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.
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
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 of privacy and technology.
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.
I am not sure I would consider this “working well”. It is the job of the court to determine if and how to apply law. Laws are never perfect and should be applied per intention, and not word-for-word. If the latter would even be possible, we wouldn’t need judges in the first place, because it would be a “simple” decision tree. But it’s not. And we have judges and the court processes for a reason.
If the law was amended a few weeks later, it shows, IMO, that the intention of the law was different than what was written down. Therefore the judge should have ruled that way by acknowledging that while the law does not exempt private individuals, its intention shows that it clearly should (simply because it doesn’t make much sense otherwise).
In other words: if the system really worked well, the judge would have sentenced (or rather not sentenced) within the intention of the law, and not within the strict writing.
(Worst case is that something like that gets escalated to the highest court who then either also accepts or overrules it.)
Shouldn’t all social media, ISPs, Apple, Google, etc also be found guilty of the same crime then? What about CDN?
you see, they are companys and they make monzees that they dont pay taxes on, so its fine. But that guy was a terroristic web activist, subverting the order of the free world by providing free tools to a community of which some used it for illegal purposes.
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.
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.
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.
