Background

In September 1997 several of our members received an unsolicited advertisment by email from an individual identifying himself as John. He offered for sale for £495 the 'complete' list of all .co.uk, .net.uk, .ltd.uk and .plc.uk domain names, together with the corresponding registrants. He promoted this list as an easy method for purchases to send emails  to all UK sites in the UK. Because this was 1997, it was felt necessary to explain to the judge that this activity was called 'spamming' and that our members "generally took a dim view (as does most of the industry) on its potentially misuse by spamming".

The investigation

A test purchase and investigations led us to the conclusion that around 50,000 records from the zone file (augmented by WHOIS queries) were being sold, and that they were been obtained between 8.45 am and 12.09pm on 31 May 1997. Analysis of the WHOIS records and comparison of the data allowed an accurate match to be drawn.

The litigation

We sued Mr McGrath and Money Spider Ltd.

Court orders were obtained to search his properties for evidence.

On 18th February 1998 we obtained an order freezing Mr McGrath's assets and bank account.

The case eventually settled out of court, on terms acceptable to us.