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• The gentleman in question has a home page here

Please mod the parent up. You have to read some of Gilmore's own words to believe how aggressively and unreasonably stubborn he is on this issue. Gilmore has done some wonderful things, but he flat out refuses to ignore the changing realities of living on the 'net, calling anti-spammers "extortionists", "thugs", "blackmailers", and asserting that this is an "antitrust" issue. Regarding spam itself, Gilmore says: "I don't even want a "tyranny of the majority", if the majority happens to prefer to smash spammers (and suspected spam-sympathizers). I don't want a rerun of Joe McCarthy's witch- hunt, with spammers in place of Communists. I want to have everyone's right to communicate with each other protected, whether or not they disagree with the majority."

Which is all well and good. Gilmore argues that any censorship is reprehensible. OK, then why did Gilmore voluntarily censor mail passing through his gateway in a token attempt to appease Verio? He argues on a point of principle, then breaks that principle quite cynically so as to create an appearance of having offered a reasonable compromise (when the real solution is much simpler: authorisation). He is a very jolly, persuasive and genial old hypocrite. Harsh comment, but judge him by his actions, not his protestations.

Gilmore is an extremely confused man, well intentioned, but in severe denial that the world has changed around him. He has found a cause to fight (using EFF lawyers) and is enjoying playing hardball on an issue of principle (while breaking that principle himself) when there's good grounds for believing that the real issue is that he's just pissed at Verio for buying up the ISP he founded and imposing terms of usage on him. Any terms. Gilmore is pro-free speech in the shouting-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre-is-OK way. Information doesn't just want to be free, it wants to be thrown out of the door and helped along with a cattle prod. While he's done a lot of good in his life, I believe that this extremist stance actually damages the EFF and the free-speech lobby.

Before you judge him, go and read his specific thoughts on this issue, and decide for yourself whether he deserves contempt or pity. I'm rather leaning towards the latter.

Frater wrote:

Verio has every right not to sell Internet service to people who want to use it to run open mail relays.

No, actually, Verio doesn't. It's bound by the terms under which it (indirectly) acquired The Little Garden (tlg.net), which very clearly specified that there was to be no blocking of service on grounds of content.

Remember this, if you're ever tempted to business with Verio: It breaks its commitments. Accordingly, you can't believe a word it says.

The gentleman in question has a home page here He also has an e-mail address of gnu@toad.com and gnu@eff.org so you can e-mail him here and here

May I suggest instead of bitching on slashdot you take a second and send an e-mail to the John and let him know how you feel. Practice your first amendment rights. Visit his web page as well. Perhaps the "slashdot affect" can do some good. Take a second and stop being so apathetic and send John Gilmore an e-mail.

The gentleman in question has a home page here He also has an e-mail address of gnu@toad.com and gnu@eff.org so you can e-mail him here and here

May I suggest instead of bitching on slashdot you take a second and send an e-mail to the John and let him know how you feel. Practice your first amendment rights. Visit his web page as well. Perhaps the "slashdot affect" can do some good. Take a second and stop being so apathetic and send John Gilmore an e-mail.

"[W]hen social policy is created in smoke-filled back rooms, between movie/record company executives and computer company executives [..] [i]s it unexpected that such back-room policies end up favoring the parties who were in the room, at the expense of consumers and the public?" - John Gilmore.

"The Net treats censorship as damage and routes around it."

I was quoted in Time Magazine in about December, 1993 as saying something very close to this ("a defect" rather than "damage"). It's been reprinted hundreds or thousands of times since then, including the NY Times on January 15, 1996, Scientific American of October 2000, and CACM 39(7):13.

In its original form, it meant that the Usenet software (which moves messages around in newsgroups) was resistant to censorship because if a node drops certain messages because it doesn't like their subject, the messages find their way past that node anyway by some other route. This is also a reference to the packet-routing protocols that the Internet uses to direct packets around any broken wires or fiber connections or routers. (They don't redirect around selective censorship, but they do recover if an entire node is shut down to censor it.)

The meaning of the phrase has grown through the years. Internet users have proven it time after time, by publicly replicating information that is threatened with destruction or censorship. If you now consider the Net to be not only the wires and machines, but the people and their social structures who use the machines, it is more true than ever.

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Verio is censoring John Gilmore's email under pressure from anti-spammers.

Update (5 August 2001): After some interaction among me, Verio, and lawyers from Stanford Law School's Internet and Society law clinic, Verio agreed to not immediately terminate my service if I modified my mailer software to avoid forwarding large quantities of email from single addresses over short periods of time. This mailer change permits ordinary users to send a backlog of queued email, such as after reconnecting a Eudora laptop after a few days, but doesn't permit mass spamming. Verio was unwilling to concede their 'right' to decide I'm a bad guy at any moment and terminate my service, but they're on notice that I have reputable and capable legal representation, and will not hesitate to make both a big legal issue and a big press issue out of their censorship campaign if they try to impose it on me again.

Update (26 March 2001): The block against outgoing mail suddenly dissolved without warning at 12:47 PM Monday. I don't know why it disappeared, whether it will be back, or whether they still plan to terminate my entire Internet service as previously announced.

Update (21 March 2001): Verio plans to TERMINATE my T1 service on April 4, ending not just my outgoing email, but this web site, my customers' Internet service, etc. If this site disappears, see the mirror at http://cryptome.org

I am not a spammer, and have never sent any spam. I've had this same Internet connection since long before Verio even existed (they eventually acquired the ISP I cofounded). I've been paying them for the connection despite their billing department's incompetence about invoicing me for it. But under pressure from anti-spam organizations, Verio has blocked outgoing email from my machine. I am not able to send person-to-person email to my friends, my colleagues at EFF, or anyone else -- including you. Now they threaten to terminate my Internet service, which supplies not only me but my customers and users.

I think this is wrong, and that the anti-spam pressure tactics behind it are wrong. Any measure for stopping spam should have as its first goal "Allow and assist every non-spam message to reach its recipients." No current anti-spam policy I know of, including Verio's, SpamCop's, or MAPS's, even views this as a desirable goal, let alone implements it.

I'm pushing back by publicizing the problem, and meanwhile allowing their censorship to take effect. If you ever want to get an email from me again, it's time to speak up about this!

If you send me email, don't expect an email reply. Include some contact information for an uncensored medium, where the providers are common carriers, take no notice of the content of messages, and don't put arbitrary restrictions on what their customers are permitted to communicate. Leave me a phone number and/or a postal address.

The irony is that Verio now owns The Little Garden.

From http://www.toad.com/gnu:

The Little Garden (with John Romkey, David Henkel-Wallace, and Steve Crocker):
A medium-sized Internet Service Provider in the San Francisco Bay Area. now merged into Verio. We mostly sold T1 and 56K Internet connections to businesses. We were distinguished from many other early commercial providers by our common-carrier attitude: "You are free to resell the service that we provide to you, and we will not censor it." This enabled a whole crop of smaller resellers in various locales to buy from us and offer other services to the public (like modem-based Internet connections). These resellers contributed to our volume of Internet traffic, and enabled us to provide higher quality service at lower prices. TLGnet was sold to Best Internet Communications in July, 1996, and my active involvement in it ended. (Best was then bought by Hiway Technologies, which was then bought by Verio.)

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Here's a copy of the terms and conditions of The Little Garden (TLG), the ISP that I co-founded with Tom Jennings (creator of the FidoNet), and which I bought my T1 service from. (TLG was bought by Best, which was bought by Hiway, which was bought by Verio.) Here's an excerpt:

TLG exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information passing through TLG. You are free to communicate commercial, noncommercial, personal, questionable, obnoxious, annoying, or any other kind of information, misinformation, or disinformation through our service. You are fully responsible for the privacy of, content of, and liability for your own communications.

-Don

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Verio is censoring John Gilmore's email under pressure from anti-spammers.

Update (5 August 2001): After some interaction among me, Verio, and lawyers from Stanford Law School's Internet and Society law clinic, Verio agreed to not immediately terminate my service if I modified my mailer software to avoid forwarding large quantities of email from single addresses over short periods of time. This mailer change permits ordinary users to send a backlog of queued email, such as after reconnecting a Eudora laptop after a few days, but doesn't permit mass spamming. Verio was unwilling to concede their 'right' to decide I'm a bad guy at any moment and terminate my service, but they're on notice that I have reputable and capable legal representation, and will not hesitate to make both a big legal issue and a big press issue out of their censorship campaign if they try to impose it on me again.

Update (26 March 2001): The block against outgoing mail suddenly dissolved without warning at 12:47 PM Monday. I don't know why it disappeared, whether it will be back, or whether they still plan to terminate my entire Internet service as previously announced.

Update (21 March 2001): Verio plans to TERMINATE my T1 service on April 4, ending not just my outgoing email, but this web site, my customers' Internet service, etc. If this site disappears, see the mirror at http://cryptome.org

I am not a spammer, and have never sent any spam. I've had this same Internet connection since long before Verio even existed (they eventually acquired the ISP I cofounded). I've been paying them for the connection despite their billing department's incompetence about invoicing me for it. But under pressure from anti-spam organizations, Verio has blocked outgoing email from my machine. I am not able to send person-to-person email to my friends, my colleagues at EFF, or anyone else -- including you. Now they threaten to terminate my Internet service, which supplies not only me but my customers and users.

I think this is wrong, and that the anti-spam pressure tactics behind it are wrong. Any measure for stopping spam should have as its first goal "Allow and assist every non-spam message to reach its recipients." No current anti-spam policy I know of, including Verio's, SpamCop's, or MAPS's, even views this as a desirable goal, let alone implements it.

I'm pushing back by publicizing the problem, and meanwhile allowing their censorship to take effect. If you ever want to get an email from me again, it's time to speak up about this!

If you send me email, don't expect an email reply. Include some contact information for an uncensored medium, where the providers are common carriers, take no notice of the content of messages, and don't put arbitrary restrictions on what their customers are permitted to communicate. Leave me a phone number and/or a postal address.

The irony is that Verio now owns The Little Garden.

From http://www.toad.com/gnu:

The Little Garden (with John Romkey, David Henkel-Wallace, and Steve Crocker):
A medium-sized Internet Service Provider in the San Francisco Bay Area. now merged into Verio. We mostly sold T1 and 56K Internet connections to businesses. We were distinguished from many other early commercial providers by our common-carrier attitude: "You are free to resell the service that we provide to you, and we will not censor it." This enabled a whole crop of smaller resellers in various locales to buy from us and offer other services to the public (like modem-based Internet connections). These resellers contributed to our volume of Internet traffic, and enabled us to provide higher quality service at lower prices. TLGnet was sold to Best Internet Communications in July, 1996, and my active involvement in it ended. (Best was then bought by Hiway Technologies, which was then bought by Verio.)

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Here's a copy of the terms and conditions of The Little Garden (TLG), the ISP that I co-founded with Tom Jennings (creator of the FidoNet), and which I bought my T1 service from. (TLG was bought by Best, which was bought by Hiway, which was bought by Verio.) Here's an excerpt:

TLG exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information passing through TLG. You are free to communicate commercial, noncommercial, personal, questionable, obnoxious, annoying, or any other kind of information, misinformation, or disinformation through our service. You are fully responsible for the privacy of, content of, and liability for your own communications.

-Don

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Verio is censoring John Gilmore's email under pressure from anti-spammers.

Update (5 August 2001): After some interaction among me, Verio, and lawyers from Stanford Law School's Internet and Society law clinic, Verio agreed to not immediately terminate my service if I modified my mailer software to avoid forwarding large quantities of email from single addresses over short periods of time. This mailer change permits ordinary users to send a backlog of queued email, such as after reconnecting a Eudora laptop after a few days, but doesn't permit mass spamming. Verio was unwilling to concede their 'right' to decide I'm a bad guy at any moment and terminate my service, but they're on notice that I have reputable and capable legal representation, and will not hesitate to make both a big legal issue and a big press issue out of their censorship campaign if they try to impose it on me again.

Update (26 March 2001): The block against outgoing mail suddenly dissolved without warning at 12:47 PM Monday. I don't know why it disappeared, whether it will be back, or whether they still plan to terminate my entire Internet service as previously announced.

Update (21 March 2001): Verio plans to TERMINATE my T1 service on April 4, ending not just my outgoing email, but this web site, my customers' Internet service, etc. If this site disappears, see the mirror at http://cryptome.org

I am not a spammer, and have never sent any spam. I've had this same Internet connection since long before Verio even existed (they eventually acquired the ISP I cofounded). I've been paying them for the connection despite their billing department's incompetence about invoicing me for it. But under pressure from anti-spam organizations, Verio has blocked outgoing email from my machine. I am not able to send person-to-person email to my friends, my colleagues at EFF, or anyone else -- including you. Now they threaten to terminate my Internet service, which supplies not only me but my customers and users.

I think this is wrong, and that the anti-spam pressure tactics behind it are wrong. Any measure for stopping spam should have as its first goal "Allow and assist every non-spam message to reach its recipients." No current anti-spam policy I know of, including Verio's, SpamCop's, or MAPS's, even views this as a desirable goal, let alone implements it.

I'm pushing back by publicizing the problem, and meanwhile allowing their censorship to take effect. If you ever want to get an email from me again, it's time to speak up about this!

If you send me email, don't expect an email reply. Include some contact information for an uncensored medium, where the providers are common carriers, take no notice of the content of messages, and don't put arbitrary restrictions on what their customers are permitted to communicate. Leave me a phone number and/or a postal address.

The irony is that Verio now owns The Little Garden.

From http://www.toad.com/gnu:

The Little Garden (with John Romkey, David Henkel-Wallace, and Steve Crocker):
A medium-sized Internet Service Provider in the San Francisco Bay Area. now merged into Verio. We mostly sold T1 and 56K Internet connections to businesses. We were distinguished from many other early commercial providers by our common-carrier attitude: "You are free to resell the service that we provide to you, and we will not censor it." This enabled a whole crop of smaller resellers in various locales to buy from us and offer other services to the public (like modem-based Internet connections). These resellers contributed to our volume of Internet traffic, and enabled us to provide higher quality service at lower prices. TLGnet was sold to Best Internet Communications in July, 1996, and my active involvement in it ended. (Best was then bought by Hiway Technologies, which was then bought by Verio.)

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Here's a copy of the terms and conditions of The Little Garden (TLG), the ISP that I co-founded with Tom Jennings (creator of the FidoNet), and which I bought my T1 service from. (TLG was bought by Best, which was bought by Hiway, which was bought by Verio.) Here's an excerpt:

TLG exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information passing through TLG. You are free to communicate commercial, noncommercial, personal, questionable, obnoxious, annoying, or any other kind of information, misinformation, or disinformation through our service. You are fully responsible for the privacy of, content of, and liability for your own communications.

-Don

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Verio is censoring John Gilmore's email under pressure from anti-spammers.

Update (5 August 2001): After some interaction among me, Verio, and lawyers from Stanford Law School's Internet and Society law clinic, Verio agreed to not immediately terminate my service if I modified my mailer software to avoid forwarding large quantities of email from single addresses over short periods of time. This mailer change permits ordinary users to send a backlog of queued email, such as after reconnecting a Eudora laptop after a few days, but doesn't permit mass spamming. Verio was unwilling to concede their 'right' to decide I'm a bad guy at any moment and terminate my service, but they're on notice that I have reputable and capable legal representation, and will not hesitate to make both a big legal issue and a big press issue out of their censorship campaign if they try to impose it on me again.

Update (26 March 2001): The block against outgoing mail suddenly dissolved without warning at 12:47 PM Monday. I don't know why it disappeared, whether it will be back, or whether they still plan to terminate my entire Internet service as previously announced.

Update (21 March 2001): Verio plans to TERMINATE my T1 service on April 4, ending not just my outgoing email, but this web site, my customers' Internet service, etc. If this site disappears, see the mirror at http://cryptome.org

I am not a spammer, and have never sent any spam. I've had this same Internet connection since long before Verio even existed (they eventually acquired the ISP I cofounded). I've been paying them for the connection despite their billing department's incompetence about invoicing me for it. But under pressure from anti-spam organizations, Verio has blocked outgoing email from my machine. I am not able to send person-to-person email to my friends, my colleagues at EFF, or anyone else -- including you. Now they threaten to terminate my Internet service, which supplies not only me but my customers and users.

I think this is wrong, and that the anti-spam pressure tactics behind it are wrong. Any measure for stopping spam should have as its first goal "Allow and assist every non-spam message to reach its recipients." No current anti-spam policy I know of, including Verio's, SpamCop's, or MAPS's, even views this as a desirable goal, let alone implements it.

I'm pushing back by publicizing the problem, and meanwhile allowing their censorship to take effect. If you ever want to get an email from me again, it's time to speak up about this!

If you send me email, don't expect an email reply. Include some contact information for an uncensored medium, where the providers are common carriers, take no notice of the content of messages, and don't put arbitrary restrictions on what their customers are permitted to communicate. Leave me a phone number and/or a postal address.

The irony is that Verio now owns The Little Garden.

From http://www.toad.com/gnu:

The Little Garden (with John Romkey, David Henkel-Wallace, and Steve Crocker):
A medium-sized Internet Service Provider in the San Francisco Bay Area. now merged into Verio. We mostly sold T1 and 56K Internet connections to businesses. We were distinguished from many other early commercial providers by our common-carrier attitude: "You are free to resell the service that we provide to you, and we will not censor it." This enabled a whole crop of smaller resellers in various locales to buy from us and offer other services to the public (like modem-based Internet connections). These resellers contributed to our volume of Internet traffic, and enabled us to provide higher quality service at lower prices. TLGnet was sold to Best Internet Communications in July, 1996, and my active involvement in it ended. (Best was then bought by Hiway Technologies, which was then bought by Verio.)

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Here's a copy of the terms and conditions of The Little Garden (TLG), the ISP that I co-founded with Tom Jennings (creator of the FidoNet), and which I bought my T1 service from. (TLG was bought by Best, which was bought by Hiway, which was bought by Verio.) Here's an excerpt:

TLG exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information passing through TLG. You are free to communicate commercial, noncommercial, personal, questionable, obnoxious, annoying, or any other kind of information, misinformation, or disinformation through our service. You are fully responsible for the privacy of, content of, and liability for your own communications.

-Don

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Verio is censoring John Gilmore's email under pressure from anti-spammers.

Update (5 August 2001): After some interaction among me, Verio, and lawyers from Stanford Law School's Internet and Society law clinic, Verio agreed to not immediately terminate my service if I modified my mailer software to avoid forwarding large quantities of email from single addresses over short periods of time. This mailer change permits ordinary users to send a backlog of queued email, such as after reconnecting a Eudora laptop after a few days, but doesn't permit mass spamming. Verio was unwilling to concede their 'right' to decide I'm a bad guy at any moment and terminate my service, but they're on notice that I have reputable and capable legal representation, and will not hesitate to make both a big legal issue and a big press issue out of their censorship campaign if they try to impose it on me again.

Update (26 March 2001): The block against outgoing mail suddenly dissolved without warning at 12:47 PM Monday. I don't know why it disappeared, whether it will be back, or whether they still plan to terminate my entire Internet service as previously announced.

Update (21 March 2001): Verio plans to TERMINATE my T1 service on April 4, ending not just my outgoing email, but this web site, my customers' Internet service, etc. If this site disappears, see the mirror at http://cryptome.org

I am not a spammer, and have never sent any spam. I've had this same Internet connection since long before Verio even existed (they eventually acquired the ISP I cofounded). I've been paying them for the connection despite their billing department's incompetence about invoicing me for it. But under pressure from anti-spam organizations, Verio has blocked outgoing email from my machine. I am not able to send person-to-person email to my friends, my colleagues at EFF, or anyone else -- including you. Now they threaten to terminate my Internet service, which supplies not only me but my customers and users.

I think this is wrong, and that the anti-spam pressure tactics behind it are wrong. Any measure for stopping spam should have as its first goal "Allow and assist every non-spam message to reach its recipients." No current anti-spam policy I know of, including Verio's, SpamCop's, or MAPS's, even views this as a desirable goal, let alone implements it.

I'm pushing back by publicizing the problem, and meanwhile allowing their censorship to take effect. If you ever want to get an email from me again, it's time to speak up about this!

If you send me email, don't expect an email reply. Include some contact information for an uncensored medium, where the providers are common carriers, take no notice of the content of messages, and don't put arbitrary restrictions on what their customers are permitted to communicate. Leave me a phone number and/or a postal address.

The irony is that Verio now owns The Little Garden.

From http://www.toad.com/gnu:

The Little Garden (with John Romkey, David Henkel-Wallace, and Steve Crocker):
A medium-sized Internet Service Provider in the San Francisco Bay Area. now merged into Verio. We mostly sold T1 and 56K Internet connections to businesses. We were distinguished from many other early commercial providers by our common-carrier attitude: "You are free to resell the service that we provide to you, and we will not censor it." This enabled a whole crop of smaller resellers in various locales to buy from us and offer other services to the public (like modem-based Internet connections). These resellers contributed to our volume of Internet traffic, and enabled us to provide higher quality service at lower prices. TLGnet was sold to Best Internet Communications in July, 1996, and my active involvement in it ended. (Best was then bought by Hiway Technologies, which was then bought by Verio.)

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Here's a copy of the terms and conditions of The Little Garden (TLG), the ISP that I co-founded with Tom Jennings (creator of the FidoNet), and which I bought my T1 service from. (TLG was bought by Best, which was bought by Hiway, which was bought by Verio.) Here's an excerpt:

TLG exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information passing through TLG. You are free to communicate commercial, noncommercial, personal, questionable, obnoxious, annoying, or any other kind of information, misinformation, or disinformation through our service. You are fully responsible for the privacy of, content of, and liability for your own communications.

-Don

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Verio is censoring John Gilmore's email under pressure from anti-spammers.

Update (5 August 2001): After some interaction among me, Verio, and lawyers from Stanford Law School's Internet and Society law clinic, Verio agreed to not immediately terminate my service if I modified my mailer software to avoid forwarding large quantities of email from single addresses over short periods of time. This mailer change permits ordinary users to send a backlog of queued email, such as after reconnecting a Eudora laptop after a few days, but doesn't permit mass spamming. Verio was unwilling to concede their 'right' to decide I'm a bad guy at any moment and terminate my service, but they're on notice that I have reputable and capable legal representation, and will not hesitate to make both a big legal issue and a big press issue out of their censorship campaign if they try to impose it on me again.

Update (26 March 2001): The block against outgoing mail suddenly dissolved without warning at 12:47 PM Monday. I don't know why it disappeared, whether it will be back, or whether they still plan to terminate my entire Internet service as previously announced.

Update (21 March 2001): Verio plans to TERMINATE my T1 service on April 4, ending not just my outgoing email, but this web site, my customers' Internet service, etc. If this site disappears, see the mirror at http://cryptome.org

I am not a spammer, and have never sent any spam. I've had this same Internet connection since long before Verio even existed (they eventually acquired the ISP I cofounded). I've been paying them for the connection despite their billing department's incompetence about invoicing me for it. But under pressure from anti-spam organizations, Verio has blocked outgoing email from my machine. I am not able to send person-to-person email to my friends, my colleagues at EFF, or anyone else -- including you. Now they threaten to terminate my Internet service, which supplies not only me but my customers and users.

I think this is wrong, and that the anti-spam pressure tactics behind it are wrong. Any measure for stopping spam should have as its first goal "Allow and assist every non-spam message to reach its recipients." No current anti-spam policy I know of, including Verio's, SpamCop's, or MAPS's, even views this as a desirable goal, let alone implements it.

I'm pushing back by publicizing the problem, and meanwhile allowing their censorship to take effect. If you ever want to get an email from me again, it's time to speak up about this!

If you send me email, don't expect an email reply. Include some contact information for an uncensored medium, where the providers are common carriers, take no notice of the content of messages, and don't put arbitrary restrictions on what their customers are permitted to communicate. Leave me a phone number and/or a postal address.

The irony is that Verio now owns The Little Garden.

From http://www.toad.com/gnu:

The Little Garden (with John Romkey, David Henkel-Wallace, and Steve Crocker):
A medium-sized Internet Service Provider in the San Francisco Bay Area. now merged into Verio. We mostly sold T1 and 56K Internet connections to businesses. We were distinguished from many other early commercial providers by our common-carrier attitude: "You are free to resell the service that we provide to you, and we will not censor it." This enabled a whole crop of smaller resellers in various locales to buy from us and offer other services to the public (like modem-based Internet connections). These resellers contributed to our volume of Internet traffic, and enabled us to provide higher quality service at lower prices. TLGnet was sold to Best Internet Communications in July, 1996, and my active involvement in it ended. (Best was then bought by Hiway Technologies, which was then bought by Verio.)

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Here's a copy of the terms and conditions of The Little Garden (TLG), the ISP that I co-founded with Tom Jennings (creator of the FidoNet), and which I bought my T1 service from. (TLG was bought by Best, which was bought by Hiway, which was bought by Verio.) Here's an excerpt:

TLG exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information passing through TLG. You are free to communicate commercial, noncommercial, personal, questionable, obnoxious, annoying, or any other kind of information, misinformation, or disinformation through our service. You are fully responsible for the privacy of, content of, and liability for your own communications.

-Don

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Verio is censoring John Gilmore's email under pressure from anti-spammers.

Update (5 August 2001): After some interaction among me, Verio, and lawyers from Stanford Law School's Internet and Society law clinic, Verio agreed to not immediately terminate my service if I modified my mailer software to avoid forwarding large quantities of email from single addresses over short periods of time. This mailer change permits ordinary users to send a backlog of queued email, such as after reconnecting a Eudora laptop after a few days, but doesn't permit mass spamming. Verio was unwilling to concede their 'right' to decide I'm a bad guy at any moment and terminate my service, but they're on notice that I have reputable and capable legal representation, and will not hesitate to make both a big legal issue and a big press issue out of their censorship campaign if they try to impose it on me again.

Update (26 March 2001): The block against outgoing mail suddenly dissolved without warning at 12:47 PM Monday. I don't know why it disappeared, whether it will be back, or whether they still plan to terminate my entire Internet service as previously announced.

Update (21 March 2001): Verio plans to TERMINATE my T1 service on April 4, ending not just my outgoing email, but this web site, my customers' Internet service, etc. If this site disappears, see the mirror at http://cryptome.org

I am not a spammer, and have never sent any spam. I've had this same Internet connection since long before Verio even existed (they eventually acquired the ISP I cofounded). I've been paying them for the connection despite their billing department's incompetence about invoicing me for it. But under pressure from anti-spam organizations, Verio has blocked outgoing email from my machine. I am not able to send person-to-person email to my friends, my colleagues at EFF, or anyone else -- including you. Now they threaten to terminate my Internet service, which supplies not only me but my customers and users.

I think this is wrong, and that the anti-spam pressure tactics behind it are wrong. Any measure for stopping spam should have as its first goal "Allow and assist every non-spam message to reach its recipients." No current anti-spam policy I know of, including Verio's, SpamCop's, or MAPS's, even views this as a desirable goal, let alone implements it.

I'm pushing back by publicizing the problem, and meanwhile allowing their censorship to take effect. If you ever want to get an email from me again, it's time to speak up about this!

If you send me email, don't expect an email reply. Include some contact information for an uncensored medium, where the providers are common carriers, take no notice of the content of messages, and don't put arbitrary restrictions on what their customers are permitted to communicate. Leave me a phone number and/or a postal address.

The irony is that Verio now owns The Little Garden.

From http://www.toad.com/gnu:

The Little Garden (with John Romkey, David Henkel-Wallace, and Steve Crocker):
A medium-sized Internet Service Provider in the San Francisco Bay Area. now merged into Verio. We mostly sold T1 and 56K Internet connections to businesses. We were distinguished from many other early commercial providers by our common-carrier attitude: "You are free to resell the service that we provide to you, and we will not censor it." This enabled a whole crop of smaller resellers in various locales to buy from us and offer other services to the public (like modem-based Internet connections). These resellers contributed to our volume of Internet traffic, and enabled us to provide higher quality service at lower prices. TLGnet was sold to Best Internet Communications in July, 1996, and my active involvement in it ended. (Best was then bought by Hiway Technologies, which was then bought by Verio.)

From http://www.toad.com/gnu/verio-censorship.html:

Here's a copy of the terms and conditions of The Little Garden (TLG), the ISP that I co-founded with Tom Jennings (creator of the FidoNet), and which I bought my T1 service from. (TLG was bought by Best, which was bought by Hiway, which was bought by Verio.) Here's an excerpt:

TLG exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information passing through TLG. You are free to communicate commercial, noncommercial, personal, questionable, obnoxious, annoying, or any other kind of information, misinformation, or disinformation through our service. You are fully responsible for the privacy of, content of, and liability for your own communications.

-Don

What it quietly neglects to say is that you can't use it to copy or time-shift or record any audio or video copyrighted by major companies. Even if you have the legal right to do so, the technology will prevent you. They don't say that you can't use it to mix and match video tracks from various artists, the way your CD burner will. It doesn't say that you can't copy-protect your own disks that it burns; that's a right the big manufacturers have reserved to themselves. They're not selling you a DVD-Authoring drive, which is for "professional use only". They're selling you a DVD-General drive, which cannot record the key-blocks needed to copy-protect your own recordings, nor can a DVD-General disc be used as a master to press your own DVDs in quantity. These distinctions are not even glossed over; they are simply ignored, not mentioned, invisible until after you buy the product.

What's even more annoying is equipment that requires the Audio (read: royalty) CD-Rs, even when there's no reason to... Like that nifty Terapin VCD recorder that they sell at Thinkgeek. It requires the digital audio consumer CD-Rs (which is another royal step, I think) when I make a Audio CD or a VCD. Not all Audio CD-Rs work in it, only ones that say "for consumer".

In other words, I have to give money to support N'Suck, even if I'm making a VCD of a broadcast TV programs. The Supreme Court (in the BetaMax decision) says I have the right to timeshift Buffy episodes by recording them... but somebody got to Terapin, and now I have to pay a DART royalty to the Backstreet Boys in order to do so.

I say "somebody got to Terapin" because the VCD feature didn't always require consumer audio CD-Rs. It looks like a recent change. Some of the manual says you can use computer (no royalty) CD-Rs or consumer CD-R, and some of the manual is stickered over so that it says you can only use consumer CD-Rs.

It's like what John Gilmore says in What's Wrong With Copy Protection... the RIAA and the MPAA are conspiring to make sure that equipment that lets us fully exercise our fair use rights never reaches the market. Or if it does, that they are least get a big cut.

However, despite all this, the Terapin recorder is still the greatest Christmas present I got, even if the blank "audio CD-R's for consumer" are $0.80.

Now all I need to do it hack it so that it accepts regular (read: no royalty) CD-Rs. Anybody working on new PROMs for this thing?

"My recording of my brother's wedding is uncopyable, because my MiniDisc decks act as if I and my brother don't own the copyright on it."

What's even more annoying is equipment that requires the Audio (read: royalty) CD-Rs, even when there's no reason to... Like that nifty Terapin VCD recorder that they sell at Thinkgeek. It requires the digital audio consumer CD-Rs (which is another royal step, I think) when I make a Audio CD or a VCD. Not all Audio CD-Rs work in it, only ones that say "for consumer".

In other words, I have to give money to support N'Suck, even if I'm making a VCD of a broadcast TV programs. The Supreme Court (in the BetaMax decision) says I have the right to timeshift Buffy episodes by recording them... but somebody got to Terapin, and now I have to pay a DART royalty to the Backstreet Boys in order to do so.

I say "somebody got to Terapin" because the VCD feature didn't always require consumer audio CD-Rs. It looks like a recent change. Some of the manual says you can use computer (no royalty) CD-Rs or consumer CD-R, and some of the manual is stickered over so that it says you can only use consumer CD-Rs.

It's like what John Gilmore says in What's Wrong With Copy Protection... the RIAA and the MPAA are conspiring to make sure that equipment that lets us fully exercise our fair use rights never reaches the market. Or if it does, that they are least get a big cut.

However, despite all this, the Terapin recorder is still the greatest Christmas present I got, even if the blank "audio CD-R's for consumer" are $0.80.

Now all I need to do it hack it so that it accepts regular (read: no royalty) CD-Rs. Anybody working on new PROMs for this thing?

While your point is valid, I think that the right to make a copy for your own usage is an important part of our system and society. E.g. some companies would profit if all libraries were closed, but the society would certainly not.

The intention of copyright was to protect the rights of the author, not of the publisher. Unfortunately this has changed and today the author gets only a very small percentage of the total monoey and the copyright is the instrument of the mega-corps to protect their money. Copyright is nothing were the society profits from it just helps a minority to get richer and richer.

I think we made terrible mistakes in the past and it is time to change copyright back to something were the society and not few profit from. Copyright should guarantee the author a fair part of the income, but finaly his work should become a part of public domain. Copyright should be something the society profits from (by giving the author an incentive) and should not be perverted to be used against us (the society).

I totaly agree here with John Gilmore in many many points he a lot others he made in his article:

I recommend very much the following article from John Gilmore (EFF, inventer of the alt hierarchy): "What's Wrong With Copy Protection".

The article is well written and he makes some good and interesting points. Worth a read IMHO.

Is it my imagination or is ICANN actually working on getting their job done rather than horribly complex politics (more complex than needed to solve the problem), or trademark/legal craziness? There's some background at the page of the ICANN DNS Root committee.

Now, I'm pretty skeptical that a closed source DNS server from Register.com is going to be a big part of the solution, but even that I don't really mind so much. Having a few alternatives is good if for no other reason than helping to keep BIND from stagnating.

The article didn't talk much about DNSsec (or this older page) which has got to be part of the solution (to try to give the 10 second summary, when a client makes a DNS query and gets a response, it is kind of tricky to ensure that the response is really from the correct server, and DNSsec uses crypto to solve this and other problems).

I'll stand corrected if you're telling me that Gilmore *doesn't* want to run an open server. Please do go ahead and explain my deep lack of understanding.

Unfortunately, his home page isn't accessible at the moment (coincidence?), but as I recall, his version of the spat with the ISP in question boiled down to "I *founded* this ISP. I can do what I like. The rules for civilised behaviour that everyone else follows don't apply to me. I refuse to accept that the internet is different now than it was in the 80s", with a few layers of bogus arguments about free speech. I have a great deal of respect for John Gilmore, but I think he's wrong on this one.

I'm glad you ignored my post to the point where you responded, but I don't quite see how the stuff you write about hashes fits in - which part of my post is that a response to? I thought this thread was about blacklists of the MAPS and ORBS kind?

Verio is censoring John Gilmore's email under pressure from anti-spammers

This reminds me of an excerpt from John Gilmore's excellent essay about what's wrong with copy control:

"If by 2030 we have invented a matter duplicator that's as cheap as copying a CD today, will we outlaw it and drive it underground? So that farmers can make a living keeping food expensive, so that furniture makers can make a living preventing people from having beds and chairs that would cost a dollar to duplicate, so that builders won't be reduced to poverty because a comfortable house can be duplicated for a few hundred dollars? Yes, such developments would cause economic dislocations for sure. But should we drive them underground and keep the world impoverished to save these peoples' jobs?"

...you have never made any [money] and neither has anyone else...

Odd, I could have sworn that John Gilmore sold Cygnus for a sum approaching $700 million. That would make your statement, um, wrong, n'est pas?

As you say, it is perfectly legal for you to make backup copies of said material for your own use. Likewise it is perfectly legal for you to rip MP3s from CDs that you have purchased (so long as you do not share them with anyone else).

Fair use dictates that you cannot be prosecuted for doing either of these things.

It does not guarantee that publishers cannot restrict your use of their product through technical means (which this is).

See John Gilmore's What's Wrong With Copy Protection for a more complete picture of the climate out there regarding such things (it isn't pretty).

• What about the ability to burn DVDs? Apple already has a cheap DVD burner, it can't be too long before the technology (which was developed by another company, I forget which) appears in other devices, or on the parts market. A DVD-based box with the functionality of a VCR would sell like hotcakes.
  
• iMovie-style camcorder interface and DVD authoring.

Apple's recent happy-happy web pages on their new DVD-writing drive, announced this month (http://www.apple.com/idvd/). It's full of glowing info about how you can write DVDs based on your own DV movie recordings, etc. What it quietly neglects to say is that you can't use it to copy or time-shift or record any audio or video copyrighted by major companies. Even if you have the legal right to do so, the technology will prevent you. They don't say that you can't use it to mix and match video tracks from various artists, the way your CD burner will. It doesn't say that you can't copy-protect your own disks that it burns; that's a right the big manufacturers have reserved to themselves. They're not selling you a DVD-Authoring drive, which is for "professional use only". They're selling you a DVD-General drive, which cannot record the key-blocks needed to copy-protect your own recordings, nor can a DVD-General disc be used as a master to press your own DVDs in quantity. These distinctions are not even glossed over; they are simply ignored, not mentioned, invisible until after you buy the product.

this story is almost offensive. maybe instead of making fun of america's "war on drugs" as a journalist you should take the time to educate your readers. if the kids who are here are told the truth and given facts about drug use, then they will grow up and elect officials who will pass fair legislation. by the way, here's a really interesting letter by john gilmore (of the EFF) on the "emergency re-sentencing of ecstasy" called for in february: http://www.toad.com/gnu/ecstacy-sentencing.html

Here is a link to John Gilmore's Most Excellent Essay addressing your very question.

Schwab

What's Wrong with Copy Protection

It is the answer of John Gilmore to a question that Ron Rivest asked: "If the customer is willing to buy extra, or special, hardware to allow him to view protected content, what is wrong with that?"

Amazon jumping into this space is clearly a direct attack on paypal's dominance in "what-passes-for-micropayments-nowadays", which is in turn a validation of what paypal is doing. The two biggest problems with the first generation of micropayment systems was

1. ease of use (not)
2. proprietary and patented "standards"

The open source community and the independant music scene needs to join forces. Here's a quote from a recent post to the Pho list:

"I don't know any hacker who doesn't think that musicians should get paid for their music. Some of my hacker friends compose music. I don't know any musicians that aren't excited by the subversive nature of the Internet and peered distribution mechanisms and, consequently, who don't respect hackers. Why don't we both work together, put down our swords, figure out how to put bread in each other's mouths (yes, even hackers are having a harder time than usual with that these days) and subvert the structure that has caused this unnatural schizm between us?"

Because it's not about money, it's about control. Culture is the most important commodity because it's the one that sells all the others, not only overtly through advertising, but implicitly, by establishing "social norms", subtle biases, and hidden assumptions. As the content and ads, news and entertainment blend and become one, the public is immersed in a bland and shallow "reality" in which they pretty much go along with anything.

The internet gives independant culture a chance, however slim, to reach a large audience without having to go through the mediation of "the industry" - and this is the greatest terror of partisans of the neo-feudal "new world order". For similar reasons, 'anonymous cash' micropayment systems have been "fumbled" by those who should have been developing and promoting standards - ie. governments and banks - because they see it - quite rightly - as potentially sewing the seeds of their own demise.

An open-source micropayment system could provide a way for fans to pay artists directly, with no middle man. Such a system would have to be established on a "web of trust" model, to avoid any possibility of control by dubious central "authorities". It would require the cooperation of many people, all over the world, to overcome the obvious chicken-and-egg problem, but the history of the net suggests that this may not be as unlikely as it appears. We propose to call this system a potlatch network, after the gift festivals of the northwest coast. Napster et al. is providing one half of a gift economy - we need to complete the circuit by providing a way for fans to support their favorite artists. The implicit contract is an informal version of Kelsey and Shneier's Street Performer Protocol, in which payments are effectively for future works - the carrot rather than the stick: "give us money and we'll release more art." Steven King's experiment was reported as a failure by the New York Times - but he made $600,000 dollars with virtually no expences. (read King's reply to the NYT.)

This not only can work, it is working. What Amazon's doing is an attempt to insinuate themselves into a central position as experiments in voluntary payments (micro- or otherwise) begin to mature. And we all know how much we can trust Amazon, right? We're interested in any insight or assistance in specing out this proposed network, comments welcome - jim at potlatch dot net or visit the url atop this msg for more info.

What is wrong is when companies who make copy-protecting products don't disclose the restrictions to the consumers. Like Apple's recent happy-happy web pages on their new DVD-writing drive, announced this month (http://www.apple.com/idvd/). It's full of glowing info about how you can write DVDs based on your own DV movie recordings, etc. What it quietly neglects to say is that you can't use it to copy or time-shift or record any audio or video copyrighted by major companies. Even if you have the legal right to do so, the technology will prevent you. They don't say that you can't use it to mix and match video tracks from various artists, the way your CD burner will. It doesn't say that you can't copy-protect your own disks that it burns; that's a right the big manufacturers have reserved to themselves. They're not selling you a DVD-Authoring drive, which is for "professional use only". They're selling you a DVD-General drive, which cannot record the key-blocks needed to copy-protect your own recordings, nor can a DVD-General disc be used as a master to press your own DVDs in quantity. These distinctions are not even glossed over; they are simply ignored, not mentioned, invisible until after you buy the product.

A recent Slashdot article pointed to a long essay by John Gilmore, originally found on cryptome.org where, among other things, he basically claims that MP3 players don't record because their manufacturers are afraid that they'll get the pants sued off them.

It seems plausible, but does anybody have facts to back it up?

Exchanging Keys with Sub- and Super-Zones

Other peoples' machines won't know that your zone's public key is accurate unless you have it signed by its superzone. (The superzone of e.g. "toad.com" is "com".) Similarly, if you have any sub-zones, you should get a public key from each of them, sign it, and return the signature to them.

So i guess the "parent" is authority. And ultimately, the root servers are.

John Gilmore isn't as well-known as he should be. Of the candidates mentioned, he's most deserving of the award.

Things he's either started or made major contributions to include Cygnus, EFF, the alt groups, GNU tar, GNU gdb, Kerberos, BIND, and the Cypherpunks. He's perhaps the most important activist for overturning the US anti-cryptography laws.

Check out his biography.

Infamous early Cygnus employees include Fred Fish (Amiga & later BeOS free software god), Sean Fagan (general troublemaker on the net), Tom Jennings (author of the original FidoNet software), Brendan Kehoe (G++ maintainer, author of Zen and the Art of the Internet, one of the first open source books and one of the first popular books about the 'net), Steve Chamberlain (extraordinary speed hacker, creator of Cygwin which built on DJGPP - he's now at TranceMeta), Ian Taylor (author of GNU/Taylor UUCP), and others too infamous to mention.

Let me understand this - in order to provide *community* focus, for free *liberated* software, we need a corporate sponsored group consisting of representatives from companies (Sun, MS) that have done thier damndest to enslave and bind thier users to thier corporate vision.

John Gillmore is a long term nerd and free software supporter, from way before the phenomen became mainstream with Linux and Mozilla. He was one of the people starting Sun, which made him a lot of money, but I doubt he is involved with that company anymore. He spend some of the money starting cygnus. He is also very interested in electronic rights, helped start EFF and have put a lot of work in the cypherpunks movement.

He is one of the people /.'ers should know and respect, but he is not really into self-promotion. I think he is ideal for the post.