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By the same token though, the Tor developers had to have known that Tor would be used for distribution of child pornography, and gun manufacturers surely know t
by ledge 14y ago
By the same token though, the Tor developers had to have known that Tor would be used for distribution of child pornography, and gun manufacturers surely know that their guns will be used to kill innocent people.
- MaysonL 14y agoNot to speak of tobacco...
- jiggy2011 14y agoTrue, but I think there is a distinction to be made between designing a protocol like tor and actually providing the service of setting up tor sites for people who you suspect are using them to distribute child porn.
- ledge 14y agoSure, I suppose Freenet or some other P2P would have made for a better analogy.
- jiggy2011 14y agoI think the distinction is when you are dealing directly with known or suspected criminals and providing them services to help in criminal activity rather than providing something that can have criminal uses but also legit ones.
- tempestn 14y agoExactly, this. Creating Tor is like the general practice of building these traps as a business. Traps have both legal and illegal uses, and you have no way of knowing what will happen with each trap after you build it. No problem there. The problem is when that service is provided directly to someone known to be using it for an illegal purpose. In the case of Tor, it is not provided directly to anyone, but rather available freely to everyone. Now, say Tor came with home installations of the client, and the client mentions to the installer that now he's got a great way to buy drugs anonymously on SR. That would be a problem.
- pencilcheck 14y agoSo that means if internet is created for terrorists to solve a problem be more efficient in communication among themselves, the creator of internet would have to be thrown in jail, even if there is also a good use in internet? Or the clothes that you are wearing, it could be created for smothering people, aren't the creators suppose to be executed as well? How about the camera? It was probably designed to create child porn!!! The creators should be fined and be thrown to jail as well!!! What makes the value of a tech, or neutral product, an act or passenger of evil or violation of laws depending on the context it is created in? Who is to decide that? You? Prosecutor? The government? I empathize this guy, as he is not confident enough, and is too kind.
- tempestn 14y ago"Or the clothes that you are wearing, it could be created for smothering people..." It's not about whether it could be created for smothering people. If you're a tailor, and someone says to you, "I need a special kind of jacket with a loop like this that I can use to strangle people with,"* and you make that for them, then yes, you are liable when they indeed use it for that purpose! As for who decides whether the creator knew it would be used for an illegal purpose, that would be the jury. If before there was an internet, a terrorist group approached a technologist and described a network that they required to better organize terror plots, then YES, that person should be held accountable for the uses the group puts it to, even if it eventually has positive consequences as well. On the other hand, if a person makes and distributes anything, dangerous or not, with a legitimate use case in mind, they should absolutely be held blameless if it is then used by someone else to commit a crime. *Assuming of course that a "reasonable person" would actually believe the person was indeed going to do that, since it comes across as pretty bizarre...