> ...the same you'd get yourself in trouble if you let anybody who asked you use a rifle of yours.
You lost me here. This is more like letting someone make a call with your phone. Rifles are inherently dangerous, even gun enthusiasts agree on that. We're talking about information more broadly here.
If I lend my neighbor my rifle and he kills someone or something that wasn't legal to kill, it isn't my problem - as long as he was legal posses a firearm. This isn't the same as sharing your IP address.
A shared IP address can be in use by me and my "friends" on Tor - at the same time. A rifle is only in the hands of one person at a time.
If you put a phone booth on the street in front of your house or business, like a free phone booth, are you liable for the contents of the calls placed on it? What if there were two phones? A hundred?
What if it wasn't a phone but a mailbox? A big chalk board? A bulletin board?
What if it weren't a mailbox but a free parking lot? Bob could put a thumb drive in his glove compartment, park his car, and then have Alice pick it up. Am I liable for what's on that drive because I provided free parking that was used as a medium for illegal information?
That why I think sharing things with strangers cannot logically make you liable for their speech and information.
Having a free-to-use shotgun and a box of shells in front of your house is an entirely different question. That's why I said the analogy was a poor one.
> This is more like letting someone make a call with your phone
If someone uses my phone to make a threatening phone call, I'm probably first in line to be investigated. Just because it's not inherently dangerous, or would result in legal consequences for the phone owner, doesn't mean it is a risk-free thing to do.
> If someone uses my phone to make a threatening phone call, I'm probably first in line to be investigated.
Sure. There are practical consequences. But if it's a working phone booth on the sidewalk out front, the prosecutor can't prove much with "it was your phone". Of course, you could be put through the wringer or even convicted based on really flimsy evidence.
For what reason would a person want to use Tor instead of his regular connection?
And before you tell me Tor is nothing more than a privacy tool, remember that most sites ban Tor exits because the majority of users are troublemakers.
Seriously? I imagine >95% of consumers would adopt tor quickly if browsing performance was comparable to standard browsing (hell it would be packaged with firefox). The general public hates being tracked and having their privacy invaded. Just look at the political mess created when congress gave ISP's the right to sell user browsing data at the end of last month.
>The general public hates being tracked and having their privacy invaded. Just look at the political mess created when congress gave ISP's the right to sell user browsing data at the end of last month.
You gotta be kidding me. If that were the case nobody would ever use Facebook, or browse the web without an ad blocker and blocking 3rd party cookies. I also like privacy but we have to understand that nobody really cares about that. Maybe it's because they are not educated and don't know what the risks are, but whatever the reason, privacy is ignored by most people.
In the case of Facebook, users might very well not know the extent by which Facebook tracks them. In the case of ad-blockers, users (at least those I've met) tend to not know they exist, and are excited to try them out.
I'm not sure the general public sees ad blocking as an ethically green area. More of a grey area so many aren't comfortable doing it even if they love the experience.
>And before you tell me Tor is nothing more than a privacy tool, remember that most sites ban Tor exits because the majority of users are troublemakers.
So... don't tell you the truth, because you've already decided that a bunch of anonymous people are "bad".
Have you ever considered a career in law enforcement or politics?
What's the truth? Most websites require you to fill a captcha, confirm your mobile number, or simply block you if you happen to use the service from a Tor exit. That's something you can check yourself, go to the big sites (Alexa top for example), and see it. Even Hacker News shows you a captcha if you register from Tor.
Do you believe those sites are in some kind of major plot to bother Tor users, or they simply are fed up with the abuse coming from Tor? Ockham's razor.
> For what reason would a person want to use Tor instead of his regular connection?
If I'm doing some background research for my work, I don't want to have to wonder if my ISP will sell me out, allowing a competitor to know what I've been up to.
If I'm hanging around gear head websites and letting people know just what a drooling fanboy I am for the products of a particular car company, I really don't want my ISP to sell me out and let the local car dealer know.
This statement is actually wrong. The majority of users are probably normal people. The majority of the traffic coming from exit nodes, though, may come from scripts/bots ; but that is a really small percentage of users.
You lost me here. This is more like letting someone make a call with your phone. Rifles are inherently dangerous, even gun enthusiasts agree on that. We're talking about information more broadly here.