The spam watchdog group spamhaus.org was recently sued by "Bulk Emailer" e360Insight in an Illinois court. Because spamhaus.org is based in the UK, spamhaus.org simply did not "accept U.S. jurisdiction." As a result summary judgment was issued, to the tune of $11.7 MILLION dollars, and there is a chance that the judge may further punish spamhaus.org by forcing (or attempting to force) the powers that be to delete spamhaus' domain name.

I'm not a lawyer, certainly not an international law lawyer. I'm not British either, so I hope I am using this right when I say to spamhaus, "Bully for you!"

Not being a lawyer, I find much of the legalities too boring to get into. But the gist of the case seems to be, spamhaus.org called e360Insight, a company run by one guy, David Linhardt, a spammer. And in so doing blocked many of the millions of emails this creep sends out from reaching the mailboxes of folks like you and me.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once wrote an opinion on the difference between art and hard-core pornography, saying of porn, "I know it when I see it." Apparently he later realized that was not a tenable legal definition, but the basic idea still fits, especially for us laymen.

Linhardt claims his massive mailings are not spam. Well, again, I don't know the legal definitions. But here is a list of some of the emails e360Insight sends out.

And that, my friends, is spam.

Spammers claim that people want their mail. Yet they falsify their email headers and alter the email content constantly, in an attempt to get past our spam filters. If we wanted their mail, we wouldn't be trying to filter it out. So no, spammers, we don't want it.

I don't think I need to tell you all how irritating spam is. What a drain it is on the internet, sucking bandwidth from legitimate use. Remember, we are talking about billions of emails a day.

I hope that spamhaus.org eventually prevails, that the Judge in Illinois realizes he has no jurisdiction, and that David Linhardt is a spammer.

But I also wonder one thing. How do spammers make money? Who is out there buying penis enlargement creams? Who buys stock based on a misspelled multicolored gif stocktip? We should continue, as netizens, to encourage legislation to deter spammers. We should encourage grass-roots efforts like spamhaus.org. But I think we should also wonder, who the heck are these idiots who keep spammers in business, and how can we educate them.

Keep the faith, spamhaus.org. We're on your side.