this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Exactly this, except that nobody stole your car. You are providing free and no-questions-asked open access to your car for any member of the public who needs to use it. Many other people also used the car that day for legitimate business or for fun, but then one guy got in it and ran over 32 people in a furious rampage.
Clearly the driver is at fault here, but a case can be made (and apparently, was) that this would not have been possible had you not provided access to the car to the perp in question.
This is the equivalent of holding gun manufacturers culpable if someone buys a gun from them and then uses it to commit murder - right?
Well, if weapons manufacturers were handing the guns out literally for free to anyone who has a pulse, I could definitely see them getting in trouble
Why does it make a difference that gun manufacturers charge for their weapens. They make them accessible for basically every adult. If they didn't sell them to basically everyone, many shootings would not happen, as world wide statistics show. Earning income on what they provide makes them even more responsible, because they profit off from the selling. I don't see why they are not being charged for selling it to people that use it to commit crimes, and someone providing an exit point does get charged because he lets people use it while he has no control at all over who uses his access point.
I mean, car manufacturers do this. And it's much easier to buy a car than a gun.
That's a bit more of a stretch, but barely. It's in the same spirit, yes.
Please do note that I'm not necessarily agreeing with the ruling here, only trying to draw a more accurate analogy. The problem with equating those two though - the tor node ruling vs gun manufacturers being liable for deaths - fundamentally comes down to a few facts, that guns are sold with the intention of killing people, that guns are sold by corporations with lots of money and power, and that governments don't want tor in the hands of citizens. Tor node keepers are easy to prosecute in many countries, as individuals hosting software that is frequently used for illegal action. Gun manufacturers are not.
Gun manufacturers have special protection, specific legislation at the federal level singling them out to not be liable.
Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act
This logic holds the ISP and backbone providers liable as well, does it not?
Somewhere else in the comments it was said that ISPs have legal protection. The laws were changed afterwards,so that individuals could also be recognized as ISPs so that they'd have protection, for situations like these.