[tor-relays] New Exit-Relay / First abuse issues

[Moritz Bartl]

On 9/25/18 12:02 AM, tor-markus wrote:
> the second abuse ticket reached Contabo yesterday about my service.
> They now threaten to take down the server when the next ticket arrives so I had to shutdown the Exit Relay (I will reconfigure it as normal relay tomorrow).
> I requested to have a phone call with the Contabo Abuse department to figure out a solution because Germany now provides the legal grounds to operate a tor relay with (little to) no liability.
> 
> If I find a solution with Contabo I'll keep you updated.

It is most likely that they just don't want it, not for legal risks but
because of the work of processing complaints and the risk of ending up
on blacklists.

I am picking this up because I am not sure what you mean by "Germany now
provides the legal grounds", because it always has, and it is dangerous
and misleading to use the recent discussions around liability of shared
internet access (open wifi, freifunk etc) -- you do not fall into that
category and you should stay out of it, it is only around ACCESS providers.

An exit operator does not provide "access", users need another point of
entry into the network. You want to stay out of Telekommunikationsgesetz
(TKG) and stick to the regulations of Telemediengesetz (TMG), as a
service provided "outside/on top of" Internet access. In that space,
exclusion of liability for carriers of traffic is uncontroversial and
not a new thing.

Most relevant sections of TMG:

http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tmg/__8.html -> you are not liable
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tmg/__15.html -> you are not ALLOWED
to store user identifiers unless you need it for billing purposes

§8 is a good argument for not filtering traffic either, because the law
requires you to not interfere with forwarded traffic.

There's a section in the "Exit Guidelines" document listing relevant
laws for various jurisdictions:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorExitGuidelines#Legal

Good luck!

-- 
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/