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[spf-discuss] Re: Making spam scores public

2007-03-05 15:25:13
Hi Stuart,

Did I miss something, or do you mean Spamhaus? I can't find anything in a quick Google search about Spamcop having any legal difficulties. I know that Spamhaus was sued in US court, but that court has no jurisdiction over a UK-based company. Spamhaus has a page on their website where they mock lawyers who threaten to sue them.

It seems to me the real goal of our work on these reputation systems is to provide a universal solution to the spam problem. Keeping the data private means there is no fundamental difference between what you are doing and what any large ISP or spam-appliance company does. How can you expect your solution to be any better than what these private companies are doing?

I think the way to deal with threats of costly lawsuits is to set up the company in a jurisdiction with more common sense in their legal system than the USA. In the UK, for example, harassment lawsuits are minimized by making the plaintiff pay the defendant's legal bills.

One other thing I am planning to do with our Registry, is make sure the ratings are provided by independent companies. The Registry itself is nothing but a clearinghouse, and should enjoy the same legal immunity as a newspaper or Consumer Reports. If some rating service is put out of business by a lawsuit, others will take its place.

-- Dave

At 04:49 PM 3/5/2007 -0500, you wrote:

On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Graham Beneke wrote:

> Are there any public domain based reputation lists? Or would anyone be
> interesting in working on setting one up?

Based on what happened to spamcop, there is a legal risk to any
public blacklist.  I wouldn't want to make my GOSSiP data public.


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