BEIJING, Oct. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said in a statement on Wednesday that it does not have the ability or authority to comply with a proposed court order that it suspend the Internet service of The Spamhaus Project Ltd.
In a proposed court order last week Judge Charles Kocoras of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois called on organizations responsible for registering the Spamhaus.org Internet address to suspend the Spamhaus' Internet service. Both ICANN and Tucows, the Spamhaus.org registrar, are named in the order.
The UK based company Spamhaus is a volunteer-run antispam service, and its "blacklist" of IP addresses used by spammers helps Internet Service Provider (ISP) and large organisations to weed out junk mail traffic.
Loss of the domain would impair the effectiveness of the service of Spamhaus at the very least. Though this still leaves the possibility that it could move onto a separate domain not under U.S. control, such an action might lead to U.S. judges ruling Spamhaus in criminal contempt.
According to Spamhaus, more than 650 million Internet users -- including those at the White House, the U.S. Army and the European Parliament -- benefit from its "blacklist" of spammers by being able to identify which messages to block, send to a "junk" folder or accept.
"If the domain got suspended, it would be an enormous hit for the net," Steve Linford, Spamhaus's chief executive said, "It would create an enormous amount of damage on the internet." Enditem
(Agencies)
