Re: William was raided for running a Tor exit node. Please help if you can.

[George Herbert <george.herbert () gmail com>]

On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Tom Beecher <tbeecher () localnet com> wrote:
> Not really comparable.
>
> Speaking from a US point of view, ISPs has strong legal protections
> isolating them from culpability for the actions of their customers. I know
> internationally things are different, but here in the US the ISP doesn't get
> dinged, except in certain cases where they are legally required to remove
> access to material and don't.
>
> End users have no such protections that I'm aware of that cover them
> similarly.
>
>
> On 11/29/2012 2:50 PM, George Herbert wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Tom Beecher <tbeecher () localnet com>
> > wrote:
> > > Assuming it's true, it was bound to happen. Running anything , TOR or
> > > otherwise, that allows strangers to do whatever they want is just folly.
> >
> > Such as, say, an Internet Service Provider business?

There are plenty of ISPs with no or little customer contracts; anyone
running open access wireless.  Plenty of "open access" sites with free
accounts.

And any but the largest ISPs are "end users" of upstream bandwidth.

The analogy of a small free access ISP and a Tor exit node is legally
defensible.  I know of five, six, seven that I can think of off the
top of my head that are run by people I know, one of whom has started
and/or been architect or operations lead for 5 or more commercial
ISPs.

Even more, ISP like protections are extended in the US to many "end
user" sites such as blogging sites, Wikis, etc; where the site is
"publishing" content but not creating it or exerting control over it,
etc.

This is US specific, and the case of a user in Austria is entirely
unrelated to US law, but I don't know that this type of response would
hold up in US court for these reasons.  I am going to ping my internet
law contacts in the US and see what they think, as IANAL.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert () gmail com