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Operators of the Spamhaus block list project will appeal an Illinois court's ruling that could shutter the effort if upheld, while other researchers contend that unwanted e-mail campaigns reached an all time high during the third quarter of 2006.In a document filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois by Spamhaus' lawyers on Oct. 13, the project's directors indicated that they will fight the court's September ruling that awarded $11.7 million in damages to e360insight, an e-mail marketing company that claims it was unfairly labeled as a bulk spammer by the organization.
"Although Spamhaus is based in the United Kingdom, unsurprisingly no spammers risk filing lawsuits in a British court, primarily because the UK legal system is based on 'loser pays costs' and does not allow frivolous lawsuits," the organization said."Instead, spammers routinely threaten to file lawsuits in their local nation's courts in the hope that a local judge can be bamboozled into accepting the case believing there is jurisdiction and in the hope of winning a default judgment from the local court when Spamhaus does not show up to defend the case."While maintaining that such default judgments "are without meaning and not enforceable in the UK," Spamhaus appears to have begun taking the Illinois case seriously, hiring the well-known Chicago-based law firm Jenner & Block to carry out its appeal in the suit.The uncharacteristic move to defend itself comes after Judge Charles Kocoras of the U.S. District Court Illinois circulated a proposed court order earlier in October that asked ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and Spamhuas' registrar to revoke the project's Web site.At the same time that Spamhaus is fighting for its survival, researchers contend that spam campaigns reached an all-time high during the first half of 2006.According to the latest research released by security applications maker Symantec, spam made up 54 percent of all the world's e-mail traffic during the first six months of this year, representing a nearly 50 percent increase compared to the second half of 2005.Symantec said that the most common type of spam detected in the first six months of 2006, representing 26 percent of the messages, offered pitches for health services and products.Fifty-eight percent of all spam detected worldwide originated in the United States, according to Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report.