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Man Found Guilty of Child Porn, Because He Ran a Tor Exit Node
(lowendbox.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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They convicted him on "supporting the transfer of underage pornography", i.e. he ran an exit node that "allowed" the upload of CP to an Austrian image hoster. Apparently, he wasn't protected because he ran the exit as an individual, not a registered company. Most likely, the Austrian authority checked who uploaded the images, and found his IP address, which became the basis for convicting him. He didn't have any of the materials because all those stuffs were encrypted in transit.
He mentioned that law that was used to prosecute him was changed a few weeks later to protect individuals as well. He apparently now ran Tor exits under an offshore company.
In summary, from what he said, he just happened to run an unrestricted exit node that some people used to upload CP.
This is an issue on Lemmy as well, one that very few so far seem to have wisened up to. If you host a server and federate it, your server will pull, store and display the content your users are watching for all to see. So you could be on the hook for distributing illegal material if you don't preemptively defederate from instances potentially hosting content that is illegal for you to possess.
This is it: https://lemmynsfw.com/post/418317
This is it: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1204784
I mean you could say the same thing about any entity hosting public wifi, but I doubt the local cafe owner has to worry when someone breaks the law on their guest network.
This feels really inconsistent is the main problem.
dude is innocent man.
I mean he's not. He did literally allow CP to be uploaded. And he literally wasn't legally protected.
But it's kind of like arresting the gas station owner for allowing a drug deal in his parking lot.
Kind of crazy how unsympathetic people are being towards Tor and Tor operators here
Does this mean you're opposed to, say, roads, because they can be used to transport child porn? How about postal services—they'll even pick it up and deliver it wherever you want!
Does he/people get paid for running the exit node?
There are 7,000+ Tor relays, and 2,000+ bridges being run by entities including individuals, orgs, corporations, and most likely governments. (https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.html) So, the answer is yes, no, and something in between. He himself didn't say, but the article portrayed him of being an individual who believed in free speech, an activity which Tor does help support.