Spam Blacklist Owner Not Responsible for Damages to Email Sender, Judge Rules   - 1,838 Views,

In a victory for the little guy, Joe Jared of Osirusoft, a DNSBL (DNS Block List, although many call them blacklists - not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you), has been exhonerated by a California court when the judge ruled that he was in his rights when he added the IP addresses belonging to Pallorium.com to his Osirusoft anti-spam blocking list.

In a ruling sure to warm the hearts of anti-spammers everywhere, and chill those of email marketers who employ questionable methods, Judge Geoffrey Glass of California’s Orange County Superior Court said that not only was Jared protected by the Federal Communications Decency Act, but that “Any good faith effort to restrict access to spam would be protected”, and further ruled that “Pallorium is a collateral casualty in the war on spam”, and not entitled to recover any costs.

The bad news is that because this was decided at a trial level, it has absolutely no precedential value whatsoever, meaning that no other court in the country is required to follow the ruling.

But still, it’s definitely a victory for Jared, if not for his Osirusoft, which he had to shut down following it being the target of an unfortunately effective DDOS in 2003.