Digital Chicken

Digital Chicken was among the earliest implementations of an Internet email to fax gateway, active for several months during the mid-1990s.

The Toronto-based gateway was created by Dr. Robert Riley through Internet service provider Planet Communications.^[1] When email was sent to one of the designated addresses, the text was transmitted as fax to a designated party such as a Canadian government agency. For example, an email sent to [e-mail] was converted to a fax transmission to the Attorney General of Ontario.^[2] The service initially lacked a formal domain name, therefore email routing of the form "utgpu!plan9!chyk!" was required until late 1993.^[3]

Many of these "@chicken.planet.org" addresses were included in Seth Godin's book, E-mail Addresses of the Rich and Famous (ISBN 0-201-40893-7, Addison-Wesley, 1994), although these addresses were not maintained by the recipients.^[2]

Digital Chicken's hosting was changed from Planet Communications to UUNET in November 1993. The arrangements with Planet were terminated because of what Riley indicated were "complaints from certain government agencies".^[4] Digital Chicken was discontinued entirely in May 1994.^[2] By that time, The Phone Company (tpc.int) had established email-fax gateway coverage for Toronto.^[5]

References

1. ^ Sambolec, Richard. "fax gateway to Ontario, Canada (fwd)". TELECOM Digest/comp.dcom.telecom. http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/archives/back.issues/1994.volume.14/vol14.iss101-150. Retrieved 2007-11-20. 
2. ^ ^{a b c} "Feedback". New Scientist. 11 February 1995. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14519647.600.html. Retrieved 2007-11-20. 
3. ^ "Extensive Govt. Fax/Email Gateways Provided in Canada". EFFector. Electronic Frontier Foundation. 29 October 1993. http://w2.eff.org/effector/HTML/effect06.04.html. Retrieved 2007-11-20.  [Vol 6, No 4]
4. ^ Riley, Robert B. (8 November 1993). "Fwd: Digital Chicken – Press Release". http://groups.google.com/group/comp.org.eff.talk/browse_thread/thread/8c5295abdf419113. Retrieved 2007-11-20. 
5. ^ Savetz, Kevin (16 May 1994). "FAQ: How can I send a fax from the Internet?". http://groups.google.com/group/alt.online-service/browse_thread/thread/f2e90204ac606a47. Retrieved 2007-11-20.