At INet ’99, the Internet Society’s annual gathering, in San Jose last week, about 15-20 people signed a letter protesting 3Com Corp’s use of a naked woman to promote the new Palm V handheld computer, which it said was exploitative and degrading to women. The poster was displayed prominently in the exhibit hall at INet. A reply was placed underneath the letter saying, We write to commend 3Com on its artistic, beautiful and tasteful ads celebrating both nudity and simplicity. However, it had just one signature, that of John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and employee number five at Sun Microsystems Inc, who hung out – and that is definitely the right description – at the conference all week.