ATTN: for-profit Tor operators

[Mike Perry]

Thus spake circut at youtopia.homelinux.org (circut at youtopia.homelinux.org):

> 
> 
> Mabey we should call all individuals who would be willing to participate, 
> Pool our programming skills, C / PHP / Python / java even and write an app 
> we could sell as a p2p client, Have special tor tweaks to optimize it for 
> the p2p protocol we define.
> 
> 
> I think it sounds quite interesting.. a bit unethical mabey, but at least 
> it could be marketed as something to guarantee the RIAA wont be  kicking 
> your door in.

Um, selling a p2p client is essentially impossible, at least in the
United States, thanks to MGM vs. Grokster. You have to be extremely
careful with marketing it, and even then the RIAA probably will try to
kick your door in just for the fun of it.

Running p2p over Tor is also a bad idea. The network is having enough
problems with people running p2p data over Tor despite numerous pleas
to back off. If a legitimate p2p app was created and its use
encouraged, the network could become entirely unusable. (As an aside,
there are several anonymous P2P nets available, for those who are
interested in such things.. MUTE, ANTS, I2P, WASTE, etc).

What is a possibility is if development could be devoted to making
software work reliably on marketable devices. I've been looking for an
excuse to hack on a Linksys for a while now. Not sure how much
interest there would be in such a device, but if they could be
purchased wholesale and sold for little more than retail price, people
might buy one. Could be an easy way to torify an apartment, house, or
small office. Not sure if Linksys would get its panties in a bundle
or not though, either. IMO, they should love it. But who knows,
corporations are strange beasts.

If Tor is interested in pursuing the merchandise route, I can
volunteer to work on setting up a Linksys Tor firmware image. It looks
like OpenWRT already has some (older) packages available, so the work
wouldn't be starting from zero..

-- 
Mike Perry
Mad Computer Scientist
fscked.org evil labs