On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Tom Beecher <tbeecher@localnet.com> wrote:
Not really comparable.
Speaking from a US point of view, ISPs has strong legal protections isolating them from culpability for the actions of their customers. I know internationally things are different, but here in the US the ISP doesn't get dinged, except in certain cases where they are legally required to remove access to material and don't.
End users have no such protections that I'm aware of that cover them similarly.
On 11/29/2012 2:50 PM, George Herbert wrote:
On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Tom Beecher <tbeecher@localnet.com> wrote:
Assuming it's true, it was bound to happen. Running anything , TOR or otherwise, that allows strangers to do whatever they want is just folly.
Such as, say, an Internet Service Provider business?
There are plenty of ISPs with no or little customer contracts; anyone running open access wireless. Plenty of "open access" sites with free accounts. And any but the largest ISPs are "end users" of upstream bandwidth. The analogy of a small free access ISP and a Tor exit node is legally defensible. I know of five, six, seven that I can think of off the top of my head that are run by people I know, one of whom has started and/or been architect or operations lead for 5 or more commercial ISPs. Even more, ISP like protections are extended in the US to many "end user" sites such as blogging sites, Wikis, etc; where the site is "publishing" content but not creating it or exerting control over it, etc. This is US specific, and the case of a user in Austria is entirely unrelated to US law, but I don't know that this type of response would hold up in US court for these reasons. I am going to ping my internet law contacts in the US and see what they think, as IANAL. -- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com