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Comment by blackhaj7 | Hacker News Reader

> Just don't run your torrent client using the tor network. I have never used tor so novice question: why not?

> please go to https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 Signed!

The tor network essentially relies on donated exit node bandwidth, and there's a finite capacity at any point in time. Torrenting is a bandwidth hog (and a lot of exit nodes will filter it out anyway)

Is it really just a matter of my bandwidth being hogged up, or more a risk of getting my IP address (range) banned, if not worse legal risks from activities being traced to me?

You can't get banned because no one knows who you are. You can bring down the entire Tor network. Probably not you by yourself, but if enough people do it they can.

I believe OP was responding from the perspective of an exit node operator.

Exit nodes have to deal with much more severe things than copyright infringement. They regularly get raided by law enforcement for accusations of child porn and hacking, and have to defend themselves by pointing out they didn't originate the traffic. There's a whole bunch of tips out there about how to not go to jail for running an exit node (which is legal).

Yes, an exit node operator will appear as the source of the traffic, which can have legal repercussions. (Personal risk.)

But on a macro scale, the entire Tor network has fairly limited bandwidth and torrenting is a very easy way to saturate it. (Existential risk to the network / tragedy of the commons)

You can use the I2P network for torrenting if that's what you want, as that kind of traffic is not frowned upon.

Probably going to be slower than over the Tor network without any manual tweaking.

That's why some "tor-torrent" protocol should be invented, where data is sent via torrent network. There's still some bandwidth amplification, but as long as someone is seeding from within tor, the whole transfer could be done there.

...would also help with privacy and nasty telco letters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub

> donated exit node bandwidth

Hey, we pay $100B/yr of tax money into the NSA/CIA/etc budgets every year so they can run exit nodes among other activities, I wouldn't exactly call it donated

Thanks!

Some clients by default leak your IP when using Tor, the last I checked. When announcing to other peers, the IP of the host machine is provided.

So, you anonymously make the requests through an exit node, but the request contains your IP, which defeats the entire purpose of Tor.

Interesting, thanks

> I have never used tor so novice question: why not?

bandwidth is a scarce resource on tor.

No it isn't. https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth.html

Thats relay bandwidth, I assume exit node bandwidth is some fraction of that

The very next tab: https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth-flags.html

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