[tor-talk] Tor Exit Operator convicted in Austrian lower court

[MacLemon]

Hi!

On 04 Jul 2014, at 15:31, Moritz Bartl <moritz at torservers.net> wrote:
> I have talked to multiple lawyers, and this case would be very easy to
> defend against. William was sadly unable or unwilling to communicate
> properly, and he's not willing/able to put it to a fight. It is a sad
> situation overall, but it does not change the clear legal status of
> relay operation. All lawyers I talked to expect this case to be more
> complicated than it looks, and it makes no sense to discuss this purely
> based on what we have right now, which is some lawman's blog post.

I've talked to William's lawyer in person as well as the ISPA jurist (Austrian Inter Service Provider's Association) who both joined our Tor-ops meeting in Vienna yesterday (2014-07-03).

What I can sum up:
It is not illegal to run a Tor relay/exit/bridge in Austria.
We can not take William's case any further.
	Doing so would neither help William nor help to clear up the legal status of running relays in Austria.
William's lawyer said he personally considers the court judgement to be wrong.

The Austrian Tor-Community is working to form an official association (Verein) to get a better standing. Goals shall be education about anonymity, better communication with law enforcement, better communication with ISPs as well as the usual technical mumble to build secure and high bandwidth relays.
Building up a legal defense fund and getting a clear statement on whether Tor-networks fall under the legal term of „communications network“ as defined in ECG §13 is also part of that.


So if you're in Austria and run a relay/exit/bridge, please get in touch, join our Mailinglist (yes another one) at torservers.at to see if you can help and to stay in the loop.

Best regards
MacLemon