Question regarding ethical torrent blocking
Hello, I was going to ask someone off-list, but the amount of abuse and DCMA complaints I have received now have been so much that I have decided that the best action to take is to set an exit policy. I run a couple of exit nodes and I have people apparently using them to torrent, which we ask people politely not to do through Tor....but the policy gets ignored I guess. Anyway, I'm receiving a sufficient amount of complaints to where I'm worried that my service may be terminated unless I take action, which would affect the greater good. So the question is - I run the default exit policy. I don't like being the arbiter of what goes through and what doesn't. Is it okay, ethically, from a free speech standpoint, to reach this point to where we say "we need to block this content from transversing my node" in response to legal complaints from others? Are others implementing these blocks and do you feel that such a block doesn't violate any ethical norm to provide uncensored access to the Internet? I'm just curious on what thoughts on this are. I know how to technically perform the block, I guess I feel like we're one of the last bastions against censorship on the Internet and people do torrent legitimate stuff. I don't consider pirating Fallout 4, The Elder Scrolls V, Sweetbitter, and The Evil Within 2 to be protected speech FYI... my worry is just blocking the legitimate uses of bittorrent. Thanks, Conrad Rockenhaus
Hi, On 15/07/18 17:23, Conrad Rockenhaus wrote:
I'm just curious on what thoughts on this are. I know how to technically perform the block, I guess I feel like we're one of the last bastions against censorship on the Internet and people do torrent legitimate stuff. I don't consider pirating Fallout 4, The Elder Scrolls V, Sweetbitter, and The Evil Within 2 to be protected speech FYI... my worry is just blocking the legitimate uses of bittorrent.
Tor is designed in such a way that you can separately decide whether or not you want to contribute to the network, and also whether or not you are willing to deal with abuse notices. This is configured via exit policies. If abuse is threatening the continued running of your relay, then you should take action to avoid not having a relay anymore. There is a page on the wiki about various reduced exit policies that will reduce the amount of abuse notices your relay may attract: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/ReducedExitPolicy Exit policies are the way to configure this. Please do not try to filter specific uses of a protocol using DPI. Application-level filtering/firewalls is a good way to get the BadExit flag. Thanks, Iain.
Hello,
Tor is designed in such a way that you can separately decide whether or not you want to contribute to the network, and also whether or not you are willing to deal with abuse notices. This is configured via exit policies.
I never said that, I asked if people felt it was ethical to still consider themselves contributing to "Full Free Speech" by running the default exit policy then to start deviating from the default exit policy and blocking items such as access to bittorrent. Basically, my concern is I see a legitimate use of bittorrent, which is why I never blocked it on my exits. Now I'm being forced to. I'm asking if other people view themselves as "Full Free Speech" still or are we starting to arbitrate free speech?
If abuse is threatening the continued running of your relay, then you should take action to avoid not having a relay anymore.
I am, but I'm in an ethical quandary. Do I like watching scat porn? No, but I'll defend your right to the death to watch it.
There is a page on the wiki about various reduced exit policies that will reduce the amount of abuse notices your relay may attract:
Again, we can answer the technical questions all day long, but it's not answering my true question here.
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/ReducedExitPolicy
Exit policies are the way to configure this. Please do not try to filter specific uses of a protocol using DPI. Application-level filtering/firewalls is a good way to get the BadExit flag.
Never thought of doing it that way. I do business by the book, what I'm questioning is am I right to call myself a Defender of the Faith by the book or should I try fighting this or what? Thanks, Conrad
On 07/15/2018 01:21 PM, Conrad Rockenhaus wrote:
Hello,
Tor is designed in such a way that you can separately decide whether or not you want to contribute to the network, and also whether or not you are willing to deal with abuse notices. This is configured via exit policies.
I never said that, I asked if people felt it was ethical to still consider themselves contributing to "Full Free Speech" by running the default exit policy then to start deviating from the default exit policy and blocking items such as access to bittorrent. Basically, my concern is I see a legitimate use of bittorrent, which is why I never blocked it on my exits. Now I'm being forced to. I'm asking if other people view themselves as "Full Free Speech" still or are we starting to arbitrate free speech?
Even when using the default exit policy you are blocking some ports. For example, SMTP on port 25. There are legitimate reasons to use port 25. You're already blocking those users that want to use 25. If you choose to define supporting Full Free Speech as allowing all traffic, you already stopped supporting FFS. Personally I'd rather support 99.9% of Tor users (made up percentage) forever than support 100% of Tor users for a limited time. I don't run the default exit policy on all my relays and I don't see anything wrong with my decision. Hope that helps. Thanks for running a relay(s). Matt PS: for reference, the default exit policy is as follows according to the Tor manual. https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-manual.html.en reject *:25 reject *:119 reject *:135-139 reject *:445 reject *:563 reject *:1214 reject *:4661-4666 reject *:6346-6429 reject *:6699 reject *:6881-6999 accept *:*
On Sun, Jul 15, 2018 at 05:53:13PM +0100, Iain Learmonth wrote:
Exit policies are the way to configure this. Please do not try to filter specific uses of a protocol using DPI. Application-level filtering/firewalls is a good way to get the BadExit flag.
I know this wasn't the original question, but I think it will be useful to add: In addition, though the line isn't black-and-white, declining to handle traffic based on destination IP address or port is more on the "address" side of things, whereas DPI by payload is more on the "content" side of things. And the closer you are to making decisions based on content, the closer you are to wiretapping, and also the closer you are to taking responsibility for the content that you do "decide" to let through. So it is a bad move from a legal perspective to go that route. As for the ethics question, I think everybody who is offering exit capacity of any sort is doing a good deed for the world, and people contribute according to what their circumstances allow, and to me that's very reasonable. --Roger
On Sun, Jul 15, 2018 at 12:23 PM, Conrad Rockenhaus <conrad@rockenhaus.com> wrote:
Hello,
I was going to ask someone off-list, but the amount of abuse and DCMA complaints I have received now have been so much that I have decided that the best action to take is to set an exit policy. I run a couple of exit nodes and I have people apparently using them to torrent, which we ask people politely not to do through Tor....but the policy gets ignored I guess. Anyway, I'm receiving a sufficient amount of complaints to where I'm worried that my service may be terminated unless I take action, which would affect the greater good.
So the question is - I run the default exit policy. I don't like being the arbiter of what goes through and what doesn't. Is it okay, ethically, from a free speech standpoint, to reach this point to where we say "we need to block this content from transversing my node" in response to legal complaints from others? Are others implementing these blocks and do you feel that such a block doesn't violate any ethical norm to provide uncensored access to the Internet?
I'm just curious on what thoughts on this are. I know how to technically perform the block, I guess I feel like we're one of the last bastions against censorship on the Internet and people do torrent legitimate stuff. I don't consider pirating Fallout 4, The Elder Scrolls V, Sweetbitter, and The Evil Within 2 to be protected speech FYI... my worry is just blocking the legitimate uses of bittorrent.
Thanks,
Conrad Rockenhaus
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I think that modern copyright lays violate non aggression principle, which includes free speech. Rationale. Skip this paragraph if you already agree with the above statement. When a person buys a hard drive they become an owner of it. Of all its parts, including parts happen to be Fallout 4, The Elder Scrolls V, Sweetbitter, and The Evil Within 2. Another person establishes a private communication channel between their hard drive and the first person's hard drive. The line between them is private, hard drives are private property of these two people => any intervention of force into this voluntarily interaction is an aggression. If one agrees that copyright laws are incompatible with free speech and are immoral, then he has to admit that all solutions including Tor are technical, not fundamental. Thus the "quality" of a solution is based not on morality but on technical properties (e.g. how much data is transmitted, how many people can use it, etc). Free speech considerations are not a measure at this point. If to continue providing the service the node has to drop some connections is the lesser evil to be accepted. You can compare it with treating an incurable disease: you can not fix the problem in a right way but you can reduce the suffering and increase life time of the patient. -- Best regards, Boris Nagaev
On Sun, Jul 15, 2018 at 12:36 PM, Nagaev Boris <bnagaev@gmail.com> wrote:
I think that modern copyright lays violate non aggression principle, which includes free speech.
As I agree, which is why I typically ignored such threats until my provider started enforcing said threats.
Rationale. Skip this paragraph if you already agree with the above statement. When a person buys a hard drive they become an owner of it. Of all its parts, including parts happen to be Fallout 4, The Elder Scrolls V, Sweetbitter, and The Evil Within 2. Another person establishes a private communication channel between their hard drive and the first person's hard drive. The line between them is private, hard drives are private property of these two people => any intervention of force into this voluntarily interaction is an aggression.
If one agrees that copyright laws are incompatible with free speech and are immoral, then he has to admit that all solutions including Tor are technical, not fundamental. Thus the "quality" of a solution is based not on morality but on technical properties (e.g. how much data is transmitted, how many people can use it, etc). Free speech considerations are not a measure at this point. If to continue providing the service the node has to drop some connections is the lesser evil to be accepted. You can compare it with treating an incurable disease: you can not fix the problem in a right way but you can reduce the suffering and increase life time of the patient.
Thank you for your very thoughtful answer. I just implemented the first choice in the ReducedExit policies in my exits to try to block the bittorrent threat from taking service away from everyone else.
On 07/15/2018 09:23 AM, Conrad Rockenhaus wrote: <SNIP>
I'm just curious on what thoughts on this are. I know how to technically perform the block, I guess I feel like we're one of the last bastions against censorship on the Internet and people do torrent legitimate stuff. I don't consider pirating Fallout 4, The Elder Scrolls V, Sweetbitter, and The Evil Within 2 to be protected speech FYI... my worry is just blocking the legitimate uses of bittorrent.
I think that you'll find blocking bittorrent to be harder than expected. Modern protocols are well-encrypted, and DPI doesn't really touch them. <SNIP>
On Sun, Jul 15, 2018 at 2:18 PM, Mirimir <mirimir@riseup.net> wrote:
I think that you'll find blocking bittorrent to be harder than expected. Modern protocols are well-encrypted, and DPI doesn't really touch them.
DPI was never even under consideration. I wasn't comfortable calling it "Free Speech" when I was indeed limiting access to something by implementing an exit policy. I forgot that the default policy in itself limits SMTP, and other things and my comfort level increased. -Conrad
If operators are taking flak from their upstream, and they want to carry the traffic for reasons, before giving in and deploying exit policy, see what options are available to SWIP the address space to you and thus eat a lot of the complaints from the internet yourself.
Dear Conrad, It seems to me that there is an ethical difference between being forced to cut off torrent traffic and cutting off certain traffic because you object to the content. --torix Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On July 15, 2018 12:23 PM, Conrad Rockenhaus <conrad@rockenhaus.com> wrote:
Hello,
I was going to ask someone off-list, but the amount of abuse and DCMA complaints I have received now have been so much that I have decided that the best action to take is to set an exit policy. I run a couple of exit nodes and I have people apparently using them to torrent, which we ask people politely not to do through Tor....but the policy gets ignored I guess. Anyway, I'm receiving a sufficient amount of complaints to where I'm worried that my service may be terminated unless I take action, which would affect the greater good.
So the question is - I run the default exit policy. I don't like being the arbiter of what goes through and what doesn't. Is it okay, ethically, from a free speech standpoint, to reach this point to where we say "we need to block this content from transversing my node" in response to legal complaints from others? Are others implementing these blocks and do you feel that such a block doesn't violate any ethical norm to provide uncensored access to the Internet?
I'm just curious on what thoughts on this are. I know how to technically perform the block, I guess I feel like we're one of the last bastions against censorship on the Internet and people do torrent legitimate stuff. I don't consider pirating Fallout 4, The Elder Scrolls V, Sweetbitter, and The Evil Within 2 to be protected speech FYI... my worry is just blocking the legitimate uses of bittorrent.
Thanks,
Conrad Rockenhaus
participants (8)
-
Conrad Rockenhaus -
grarpamp -
Iain Learmonth -
Matt Traudt -
Mirimir -
Nagaev Boris -
Roger Dingledine -
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