50 billion spam emails a day, going out of business and releasing that flood of sex aid emails and cheap loans is bad enough. What would be worse is the flood of lawsuits flowing through the US courts with the aim of seizing domain names and damaging international competition.

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