NSI threatens to sue Blackhole List operator
Network Solutions says it may sue the influential antispam group if it provides a filter that could be used by hundreds of networks worldwide to block the dominant registrar's email.
Mail Abuse Prevention Systems, a Redwood City, California, group founded by Internet pioneer Paul Vixie, said in an Internet posting that it is considering adding NSI to its Realtime Blackhole List following "repeated attempts to get them to stop sending unsolicited bulk commercial email to all domain holders." The filter, which lists Internet service providers and companies that permit spam to be sent on their systems, would then be made available to network administrators to use in blocking email from NSI and other offending organizations.
The filter is used voluntarily by at least 180 licensed subscribers, Mail Abuse Prevention Systems, or MAPS, says on its Web site. The service has been instrumental in getting Microsoft Network, America Online, Netcom, and others to modify their email policies when those companies temporarily were blacklisted.
"Given the purely voluntary nature of the Realtime Blackhole List, it's difficult to see any legal theory under which NSI could state a claim," said Dave Kramer, an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati who has handled several high-profile spam cases.
MAPS has had scrapes with other powerful companies over its list, including Microsoft and Netcom, but so far those companies have been able to resolve their differences out of court, usually after they modified their systems to prevent them from being used by spammers. For example, free email and Web hosting provider GeoCities last year started requiring its users to enter a password to use email so that outsiders could not use the service to send spam.