Battleangel

But will ICANN comply, seeing as it would fly in the face of the claim that ICANN is independent? Here is a good example of what can happen when the organization that manages the assignment of domain names and IP addresses is subject to US laws and a litigation happy culture.

A federal court has issued a proposed order which would direct ICANN to suspend the spamhaus.org domain after the spam blacklist site thumbed its nose at a $11.7 million default judgment last month. Spamhaus was sued by e360insight, a company that had been blacklisted by Spamhaus for sending unsolicited commercial e-mail. Although Spamhaus initially filed a response to the complaint, it decided not to participate any further in the case, a decision that led to the default judgment.

Strange as it may seem, with Spamhaus being British and supposedly not subject to Illinois laws, one actually has to point that out in a formal argument. Which Spamhaus didn’t. The question is if this is a one-off glitch or a potential venue for abuse, a test balloon if you will, for a flood of similar cases that will come up with convenient ways to rid the wired world of troublesome domains.