Modern-day Proponents
The most famous open mail relay operating today is probably that of John Gilmore, who argues that running an open relay is a free speech issue. His server is included on many open relay blacklists (many of which are generated by "automatic detection", that is, by anti-spam blacklisters sending an (unsolicited) test e-mail to other servers to see if they will be relayed). These measures cause much of his outgoing e-mail to be blocked. Along with his further deliberate configuration of the server, his open relay enables people to send e-mail without their IP address being directly visible to the recipient and thereby send e-mail anonymously. In 2002, his open relay, along with 24 others, was used by a computer worm to propagate.
John Gilmore and other open relay proponents declare that they do not support spam and spamming, but see bigger threat in attempts to limit web capabilities that may block evolution of the new, next generation technologies. They compare the network communication restrictions with restrictions that some phone companies tried to place on their lines in the past, preventing transferring of computer data rather than speech.
Read more about this topic: Open Mail Relay