Indymedia was widely infiltrated, I think; certainly there were some infiltrators, and they often trolled that Indymedia loggeed IP addresses.
There was a tool we could use to capture addresses; they were captured to memory only, and the tool could only be switched on for a limited time; it usually got switched on for less than an hour - long enough to find and block the addresses of particularly egregious spammers and trolls.
An SMTP server could be run without address logging; but a commercial SMTP server would be damned hard to administer without IP addresses in the logs.
[Edit] Indymedia had two servers seized in the UK; one was the property of Bristol Indymedia, and didn't run Apache. The other was run by Indy UK, and didn't log addresses. There was therefore no fallout from the seizure, except that the cops hung onto it for about 5 years. When we finally got it back, we retired it - we couldn't trust it, and it was by then obsolete kit anyway.