Hi all,
I've been running a Tor exit node on my new server for 16 days. Today I received my second automated DMCA infringement notice from HBO. I sent them the boilerplate you see at the bottom of the message both times. My colo provider Hurricane Electric understands Tor, which is awesome. I don't think it'll be an issue, so I'm happy with this. I'm wondering if anyone receives a large number of DMCA infringement notices and whether there was a resolution. It would certainly make my life a little bit more difficult to send more than one of these per week. When I got my first letter I was pushing 5 Mbps (megabits) and now I'm pushing 9 Mbps. I've set the RelayBandwidthRate to 5120 KB which should give a max rate of 41 Mbps. If infringement notices increases linearly with traffic, this could become an issue.
I'm happy to share the infringement notices if anyone is interested.
I followed a few of the tips from https://blog.torproject.org/running-exit-node , I got a separate IP address and I reduced the exit policy. I plan to update the reverse dns. I don't feel like reducing the exit policy does anything because BitTorrent was designed to run on any high port. Also, reducing the exit policy blocks researchers who are doing port scans and header grabbing over Tor. That's a point of contention for me because I know legitimate researchers use Tor for that purpose. Does anyone have any data or anecdotes on how exit policy affects malicious use of Tor vs legitimate use of Tor?
Btw, my server is 216.218.134.12. I'm running a patched version of tor 0.2.3.25 which fixes a few bugs I found in buffer events. See https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7788 for more info. Uptime is now 6 days, 13 days without a crash.
Thanks, Javantea
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Dear Andrew Martin:
The IP address in question is a Tor exit node. https://www.torproject.org/overview.html
There is little we can do to trace this matter further. As can be seen from the overview page, the Tor network is designed to make tracing of users impossible. The Tor network is run by some 2500 volunteers who use the free software provided by the Tor Project to run Tor routers. Client connections are routed through multiple relays, and are multiplexed together on the connections between relays. The system does not record logs of client connections or previous hops.
This is because the Tor network is a censorship resistance, privacy, and anonymity system used by whistle blowers, journalists, Chinese dissidents skirting the Great Firewall, abuse victims, stalker targets, the US military, and law enforcement, just to name a few. See https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en for more info.
Unfortunately, some people misuse the network. However, compared to the rate of legitimate use (the IP address in question processes approximately 11 megabits of traffic per second), abuse complaints are rare. https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse.html.en
This is the second e-mail from you that I am replying to. The only thing that has changed is that I have increased the bandwidth to 9 megabits per second.
If you have further questions, feel free to contact me at ------------
Sincerely, -----------