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Open Relays, Free Speech, and Virus Propagation

Posted by michael on from the now-boarding-at-port-25 dept.

sirsnork writes: "There is a story about John Gilmore running an open relay that is being used by a virus to propagate running over at Newsbytes. His defence? He wants his friends to be able to send email through his server from whereever they are. You'd think he'd know better." Gilmore has been skirmishing with Verio for some time over his open mail relay. Is it a good thing because it promotes the free flow of information? Is it bad for promoting the free flow of spam? Do the ethics change because someone writes a virus that uses the server to propagate? Interesting questions.

3 of 452 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I see his point though... by Spock+the+Vulcan · · Score: 5, Informative
    My problem is that SMTP has no authentication that I can find that would allow me to let him use our SMTP server from wherever he was
    Yes it does. Read RFC2554, SMTP AUTH. To quote: "SMTP AUTH is " ..an SMTP service extension [ESMTP] whereby an SMTP client may indicate an authentication mechanism to the server, perform an authentication protocol exchange, and optionally negotiate a security layer for subsequent protocol interactions."
  2. Why doesn't Gilmore? by Hieronymus+Howard · · Score: 5, Informative

    My provider allows anyone to use SMTP, provided that they have first made a successful POP connection. Once the POP connection is made and the user authenticated, then their IP address is added to the relay, for a period of time (a few hours, I think).

    Why doesn't Gilmore implement something like this? Then his friends could still use his relay from anywhere in the world, but spammers wouldn't be able to.

    I'm inclined to agree with the comment in the article at Gilmore is "being a stubborn old fool for leaving his mail systems as open relays"

    HH

  3. Who is John Gilmore? by SiliconEntity · · Score: 5, Informative
    Readers should be aware that John Gilmore is not just a clueless know-nothing who refuses to close his mail server out of ignorance.

    Gilmore is a true Internet pioneer and activist, a dedicated supporter of free speech. A short list of his accomplishments is available here, including being one of the first employees at Sun and helping found the EFF. In addition he was an early activist in getting the Usenet alt. groups going as an alternative to the rest of the hierarchy where tight controls were in place. He has been active in supporting free access to cryptography, helping found the Cypherpunks and participating in a number of law suits and FOIA actions to get the government to reduce restrictions on crypto. He has funded the FreeSwan effort to build transparent point to point crypto into the Linux kernel.

    He also founded Cygnus Support, probably the first company to prove that you could make money off of open source software. The company was sold to Red Hat in 1999 for $674 million.

    John Gilmore was fighting for free speech and the right to communicate before most of us had ever heard of the Internet. If his actions seem out of step with an increasingly paranoid and closed Internet community, I suggest that we not be so quick to assume that everyone else is right and Gilmore is wrong. History has shown him to be a far sighted thinker who has been on the right side of virtually every issue.