[plug] Ham vendors get the pork sword!

[Leon Brooks]

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=linford-BAE2AE.16124115102003%40news.supernews.com&output=gplain

<quote>
From: Steve Linford <linford at spamhaus.org>
Subject: The Thrashing of ESpammersAmerica
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 16:12:42 +0100

As PC World says today: "Antispam activists have won a major battle. 
Now they have to figure out how to pay for it".

Although there's a cost, that must not overshadow the significant win we
got by default that has left the Boca spam gang barred from suing us 
again and left us with no restrictions whatsoever to carry on doing 
exactly what we do (and now with precedent).

Being dismissed "with prejudice" means that all the arguments were
given to us and all of the spammers' arguments (every single one) were 
therefore denied. This includes "interrupting and blocking the Internet
traffic of lawful businesses and individuals: Denied", "Plaintiff claims 
damages from blocking: Denied", "Plaintiff alleges Libel: Denied", etc.

Nor indeed will any spammers try suing us again after the very public
fiasco Marin's junior ambulance-chaser endured up against the Wellborn
& Butler, LLC law firm. Felstein had a near-death experience when he 
realized we were going for full discovery on the spammers behind EMA, 
their tax records for the last 5 years, their contracts with ISPs, 
everything. Felstein, Marin & Co literally ran for their lives from
our lawyer, they had a very close shave indeed and were extremely 
lucky the Judge accepted their pleas for dismissal.

You can well imagine that when Marin, Hirsh, Richter, Hardigree, 
Battles, 'Penis-Pump' Thau and the other Boca Raton spammers realized
that with this lawsuit Felstein had implicated them all by refusing to
say which one of them was behind it, and had opened up all Boca Raton 
spam outfits to discovery subpoenas that would end their spam outfits, 
you can just imagine how fast Eddy stopped Foolstein's coke supply and
you can imagine the yell of "Get us out of this _fast_ you a**hole".

But, although delighted with the technical outcome, we're left with
the costs of having had to defend the bogus lawsuit, as the Florida
legal system does not grant costs to the winner even in cases where
lawsuits are as fraudulent as this one clearly was.

We are now going to appeal to Internet users to donate to our legal
fund - which they can do via the SpamCon Foundation web site at:
http://www.spamcon.org/legalfund/

The amount we need to cover is not what was publicized, it's far less
and a good amount of it has already been donated to SpamCon by generous 
Internet users. On notice of the dismissal, the Wellborn & Butler, LLC
law firm immediately dropped their fees by $40,000 so our real costs
now are very substantially less and we believe donations from Internet 
users will cover them. If so, then we won't incur a monetary loss to
dampen what was a most excellent thrashing of ESpammersAmerica by our 
lawyer Pete Wellborn III, described perfectly by one observer as:
"Watching Pete Wellborn deal with EMA is like watching a fish-shoot in
a barrel". Only in this case, we had to pay a ticket to watch.

-- 
  Steve Linford
  The Spamhaus Project
  http://www.spamhaus.org
</quote>

I think I can just about see Jeremy's grin from here. (-:

Cheers; Leon

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