lots of DMCA request's... (1/day)
Brian Puccio
brian at brianpuccio.net
Mon May 19 22:34:41 UTC 2008
On May 18, 2008, at 6:46 PM, Geoffrey Goodell wrote:
> On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 04:58:08PM -0400, Brian Puccio wrote:
>>
>> For what it is worth, here is Linode's position on running an exit
>> node:
>>
>> http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3082
>
> The comment from caker is important:
>
> http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=14063&sid=d0c8a8f83495edf787592499f4fdb5f5#14063
>
> "Eventually, we'd run tired of handling these and ask you to knock it
> off."
>
> Linode staff are exercising discretion in determining which
> circumstances warrant threatening their customers with disconnection.
> There is no refinable, repeatable way for a customer to know whether
> her
> deployment of a Tor exit node is acceptable to Linode or not -- that
> decision rests squarely with Linode on a case-by-case basis.
>
> Unchecked discretion offers an opportunity for discrimination. Who
> is to
> say that some customers running Tor nodes will not cause Linode
> admins to
> "run tired" sooner than others for reasons entirely unrelated to the
> activity of their exit nodes?
If responding to your DMCA takedown notice is more tiresome than
responding to someone else's, I'd probably cancel you first. After
all, you're the one who is causing me more grief.
> What is not clear is why Linode staffers want to take on such
> responsibility -- do they really want to be in a position of judging
> what constitutes acceptable behavior and what does not, any more
> than is
> necessary to satisfy legal requirements and fairness issues with
> respect
> to network performance?
Personally, if I were a hosting provider (and I guess you better be
thankful that I'm not) and I got one DMCA takedown notice because of
you, I'd bill you for whatever administrative overhead you caused me,
whatever I had to pay my attorney if I had to consult him and tell you
that the next one means your account is cancelled. I'm operating my
business to make money. You taking up my time and costing me money is
counterproductive to that and I'd do better off not to have customers
like you.
The short story is, Linode doesn't judge what is acceptable and what
isn't beyond the fact that they're only willing to deal with a certain
number of DMCA takedowns before they get tired of playing the game.
You seem to be upset that they haven't ennumerated their limit, but I
have a feeling if you push them for one, they'll come up with the
safest number they can think of: zero. I'd rather have there be a bit
of a gray area that I know I can fall into rather than being outright
told "sorry, once we get a takedown notice, you're cut off."
There's probably a thousand different variables including how long you
have been a customer, how frequent the notices come in, what size
account you have, if your monthly payment is constantly bounced, what
I had for dinner last night, how much your account stresses the server
and tons of other things.
If you don't like that policy, get your bandwidth from some place
else. It is their company it is their policy and you either need to
agree to it or host elsewhere. I *like* the gray area. And until you
show me some ISP that will give it to me in writing that I can operate
a Tor exit node regardless of how many takedowns I get, it seems to me
that a gray area is the best thing either one of us is likely to find.
If I were running a business and I had 500 customers (I'm not huge,
but I'm not tiny, either) and 1% of them ran exit nodes and received
one takedown per day each, I'd be spending 30 minutes every day for
the rest of my life dealing with them. And I may be willing to give up
half an hour a day until I retire so you can run your exit nodes. But
I might not. And one day I might say "hey, you can continue to run a
Tor node, but not an exit node, it's either that or you need to find
another host."
What if my hosting business were to expand? What if my 500 became
50000? I'd have 500 people running exit nodes (the same 1%) and I'd
need to spend hours every day keeping up with takedowns. In fact, I'd
need to hire some extra help to respond to all of them, I'd need my
own legal department. How would I pay for this? Not by increasing my
rates, no, that's unfair to the 99% that don't make me deal with all
these takedowns. No, I'd charge the 1% a legal recovery fee. They
would pay the attorneys and secretaries who respond to each takedown.
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