[tor-relays] A little bedtime story about relays and OVH

[Roman Mamedov]

On Sat, 25 Jan 2014 16:15:21 +0100 (CET)
tor at gmx.info wrote:

> Hi list,
>  
> as I am in the progress of looking for a dedicated box to host a high volume relay on,
> as one of my current Tor-VPSs has some TCP limitations so I took it down. After doing
> some reasearch, my shortlist came up with OVH. After reading their (awfully translated:
> Babelfish French to German anyone?) AUP/TOS, I found that Tor nodes in any flavor
> are forbidden on their network. So I got curious and checked the pertinent Tor node
> lists for boxes within AS-OVH.

Maybe in the German ToS they are forbidden, but in general it's a bit more
complex.

For instance, there is no mention of Tor by name at all in the current version
of English (US) ToS, from October 23, 2013 [1].

In their French ToS (updated July 31, 2013), there is this wording:

"7.4 Pour des raisons de sécurité, OVH se réserve la possibilité de procéder à
la suspension immédiate et sans préavis de tout Serveur sur lequel serait
proposé à titre gracieux ou onéreux, un service ouvert au public de Proxy,
IRC, VPN, TOR, pour lequel OVH aurait connaissance d'une utilisation
malveillante, frauduleuse ou illicite."

Google-translated to English:

"7.4 For security reasons, OVH reserves the right to proceed with the
immediate suspension without notice of any server on which would be offered
free of charge or for a fee, an open service Public Proxy, IRC, VPN, TOR, for
which OVH have knowledge of misuse, fraudulent or unlawful."

Other than just by assumption, there can't be any "knowledge of misuse,
fraudulent or unlawful" of a non-Exit Tor node. So I think it should be pretty
safe to run such nodes at OVH. And btw the French ToS is special due to the
fact that it also applies to clients in all countries where OVH doesn't have a
local reseller (which is still a lot), so perhaps a very sizable chunk of OVH
clients are bound by this particular version of the ToS. 

[1]
https://www.ovh.com/us/support/termsofservice/Special_conditions_for_dedicated_server.pdf
[2]
https://www.ovh.com/fr/support/documents_legaux/Conditions_particulieres_location_serveur_dedie_2013.pdf


-- 
With respect,
Roman
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