[tor-talk] BIttorrent client installed by default in Tor centric distros okay?

[adrelanos <adrelanos@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!

Let's forget about the technical questions whether it's possible to
route all bittorrent traffic over Tor without leaks or not on focus on
the ethical question.

There are quite a few contradicting statements from the Tor core
people [1] about that.

With my Whonix hat on, would you prefer if Whonix didn't include a
torrent client by default or would that be okay?

I can't speak for Tails, but they have a ticket [2] discussing the
inclusion of a torrent client as well, so they might be interested in
this answer as well.

Quote Jacob Appelbaum [3]:

> [...] I'm not clear that it will harm the network if Tails includes
> a BitTorrent client. I think that the harm comes when someone runs
> a few seeding boxes through Tor and doesn't bother to add any
> capacity to the network at all. [...]

Quote Andrew Lewman [4]:

> [...] There are completely legitimate uses of bittorrent over Tor.
> I've talked to people who want to get their ISO of Fedora or Ubuntu
> from outside their country, so they bt over tor to do so. [...] I'm
> fully aware that the tor codebase punishes me for doing large
> downloads over Tor, so be it. [...]

Quote Roger Dingledine [5]:

> [...] We've been saying for years not to run Bittorrent over Tor,
> because the Tor network 
> [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/why-tor-is-slow can't handle the 
> load]; [...]

I know, there is quite some time between those statements, knowledge
and opinions change over time and you're free to disagree (that's even
nice). But... What is your latest opinion on that?

Cheers,
adrelanos

[1] http://www.torproject.org/about/corepeople.html.en
[2] https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/5991
[3]
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2011-December/022376.html
[4]
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2011-December/022369.html
[5] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea

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