Mickey Chandler's SpamSuite

Well, they say that all good things must come to an end. And so it is with this incredibly stupid case. Except that it's not over. Where the Spamhaus case got removed to federal court, Linhardt is dismissing this one in order to refile it in state court thus making everything old new again. Don't worry, we're going to try to follow that one, too.

But now it's time for the post-game wrap-up for this part of the program. We're going to try to figure out what happened and why. And, even better, all we have to work with is the Original Complaint.

To start with, I have to admit that I'm not quite sure what Linhardt's point was in filing this case. Maybe he wanted to play the part of the crying little kid who screams "Mommy, make the mean kids stop picking on me!"

While I'm sure that was a big part of it, let's go back and see what the tea leaves in the cup tell us now that it's, well, not so much drunk as evaporated.

So, let's start with the First Count. This portion of the lawsuit is for "defamation per se". In order to understand "defamation per se", you first need to understand the elements involved in defamation. Defamation is defined as:

1. an intentionally false communication
2. that is communicated to another without privilege
3. that causes damage to the Plaintiff's reputation.

There is also a special class of defamation called "defamation per se". Defamation per se deals with the third element by saying that the damage to reputation is so obvious and egregious that the Plaintiff doesn't need to prove that the statement harmed his reputation. So, I can see where Linhardt would think that being called a spammer on a usenet newsgroup dedicated to stopping spam would be defamatory per se (unless, of course, e360Insight is sending mail to people who have not requested it).

The only problem is that Linhardt claims that it is because it is a violation of federal law to spam, and it is not. Mainly, all that the CAN-SPAM Act prohibits is (1) false or misleading information, and (2) mailing after a request to stop. It, most assuredly, does not prohibit spamming.

I'm guessing (based on paragraphs 72 through 76 of the Original Complaint and a brand-new Ken Magill article) that he might even have thought that his getting listed by various blocklists (like Spamhaus) were caused by usenet. And, as it turns out this bit is what the lawsuit is really all about. It looks like he thinks that he can concoct jurisdiction in the Spamhaus case by showing that [HORROR OF HORRORS] Spamhaus gets some of its information from people in the United States. Imagine that! People in the United States not only use Spamhaus's lists, but they sometimes will give information to Spamhaus as well. But, I don't see how having a group of random posters to a usenet newsgroup send information to Spamhaus helps his case, and really the place to find this stuff out is in discovery in the Spamhaus case.

It's Count 3 that makes me think he's just being juvenile. Based upon complaints sent to his service providers, his practices were looked into and he had his service terminated. Oh, boo-hoo!