It's a volley in semantics that has one side claiming foul and the other claiming first amendment, and it's a court battle where the defendant list looks more like a Who's Who online than just another saga in the spam wars.

In a high profile email abuse proceeding, online market research firm Harris Interactive is suing Redwood City-based Mail Abuse Prevention Systems (MAPS) for putting the company on its Realtime Blackhole List (RBL), a list of companies accused of electronic mail abuse. Shortly after it was listed, a number of Internet service providers (ISPs), including those owned by Microsoft, Netscape, AltaVista, and AOL, subsequently blocked Harris from emailing its members.

"Because MAPS put us on their RBL there were a number of ISPs who began blocking our mail to our registered panel members (the recipients of Harris' surveys and polls), and they effectively cut us off from talking to about 40% of our panel," says Dan Hucko VP, Director of Marketing Communications at Harris Interactive. "As you may imagine, that severely started to impact our ability to conduct our business."

Though a judge struck down Harris's call for a temporary restraining order against MAPS yesterday, a suit in which Harris is seeking extended compensatory damages is soon to follow, with Microsoft, Netscape, and AltaVista just a few of the ISPs listed in the case along with MAPS. AOL was dropped from the list of defendants today, after Hucko says his company was once again cleared to email AOL members.

Best known for its Harris Poll, Harris Interactive has more than more than 6.5 million online panelists from many walks of life registered in its database. The company acquires its panelists through a network of 26 Web sites that host a "panelist application form", a profiling form each new member must fill out and email to Harris if they want to become a panel member.

The problem, says MAPS spokesperson Peter Popovich, arises in how Harris ensures those applications are in fact legitimate.

"The process is fairly simple," says Popovich. "When you get an application, you send an email asking the recipient if they actually want to receive the mail. Then you say something to the effect of, 'If you don't want our mail, don't do anything, just ignore this and you won't get anymore.'"

The difference? Harris requires new users to click on a link in their email if they have been added in error.

"That process, in the fact that Harris doesn't wait for a confirmation, is flawed," says Popovich. "It does result in unsolicited bulk commercial email, so it does result in spam, and we received several complaints about Harris's tactics."

Where those complaints came from is another bone of contention between the two companies, and a confusing one at that. Hucko says the suit originally developed when Martin Ross, CEO at Incon Research (a Harris competitor), filed a complaint with MAPS and requested the company be placed on its RBL. Popovich, on the other hand, says the first complaint originated from a user somewhere in Russia last December. No one from Incon had returned internet.com's phone calls by press time to verify Hucko's claim, and Popovich could only say that, to the best of his knowledge, Ross was only a minor player in the case.

"For us it is a First Amendment issue," says Popovich. "We document people who do not follow the basic practices that we consider to be acceptable."

"We are not spammers," counters Hucko. "We do not rent out email lists or send out mass invitations to participate in our surveys. The only ways someone can get email from us is if they have registered with us."

The case will be moving into the discovery phase in the coming weeks, with Harris asking the courts to scrutinize MAPS' RBL policy.

"This is First Amendment speech," says Popovich about the RBL. "What other ISPs do with [our documentation] is up to them."