philosophical issues

[alexyz at uol.com.br]

Hi again!

I´ve read the legal FAQ and all I can say is that it takes bravery to setup a Tor server. It also takes bravery to standup against 
oppessors and fight for freedom.

Generally speeking, the strongest defense with Tor ops is that servers only act as a conduit for other people´s doings. Thus you 
are not the perpetrator of those doings and are not liable for them. But people are also creative... What happens if an attacker 
decides to run a server to disguise his own wrong-doing? When questioned, he could just point to the server and say it came from 
Tor network. As it is anonymous, he can´t detect the source, blah blah blah, he walks. Or, he is demanded to prove his innocense. 
In either case, the outcome is unacceptable, they are both wrong! The thought of this situation really scares me, what do you 
think?

Another issue has to do with abuse. Yes, I know it has been battered before, and everyone at Tor is commited to fighting this. But 
what exactly is being done? My concern is that the law (and I refer to it here only generically since it varies considerably from 
country to country), suggests that service providers should have means to fight abuse (at a reasonable level) and terminate service 
to repeat offenders. A Tor server is a service provider, are we not? So it seams to me that we would be REQUIRED (I know it is 
desirable to developers but is that enough?) to have reasonable means to fight abuse. Do you agree with my assessment? IS 
there anything? SHOULD there be something? Do we HAVE to have something?

cheers