A recently formed group of e-mail marketers has opened a new front in the escalating war over unsolicited e-mail, suing several organizations that track and "blacklist" alleged spammers so that their messages will be rejected by Internet service networks.
EMarketersAmerica.org, a nonprofit Florida corporation, charges that spam-tracking groups falsely accuse legitimate marketers of being spammers and ruin their businesses by blacklisting and harassing them.
The tracking groups, which include Spews.org and Spamhaus.org, keep databases of information about accused spammers, publishing as much personal information about them as is available.
The data form blacklists, which are used by many providers of Internet connections and Web-page hosting services. Once the Internet address of an accused spammer is publicized, providers can block any mail from it, or pull down any Web site at that address.
"My members are permission-based marketers," said Mark E. Felstein, a Boca Raton, Fla., lawyer who also is the group's attorney. "They don't engage in fraud or obscene marketing."
Several defendants named in the suit, some of whom reside outside the United States, did not return e-mail for comment.
In an Internet discussion area about spam, Steve Linford, who operates Spamhaus.org, wrote that the suit "is an incoherent rambling that I stopped reading after the second paragraph when it becomes obvious it's just another spammer trying one on."
Felstein said his group does not include the most notorious spammers on the Spamhaus list, but his lawsuit says that his members are among those who have been blacklisted. He declined to name the association's members, asserting that to do so would subject them to harassment that would destroy their businesses.
Some anti-spam vigilantes have used the information from blacklists to turn attacks back on spammers, signing them up for mail-order products and magazines, and inundating them with telephone calls.
Since the suit was filed April 14, Felstein said, he has received threatening phone calls.
He said that one illustration of the danger of blacklists came when the company that registered the new group's Internet address later decided it would not host the Web site. The registry, Arizona-based GoDaddy.com, acknowledged that it made the change when its own Internet addresses were blacklisted as a result of its association with Felstein's group.
"It's an interesting quandary," said Christine Jones, GoDaddy's general counsel. She said the company is not pressured by blacklists, but "we just try to keep our . . . addresses off of them" and GoDaddy wants no association with spammers.
The suit comes at a time of intense scrutiny of spam, which accounts for an estimated 40 percent of all e-mail.
The Federal Trade Commission is holding a three-day forum on the issue next week, and several bills in Congress have been or soon will be introduced. One bill that will be watched by marketers and blacklisters alike is set to be announced next week by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). It would offer a bounty for anyone who tracked down spammers who falsify their identities or the originating addresses of the e-mail.
The bounty would be 20 percent of any fines levied by the FTC for the fraudulent mail.
The bill also would require that marketers label unsolicited commercial mail with the letters ADV -- for "advertisement" -- in the subject line.
