View source for Open mail relay

== Modern-day proponents ==
The most famous open mail relay operating today is probably that of [[John Gilmore (activist)|John Gilmore]],<ref name="wired_pass">{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/07/44876?currentPage=all |title=Spam Blockers Pass It On |magazine=[[Wired (magazine)|WIRED]] |date=2001-07-02 |access-date=2008-04-07 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080601095441/http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/07/44876?currentPage=all |archive-date=June 1, 2008}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.spamresource.com/2006/12/blast-from-past-john-gilmores-open.html |title=Blast from the past: John Gilmore's open relay |date=2006-12-29 |access-date=2008-04-07}}</ref> who argues that running an open relay is a [[freedom of 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.<ref name="wired_pass" /> 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 [[anonymity|anonymously]]. In 2002, his open relay, along with 24 others, was used by a [[computer worm]] to propagate itself.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://seclists.org/politech/2002/Mar/0026.html |title=Worm uses John Gilmore's open relay at toad.com to reproduce |date=2002-03-07 |access-date=2008-04-07}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html|title=Open mail relay restrictions from the view point of John Gilmore|access-date=2010-06-25|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120503021816/http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html|archive-date=2012-05-03|url-status=dead}}</ref>