[tor-relays] Is there any reason to keep the default exit policy?

[Thomas Hand]

This is something I raised a few months ago. I found that an reinstall of
an old relay defaulted to exit, I only noticed after a few days... since
the relay was on a residential address I immediately reconfigured it.
I would assume that the majority of users who run relays on vps in the
cloud will have enough technical competence to uncomment a simple exit
policy in torrc and restart the service. Whereas someone who just throws up
a relay at home may not bother to check torrc at all. Thus it should
default to non exit.
This is important because, as Roger said, we need to keep isps onside in
the long run, I guess most isps don't care what service you run provided
they don't get any legal headaches.
Running as exit relay should be a consensual and informed decision of the
operator.

Tom.
On Nov 4, 2013 1:05 PM, "Paritesh Boyeyoko" <parity.boy at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday 04 Nov 2013 04:10:55 Roger Dingledine wrote:
>
> > Today's interactions with ISPs influence Tor's future viability. So if
> > people are accidentally exit relays without knowing it, I worry as much
> > about the damage to the ISP's view of Tor as I do about the temporary
> > hassle for the operator.
>
> Exactly this.  I recently made a list of Tor-tolerant VPS hosters, based on
> the offers available on Low End Box.  Out of the 14 I found, three in
> their AUP
> stipulated "no exit" and one would allow Tor relays of any kind on their US
> servers only.
>
> So out of all of the companies I found on LEB, only 11 allowed "full" Tor
> support, with the others permitting "partial" support. I think more and
> more
> hosting and service providers are seeing Tor as a source of legal hassle
> and
> don't want to be bothered with it.
>
> If Tor is made non-exit by default, it can be explained to the hosters that
> Tor out-of-the box will not bring any legal stress their way.  It may even
> encourage them to run a few relays themselves. :)
>
> Best,
> --
> Parity
> parity.boy at gmail.com
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