John Gilmore (activist) - Toad.com

Toad.com

He owns the domain toad.com which is one of the 100 oldest active .com domains. It was registered on August 18, 1987.

He runs the mail server at toad.com as an open mail relay. In October 2002, Gilmore's ISP, Verio, cut off his Internet access for running an open relay, a violation of Verio's terms of service. Many people contend that open relays make it too easy to send spam. Gilmore protests that his mail server was programmed to be essentially useless to spammers and other senders of mass email and he argues that Verio's actions constitute censorship. He also notes that his configuration makes it easier for friends who travel to send email, although his critics counter that there are other mechanisms to accommodate people wanting to send email while traveling. The measures Gilmore took to make his server useless to spammers may or may not have helped, considering that in 2002, at least one massmailing worm that sent through open relays — W32.Yaha — had been hardcoded to relay through the toad.com mailserver. An article citing this was posted, and a subsequent discussion on the issue took place, on Declan McCullagh's Politechbot mailing list.

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