William Weber, a LowEndTalk member, was raided by Austrian police in 2012 for operating a Tor exit node that was allegedly used to distribute child pornography. While he was not arrested, many of his computers and devices were confiscated. He was later found guilty of supporting the distribution of child pornography through his Tor exit node, though he claims it was unintentional and he was simply supporting free speech and anonymity. He was given a 5 year probation sentence but left Austria shortly after. Though some articles portray him negatively, it is debatable whether he intentionally supported child pornography distribution or simply operated in the legal grey area of Tor exit nodes.
Reading the article, it’s not just distributed CP. Someone also used his Tor Exit to hack into a NATO facility in Poland that dealt in chemical/biological weapons. Like, yeeesh.
This is equivalent to a criminal running into a crowd to get away from police, and the police just stopping, arresting, and charging the first person in the crowd that they see for not doing anything to stop them.
Shouldn’t all social media, ISPs, Apple, Google, etc also be found guilty of the same crime then? What about CDN?
The absolute balls on the man to continue after being raided. It’s unfortunate that the private internet requires people like him to risk their safety so it can continue to operate.
We oughtta arrest the people who pave roads because human traffickers use them to commit crimes.
I wonder if the ISP got charged as well lol
The charges usually end up falling onto the last one who can’t stick them onto someone else.
Like, a carrier can blame the ISP, who can blame the VPN, who can check its logs and blame an address owner, who… better keep their own logs capable of identifying someone else if they’re letting random people do random stuff using that address. And a good lawyer, and will and money to fight it.
It sure is weird how a political system based around who has the most money always ends up hurting the people that don’t have money. Nobody could’ve predicted that.
Is there really a realistic way to do it differently? Situations ending up in court are complex and ambiguous. It’s never a simple “if this then that” kind of thing. So in the end it’s about making arguments and convincing each other. Different people have different skills and depending how you match up, arguments are lost or won. There will always ever be a limited amount of extremely skillful people. Even if you would make sure that money isn’t a barrier, time/availability will still be and so still most people will end up with inadequate council.
Don’t have a society that gives all the power to people who have the most imaginary tokens. Don’t assign and apportion legal counsel according to money but instead according to need. Like, obviously I’m criticising capitalism, but your question assumes capitalism is here to stay.
Of course, under capitalism this will never happen, because the legislature is thoroughly captured by capital, and they are quite happy with lawyers being extremely expensive and siloed away in massive corporate legal teams.
Now of course none of what I am suggesting is going to be easy, quick, or absolute, which I mention just to head off the inevitable critcisms along those lines from people who find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. As Ursula K le Guin said, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings.”
but your question assumes capitalism is here to stay.
It does not. In my last sentence I specifically said “Even if you would make sure that money isn’t a barrier”, which rules out capitalism. So in a system where everyone has equal access to everything, you still only have a limited amount of skilled people with the right profession. If there are currently 1000 first-degree-murder cases where life sentences are on the line, and you only have 10 extremely good lawyers … 990 people will still end up worse than the 10 that had the luck (!!) to get these 10 good lawyers assigned.
From the article…
Yes, as they had to give me the minimum sentence. By law they were right as the law only protected registered companies, unlike in Germany for example. The law was changed a few weeks later to include private persons and sole traders as protected lsps, not just companies, but they had to convict me. No choice in the end.
So, ISPs in Austria actually have legal protection from liability here, rightfully so, and also rightfully so, that protection was extended to private persons as well. A rare story of a legal system apparently working well, with regard to the marriage privacy and technology.
Do they not have Jury Nullification over there?
Can’t have jury nullification if you don’t have juries.
