Have either one of you actually read the DMCA laws, or at the very least the Wikipedia entries regarding the subject? If you do, you should be able to answer your own questions.

Have you actually read [insert something] on this subject?
If you do, you should be able to understand my position.

See how this way of having a discussion works?
Like it?

Or, in this specific case it clearly (for the most part) spells out a provider's obligation in this situation to prevent them from becoming a target themselves.

Linode was in no risk of being a target of legal action -- your, and their, assumption was simply submitting to the FUD that the MPAA/RIAA has tried to instill in the American public, but failed to actually fully and successfully follow through on in any court system. Seriously, I've worked for an ISP and seen the exact process from beginning to end. Don't worry guys, no matter how many DMCA notices Linode gets nobody is going to break down their doors and shut off all their servers.

This may shock you, but you don't need to be guilty to be taken to court. The fact that technically, you and Linode are not liable for your tor exit traffic doesn't mean that someone who is determined enough couldn't drag Linode into court and whatnot.

This is just your opinion, and I have a suspicion that you are not a lawyer. You go on to say: "… but failed to actually fully and successfully follow through on in any court system." -- clearly showing that there is indeed some risk of Linode being dragged into court as the *AA and others continue with their litigious activities. When you go on to say "Don't worry guys, no matter how many DMCA notices Linode gets nobody is going to break down their doors and shut off all their servers.", you obviously haven't been following the news lately.

_________________
/ Peter

And yet you're still here blathering on.

Shoo, move along now, shoo.

Let's set the somewhat undecided issue of copyright infringement aside... The issue of network abuse still exists (blog comment spam), which means you were certainly in violation of the ToS.

Yeah, let's stick a fork in this one -- it's done.

_________________
/ Peter

Seriously, guys -- *I*, nor linode, was responsible for torrenting anything or spaming anyone's wordpress page. Certainly this issue has been well written off by those unwilling to do the research. When ever anybody hears about somebody being taken to court for running a TOR node please let me know directly -- I would be greatly interested in hearing about how that turns out.

Seriously, @tor_zealot, I think it has been made clear enough that the issue has nothing to do with who torrented a movie or who spammed a blog. Of course it wasn't you, we know that. But the fact of the matter is that Linode doesn't want to get involved with anybody whose IP address keeps getting mentioned in DMCA complaints, regardless of who did it. This, too, has been made plenty clear.

You have every right to disagree with Linode's policy, but Linode also has the right to refuse to do business with you. A company has the right to refuse business with anybody for any reason whatsoever. It doesn't need to be legally necessary or anything like that. If they want to kick you out because they don't like the color of your eyelashes, they can do so. Likewise, if you hate Linode because you don't like the font in the logo, you can do so.



The very fact that no clear precedent exists with respect to Tor might be considered a good reason, at least for some people, to stay clear of it altogether. Again, you might disagree. But different people and different businesses have different priorities and different standards of risk-taking, and what seems unreasonable to you might be the most natural thing to do for other people. Law is a complicated and very expensive thing. It's not unreasonable to stay far, far away from it, even if there is no chance of losing a lawsuit.

Get yourself some fucking toleration. There are thousands of hosts out there. Find a host that offers what you want. Leave alone those who don't agree with you.

No, you're just not getting it, you're trying to express your opinion as fact or as a legal opinion which it is not. Any provider, including Linode, must pass along DMCA information or become potentially liable themselves. As far as the abuse relating to child pornography, are you really trying to defend that?

You don't get it, and you're not listening, which means this is just trolling.

As far as responsibility regarding the DMCA complaints, if you really felt the conviction you are expressing in the forums you would have followed the long established procedure of responding to the DMCA requests in a normal and professional manner. Instead, you want the provider of an unmanaged service to deal with your irresponsibility and try to justify your actions. For what, $20 a month? Really?

Linode disagrees with their *own* policy! They say TOR is alright, but then harass people when it's in use. The primary issue here is *not* how they offended my personal principles regarding internet freedom and privacy. What I'm actually taking issue with is the fact that Linode CLAIMS one thing, then ACTS entirely opposite to that claim. They market directly to a demographic of the open source community that is most often foremost concerned with with matters of personal privacy and liberty, but back-peddle when actually faced with the matter.

To be a responsible and honest company they should either change their TOS to say you can't run a TOR node, or provide customers with acceptable parameters in which they can operate their TOR node. But spouting some bullshit about how "we have other customers that run tor nodes and that's ok" but then threatening to turn off my service when I randomly get hit with a false-positive complaint due to running a service THEY SAID I COULD is just flat out poor business practices.

Linode is welcome to set whatever policy they like and then enforce it at their own whim. But being hypocritical about their own policy is an entirely different matter that I believe their customers deserve to know about and seriously consider when they pay linode their own hard earned money.

Like I've said before -- linode offers a pretty technically solid service. I was a happy customer before this, and I certainly wouldn't disagree with those who think I may have slightly over-reacted, or was maybe rude/arrogant/[insert negative adjective here]. If you like your service with Linode, by all means keep using it. But on the other hand, if you are one of those Linode customers who does actually care passionately about digital privacy and is disturbed by the implications of the lip service they pay to such matters, I highly encourage you to be critical of their policies, and possibly explore the many other VPS providers out there that show a little more informed legal competence and backbone. That's all...

They are not hypocritical, they don't prevent any services including TOR from operating on their equipment. However, as expressly stated in their terms of services, once you violated the terms of service by allowing your node to become party to questionable content they required you to take action. It's not bullshit or any other slander you would like to throw out, you were simply unable or unwilling to prevent abuse reports from being routinely filed because YOU decided to run a TOR exit node.

You're not advocating equal rights, freedom of speech or anything even close to the same, just irresponsibility which I am personally glad they they did not accept. It should also be mentioned you decided to leave on your own, at no time did you mention they disrupted your service or took direct action against you. Personally, I think they should have shut you down based on your increasing hostile reactions based on the tickets you decided to post here.

Good luck with Rackspace, but I am personally glad you're gone.

I apologize for offending the delicate sensibilities of the portion of linode's customer base who fails to understand what a private internet proxy is, the legal responsibilities of it's operator within the bounds of technical feasibility, and the inability to control the intentions of said proxies users.

You can sleep soundly knowing as happy you are about my departure, I am equally as satisfied at disassociating myself from a community that believes hallow legal threats trumps personal privacy and liberty.

Good luck, guys. It's been a blast.