With the recent court judgment that ruled in favour of anti-spam company Kaspersky Labs, the courts have now given Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and their customers the right to 'Just Say No...' to email marketing and other types of spam.

Wizard IT, a leading Canadian anti-spam solutions provider, is delighted with the outcome of the case, which now gives consumers and their Internet providers the legal right to restrict access to material that the provider or user considers to be "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable".

The lawsuit against Kaspersky Labs was launched in The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington by Zango, an online media company, to try and get its programs reclassified as non threatening and to prevent Kaspersky's anti-spam and security software from blocking its programs. With a decision in favor of Kapersky's anti-spam program, the courts set a precedent which would give ISPs the right to track, label and even block spam and malware that might be harmful to its customers.

Michael Peddemors, President of Wizard IT, Services has always believed in the rights of people to limit the amount of emails they receive from email marketing companies.

"We are very pleased with the judgment because it supports our belief that consumers have the right to choose what emails they receive and what emails they reject. I strongly believe that the protection of consumers must be the main priority of all ISPs and email operators," said Michael Peddemors.

Blocking email has always been a controversial issue. It pits the rights of the receiver over the rights of the sender. The recent court case involving Kaspersky labs and other recent court cases, like E360 Insight vs The Spamhaus Project, a large anti-spam BlackList provider, is proof of this controversy.

Josh Wilsdon, Vice President of Technical Development for Wizard IT Services, says that the recent court case gives anti-spam companies some valuable legal precedent to support them when facing legal challenges in the US.

"As an IT company and email software provider, we saw a rise in unwanted commercial email being sent to our customers. This prompted us to develop two products, MIPSpace and SpamRats, which specifically deals with the rise in spam, malware and abusive email marketing. We wanted to give consumers and ISPs a choice as to which senders they wanted to receive mail from and which they would reject. The recent court decision for Kaspersky helps lay a foundation of precedent which will support us as we continue providing this choice to customers."

As security threats continue to plague email and Internet users, consumers are expecting that ISPs and other email operators are adequately checking for spam and other security threats before legitimate email is sent to their email in-box. While the methods of combating various types of spam have not changed, with this ruling, ISPs, security vendors and consumers now have broad discretion in determining what is or is not spam and malware and the legal right to 'Just Say No...' to email marketing and other forms of intrusions.

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