Message from discussion It would be easy to have a good SPEWS

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Subject: Re: It would be easy to have a good SPEWS
From: Kevin Filan <mrhar...@excite.SPAMBGONE.com>
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email
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Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2005 23:50:03 GMT
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On 7/6/05 3:55 PM, in article
1120679736.918909.201...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com, "SuN Tsu"
<bananana...@spamblocked.com> wrote:

> 
> Kevin Filan wrote:
>> 
>> It is considerably harder to sue a non-American who runs the DNSBL
>> outside the U.S. and who has no major assets in the U.S..  This is
>> a flaw with the U.S. judicial system, and there isn't a whole hell
>> of a lot you can do about it unless you want to rewrite America's
>> source code from the ground up.
> 
> 
> You speak, of course, Kevin, as an American, living in the United
> States.
> 
> The fact that it is harder for a US citizen to sue a non US citizen is
> not a flaw in the US judical system, but rather a matter of
> jurisdiction.

Actually, the major flaw here is in my misuse of the English language. :/

The flaw with the U.S. judicial system is that just about anyone can sue
anyone else, for any reason or for no reason at all.  And unless you can
prove barratry or frivolous litigation on the part of the plaintiff, you're
likely to wind up on the hook for any legal bills you incur in defending
even the silliest claim.

The case of the "NANAE Nine" is a good example.  You couldn't ask for a
better example of litigation intended to harass; you couldn't ask for a
worse abuse of the judicial system, or for a more poorly written complaint.
And the NANAE Nine *still* wound up with around $30k in legal bills for a
case which was dismissed in relatively short order... and which should never
have been brought in the first place.

Jay Stuler and Joe Jared are currently in court battling SLAPPers; chances
are slim that the SLAPPers are going to wind up paying any kind of penalty,
or that they're going to contribute so much as one thin dime toward the
legal bills incurred to defend against their garbage lawsuits.   And what
ever became of the guys who were sued by CIHost on similarly shaky grounds?
I'm guessing that they're still paying for the privilege of getting those
lawsuits dismissed.

Unfortunately, any American plaintiff with deep pockets or with ready access
to a lawyer has a good chance of bankrupting an American defendant who
doesn't have similarly deep pockets or legal access.  And just about anyone
who operates a blocklist in the U.S. is likely, sooner or later, to wind up
spending money on a lawyer.  And s/he is not likely to recoup those costs
from the plaintiff, no matter how blatantly said plaintiff abused the
judicial process.  

I cannot comment on the British legal system because, honestly, I know
nothing about it.  I have heard that UU.net threatened Steve Linford with a
lawsuit. To date the only details I've seen about that threat have come not
from Steve but from Robert Bonomi, and said details have been sketchy.  I'd
be interested in hearing more from someone who had more knowledge of the
situation and/or who was at liberty to give particulars.  (OTOH, I can also
understand why Steve or other Spamhaus regs would *not* want to talk about
pending or threatened litigation).

I don't know if UU.net would have won a lawsuit brought in a British court,
nor do I know if they would have been found liable for Steve's legal fees if
they lost.  I was under the impression that British courts generally tend to
hold the losers in a suit responsible for the other side's legal fees, but
as I said I don't know.  Nor do I know how Steve responded to that threat
then or now. But I do believe that if Spamhaus were operating in the U.S. it
(and Steve Linford) would have been sued repeatedly by now, and probably
would have been bankrupted, defanged, or otherwise rendered less useful than
it is right now.  So it appears that the British system is less liable to
SLAPP-style abuse than the American system.

Peace
Kevin Filan