[tor-relays] Legal situation of tor in Europe

[Markus Hitter]

Am 09.03.2015 um 20:33 schrieb grarpamp:
> On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 2:40 PM, Markus Hitter <mah at jump-ing.de> wrote:
>> > Am 09.03.2015 um 16:08 schrieb Steve Snyder:
>>> >> Being able to separate webmail from the parent web presence (e.g.
>>> >> gmail from google.com, Yahoo Mail from yahoo.com, etc.) would be a
>>> >> big step forward in curbing spam.  This would allow the exit
>>> >> operation to refuse traffic to the webmail service while stilling
>>> >> allowing access to the parent presence.
>> >
>> > Good point!
> Two censors high five-ing themselves over ways to ban entire
> peoples freedom to communicate using webmail. Amazing.

It certainly wasn't meant this way. The point of these considerations is: of what use is an anonymous network if virtually no website accepts connections from it? Right: it's of not much use, with most of the public internet blocked you can communicate inside the network, only.

To take your webmail example: if the site admin decides there's too much spam coming from Tor connections and blocks the entire network, then you're done with your webmailing, even with full freedom inside Tor its self.

As such the only solution can be to play nice with public sites. I don't mean to have all answers to all problems here. Opening only selected ports, a common practice, could also be seen as censoring, still it's generally considered to be acceptable. Apparently it's not enough to gain a good reputation.

Just look at this mail sent to the list by Josef Stautner a couple of minutes ago. Service providers fear Tor enough to demand an entire shutdown, risking loosing a customer, for just one abuse message. This isn't going to fly long term, admins have to loose this fear and the pretty much only way to get there is to get rid of the abuse. Get them to recognize that Tor users are actually the well behaving ones and you win the much needed freedom.

Finding a good balance isn't easy, of course. That's why discussion is needed.


Markus

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Dipl. Ing. (FH) Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/