A court has threatened to shut down the Spamhaus Project, a volunteer-run anti-spam service, for ignoring a $11.7 million judgment against it, an Associated Press report said.
The Associated Press report said in a proposed court order, Judge Charles Kocoras of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois calls on the organizations responsible for registering the Spamhaus.org Internet address to suspend the organization's Internet service.
Both the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Tucows, the Spamhaus.org registrar, are named in the proposed order, the report said.
The proposed order follows a September 13 ruling in which Spamhaus was required to pay damages and stop listing an email marketing company called E360Insight in its database of known spammers.
Spamhaus, based in London, has said that it ignored the judgment because it cannot be enforced in the UK, the report said.
Though the order is not yet final and may be part of 'the judge's gambit to get Spamhaus to come back to the table,' there is nothing to prevent it from ultimately being finalized, said Matthew Prince, CEO with Unspam Technologies, and an adjunct professor of law with the John Marshall Law School, writing in a blog posting.