Need help with MPAA threats

[Sven Anderson]

Am 15.12.2008 um 12:57 schrieb Hannah Schroeter:

>> After all, a running Exitnode relaying on the "standard" ports like  
>> HTTP
>> seems to be (for me) better than a completely switched off node  
>> because
>> of legal troubles regarding file sharing.
>
> But in the end, the situation is all the same for HTTP(S) as for BT.  
> BT
> can (and *is*) used for legal content. E.g. I've already pulled (and
> redistributed, i.e. contributed) OpenBSD *legally* via bittorrent (of
> course not via tor). OTOH, you can use http(s) for illegal content,  
> too.
> Especially via ssl.

Yes, in theory everything is possible with every protocol, as long as  
_some_ information is getting through. So it makes no sense to discuss  
theoretic possibilities. We should rather discuss the reality, that is  
the actual usage patterns. And it's matter of fact that, if you  
restrict your exit policy, the MPAA complaints just stop, while the  
investigations regarding crimes like financial fraud and child porn  
are all related to port 80 traffic. So both protocols are used for  
crimes, but different types.

> And, if I see things right, the bandwidth argument doesn't compute.
> IIRC, only the client<->tracker traffic is relayed via tor, and that's
> not the mass traffic of the actual big files. That's different when  
> you
> pull big files via http(s) which you keep allowing (and big files also
> encompasses just bloated web sites with tons of inline and background
> images, or even flash stuff or whatever).

How can you claim "only the client<->tracker traffic is relayed via  
tor"? Most users don't have it configured that way I suppose, and that  
is backed up by my personal experience. There are a lot of Bittorrent  
file transfers over Tor if you allow arbitrary ports.

Sven

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