I agree that if anyone sounded rude in ANY of those interactions, it was you, not Linode. Seriously, you think Linode just happens to hire people who are rude and dismissive? I think not, and IMHO, they were awesome. As one other poster commented, advising them to FO and ignore false positives is about as arrogant and demanding as a customer can get.

(I mean, seriously, how is Linode to determine if a request is a false positive or not? Should they monitor every request, and personally analyze it? Should they hire additional staff just to respond to these false positives, so that you don't have to be bothered? Arrogant!)

The *bottom line* here is that if Linode gets served with C&D's, investigatory briefs, subpoenas or whatever, then they are perfectly within their rights to request that you fix things. They are doing what is in the best interest of THEIR company!

Maybe you don't want to move your Tor (and BTW I fully appreciate and support TOR's *ideas*, by the way) to another host? Well, how would you like it if Linode went under from lawsuits (or *threats* of lawsuits, and defending them in court) and took your sites with them? Then you would have to find a new host anyhow. Just jump now and MOVE.

Any decent and caring ISP will do the same thing. It's how you legally handle these things. Get a complaint, have the offending customer fix it and be nice. If that doesn't work on a continued basis, then boot the customer and let them take their political statement somewhere else. Personally, I applaud Linode for staying with you all this time already.

Look, I *appreciate* what you're trying to do. I just don't think the way you're going about it is all that cool. If you feel so strongly about making this a political statement, find a hosting company that is more lenient towards this type of application. There are MANY. But let's not point the finger back at Linode, and let's not take down the rest of Linode's customers just so you can keep hosting here.

I would like to see where you are in three months. Still at Rackspace? Huh. Did you know they have one of the highest boot rates in the hosting business? Wonder why...?

Thanks,
Bruce

That sums up the issue.

Tor_zealot makes a valid point that running a Tor exit node that relays copyright-infringing BitTorrent traffic may not be illegal in the U.S. (or at least that's what EFF says.) But the question is not about what is or isn't allowed by U.S. copyright law. The question is about what is or isn't allowed by Linode's TOS, which is stricter than U.S. law. The TOS is a contract between you and Linode, so Linode has every right to enforce it. If you don't like it, find a company with a different TOS.

It's possible to run a Tor exit node without much hassle, but it takes some effort to set it up. You'll need to colocate your own hardware in a good datacenter, and purchase your own IP block from your RIR so that any complaints go directly to you instead of the datacenter.

Tor's philosophy is excellent IMO, but I find libertarians annoying when they expect others (such as Linode) to protect their rights for them all the time. A serious libertarian protects his own rights as much as he can. If you care for anonymity so much, do some real work, spend some real money.

The law is whatever your lawyer can prove in court. Right or wrong has nothing to do with it.

People that think the law is some "written in stone" policy are in for a big shock the first time they set foot into a courtroom.

"Might makes right" might have been coined for governments fighting wars, but it's more appropriately used for lawyers in the courtroom.

What all that means is that LINODE is in the hosting business, not the fighting in court business. There's no (none, zip, zlich, nadda) ROI for them to even attempt to argue this in Court. The RIAA/MPAA would eat them alive. In the end, they'd lose, and lose a ton of money, for what? Protecting some kid's right to run a tor exit on their network?

Meh. If the kid continues to whine, kick him loose.

Just to clarify to many posters -- I was *not* running p2p software, or hosting *any* copy-written material on my linode, nor was I using it to pump out malicious or illegal traffic. I was simply running a TOR node. Linode claims they're fine with that "in principle" but they clearly don't agree with it in actual technical operation. The phrase "you are responsible for all traffic transmitted by your server" is ludicrous to many degrees, particularly in relation to TOR, because there is no way to control a TOR users intentions.

The bottom line is Linode says it's ok to run a TOR node, but if you actually do they harass you with tickets regarding traffic that *nobody* could block coming out of a TOR node. You can't say "I agree with TOR in principle" but then complain when garbage traffic comes out of it -- that's called THE INTERNET. The person who is legally responsible for the DMCA/etc. infringements is the person who originally transmitted the data, not any of the intermediaries used to relay the traffic.

Nobody cares what you can do with your Tor node and what you can't. You have claims and you can't react adequately, so there is only 1 way - turn off this Tor node.
Nobody should take additional risk just to give you ability to play with lawyers. Not Linode, nor neighbors of your VPS.

Point to somewhere where someone stated that you were?



You were indeed pumping out malicious traffic, as shown in the ticket regarding comment spam. That you did not do that intentionally doesn't change the fact that your node relayed it. Running a tor exit node is not "simple", and it carries with it very serious responsibilities, especially when you don't own your hardware and your IPs.



That's why they keep saying "in principle". You're reading but not comprehending. I am ok with completely free speech "in principle", but in reality, I dislike the idea that someone can shout racial slurs in a public place. Linode is ok with tor in principle, but unfortunately, in practice, it can cause problems.



It doesn't matter if you run tor, apache, an open mail relay, or an NTP server. Your outbound traffic is your responsibility. How is this hard to grasp? Nobody is forcing you to run a tor exit relay. If you chose to run software, you accept the responsibilities for what that software does.




Again, you fail to understand what "in principle" means.

Well obviously it's off, now. I've totally canceled my account and moved all services away from the linode network -- rackspace cloud is working very nicely indeed!

My main point here is that linode is entirely backwards and hypocritical in their traffic monitoring policy and abuse response. I did everything I could to filter traffic to better suit their requests, but in the end it came down to unreasonable requests on their behalf that would be impossible for any TOR node operator or networking god.

When it comes to trivial complaints that are false alarms I would hope my hosting company would respond accordingly. This may seem a silly issue to some, but if you were a citizen of Pakistan, Iran, Libya, etc. and TOR was the only thing standing between your ability to communicate, and having the government bust down your door and shoot you in the face, you might feel less concerned about somebody sneaking some torrent traffic through TOR to get the latest House MD episode.

There are very many legit uses for TOR. In that I believe in freedom and privacy for all I can accept such things can occasionally be used for less than pious purposes.

It may be cliche, but let's all remember:
"Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security." --Benjamin Franklin

What about companies that get put out of business by the DMCA because some shmuck decided to violate their ToS?

My money says that Rackspace does exactly the same thing.

And again: if you can't do enough, it's same as you can't filter traffic. What you could and what not - doesn't matter.


Are you 17 years old? Your node was used to download "House MD" and other copyrighted crap. If you want to play in politic games, want to work for somebody's freedom - be ready to spend big moneys and large amount of nerves. And using VPS for this games - it's ridiculous.

We'll certainly see. But neither linode, nor I, was in any threat of being taken down by the DMCA, or any other legal power. Seriously guys, read the legalese provided by the TOR project and you'll better understand this. We don't all need to run scared because something says DMCA on it. Chill out.

I'm always very suspicious when people wish to remain "anonymous" on the internet and they assume - incorrectly - that it's their "right" to have privacy online.

I do question why people go to such lengths to try to hide their activity...

I'm surprised that Linode allow TOR nodes at all - it's not worth the hassle for them. I think their support staff were very professional in dealing with you.

You're right, we should question anyone who seeks privacy -- as we all know the desire for privacy is a default admittance of guilt of some atrocious crime. We should round up all these people seeking this whole "privacy" thing and put them in some sort of concentration camp, or prison, or just shoot them and be done with it...
Oh wait! There are actually many 3rd world countries already do that! I highly suggest you move to one of those countries. Freedom and privacy are HUGELY over-rated.

PS. Just an idea, but you might want to read up on the 9th amendment some time. It's good reading.

And how is this relevant to the question I asked?

Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Wake up snowflake. Words on a piece of paper are just that, words. Until a judge rules on them they don't mean squat (and even then, unless it travels up the judicial food chain, it still might not mean squat).

Go sit in a federal court session for a afternoon and see how the real world operates.

It's not LINODE's job to pay for a ruling on that pie-in-the-sky crap that TOR is spewing out.

tor_zealot, one thing I would agree about with many posters here, is that ultimately you can not expect Linode to fight this for you. What you should have done is created official response to take down notice, asking them to provide specific links to copyrighted material stored on your site, and then ask Linode to relay your response. In other words, this is between you and the morons sending take down notices, Linode is just caught in the middle.