nanog mailing list archives
RE: tor
From: "Joe Blanchard" <jbfixurpc () gmail com>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:49:39 -0400
My gosh... Ok, so if someone happens to talk about murder over the phone, is the phone company providing the service held liable? Lets get back to rational/informative content please. -Joe Blanchard
-----Original Message----- From: Rod Beck [mailto:Rod.Beck () hiberniaatlantic com] Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 6:12 PM To: Steven M. Bellovin; trelane () trelane net Cc: NANOG list Subject: RE: tor -----Original Message----- From: Steven M. Bellovin [mailto:smb () cs columbia edu] Sent: Wed 6/24/2009 11:01 PM To: trelane () trelane net Cc: NANOG list Subject: Re: tor On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:48:58 -0400 Andrew D Kirch <trelane () trelane net> wrote:Richard A Steenbergen wrote:On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:43:15PM -0700, Randy Bush wrote:sadly, naively turning up tor to help folk who wish tobe anonymousin hard times gets one a lot of assertive email fromself-importantpeople who wear formal clothes. folk who learn this the hard way may find a pointerpassed to me bysmb helpful, <http://www.chrisbrunner.com/?p=119>.If bittorrent of copyrighted material is the most illegalthing youhelped facilitate while running tor, and all you got was an assertive e-mail because of it, you should consider yourself extremely lucky. Anonymity against privacy invasion and for political causes sure sounds like a great concept, but in reality it presentstoo temptinga target for abuse. If you choose to open up your internet connection to anyone who wants to use it, you should beprepared tobe held accountable for what those anonymous people dowith it. I'msure you don't just sell transit to any spammer who comes along without researching them a little first, why should this be any different.You might also consider asserting your right to common carrier immunity under 47USC230.OK -- I looked at that part of the US Code (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/230.html). Apart from the fact that the phrase "common carrier" does not occur in that section, subparagraph (f)(2) says: Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or expand any law pertaining to intellectual property. Perhaps you're referring to the law exempting ISPs from liability for user-created content? (I don't have the citation handy.) If so, remember that that law requires response to take-down notices. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb Well, let's push a little harder. If I transfer stolen intellectual property over the Internet using simple file transfer, I don't believe any court is going to accept that the ISP has liability. So what is the underlying principle? Mind you the law is ad hoc most of the time. This whole area is fuzzy to the point of being a pea soup fog ...