[tor-relays-universities] Preventing access to scientific databases

[Ian Goldberg]

On Wed, Feb 05, 2014 at 02:39:08PM +0100, Philipp Winter wrote:
> At Karlstad University, we recently got permission to operate an exit relay.
> One item on our "to do" list is how we should handle databases such as IEEE
> Xplore.  Our university has several subscriptions meaning that our net block is
> whitelisted to have access to the databases of different publishers.
> Unfortunately, we cannot allow users of our exit node to access these databases
> as we would risk violating copyright.
> 
> Possible solutions are:
> - Blacklist the publisher's net blocks in our relay's exit policy.
> - Put our relay's IP address in a non-whitelisted net block.
> - Do nothing and risk getting sued?
> 
> How is this handled elsewhere?

This was the #1 issue here at Waterloo.  What we eventually went with
was to run the exit node on an IP address outside of our netblock.
(Your option 2 above.)  We'd have done option 1, except our library did
not have a comprehensive list of subscribed sites for some reason.
(Also, we would have had to annoyingly keep it updated.)

   - Ian