ATTN: for-profit Tor operators

[Dan Mahoney, System Admin]

On Wed, 23 Nov 2005, Eugen Leitl wrote:

Personally, I like the alternate side of this service -- the access to 
hidden tor services.

With recent legal developments in the US, some very interesting sites -- 
even those which are text-ONLY have gone away.  The draw of being able to 
offer existing threatened sites an alternative is a good thing (along with 
careful auditing and accounting of said sites to make sure no obvious 
clues as to the actual server location are left).

It could make paid-tor access very feasible, indeed.

For example, a tor-ized mirror of a "fetish stories" site, if the 
mirroring was automatic, might be stupid and mirror the thing from its own 
public IP (thus giving its location away), instead of more properly 
mirroring the site THROUGH tor (or some other anonymous proxy service).

I love tor, personally, but I'm daunted by the number of pieces of 
software I've had to set up to get it to work.  I *really* think the 
necessary element here that stops things is the lack of a single-shot 
installer.



> On Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 03:21:29PM -0600, Paul Andrew de La Soujeole wrote:
>
>> I am definitely interested. I have a 10Mb/s server in Florida which is
>> currently running Tor. How would users be charged? Would they be rate
>
> How you would charge your users is entirely at discretion of the individual
> operators. I suggest some low-friction payment scheme (PayPal, IBAN bank transfers
> for EU users) to reduce entry threshold, but for the truly tin-hatted acceptance of
> anonymous payment schemes (cash, e-gold & Co) are almost mandatory, even
> if almost nobody will make use of it.
>
>> limited and charged per Mb/s, per GB/month, or by using a 95th percentile
>
> For starters, I would limit the service to web browsing and assume a flat
> fee (say, 5$/month subscription for basic anonymous browsing via Tor/privoxy).
> This can be abused, but this requires some malignancy on part of the users.
> Given that the first leg is encrypted but authenticated it's fundamentally
> feasible to charge individual users for traffic by the GByte.
>
>> scheme? I think this has some real potential.
>
> Paranoia and willigness to rely on anonymization services provided by
> a commercial entity (and subsequent tradeoff in accountability) are somewhat
> mutually exclusive. We'll see whether the market will accept it.
>
>

--

"Of course she's gonna be upset!  You're dealing with a woman here Dan, 
what the hell's wrong with you?"

-S. Kennedy, 11/11/01

--------Dan Mahoney--------
Techie,  Sysadmin,  WebGeek
Gushi on efnet/undernet IRC
ICQ: 13735144   AIM: LarpGM
Site:  http://www.gushi.org
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