Proxy websites

I'm toying with the idea of making a proxy website but the legal issues concern me. If somebody does something illegal on the proxy server am I the one who is liable? If so are there any ways to "get around" this? Eg certain points in disclaimers/TOS, etc.

 

disclaimers & terms of service matter for civil matters, not criminal ones.

if someone were to say, view child pornography via your proxy, you'd technically be guilty of both possession and distribution.

just because you'd technically be guilty doesn't mean charges are likely to be brought against you however.

as long as you do what you can to cooperate with law enforcement should something happen you should be fine.

 

ok, I am planning on developing a proxy designed for older audiences.
lol, anyway how can I become the least liable?

 

you can reduce your civil liability via disclaimers and terms of service.

your criminal liability is much more complicated.

as long as you block abusive users and respond quickly when you get complaints (from law enforcement or other site owners), chances are you'll be fine. if "chances are you'll be fine" isn't enough to make you sleep soundly in your sleep, maybe a proxy site isn't for you.

 

I put a little note by the "Unblock Me!" button on my proxy website stating that all illegal activity will be reported to the authorities. It stops illegal activity before it starts!

 

As an online provider you have no liability as long as you dont promote illegal activity. Do you think everytime the cops bust a child porn ring they find out which ISP they use and shut it down and arrest everyone that works there? That'd be stupid. You're merely providing a free service, which anyone can access and there would be absolutely no way for you to know who is going to commit illegal acts...

Most hosts don't allow proxy servers though, so you may want to check into that before throwing one up.

 

just because the law sounds insane (it is), doesn't mean it isn't the law, or that you couldn't technically be held liable.

 

Where exactly might one find this law that you are refering to?

 

there are federal and state laws. state laws may differ.

the federal law:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I_20_110.html

some statutues require that you "knowingly" posses the material, others don't.

 

thank you, +rep.
Now can anyone tell me any good ways to promote a proxy site?

 

This is horrible advice and legally inaccurate.

Better to keep your mouth shut than to mislead and give poor advice.

 

in general it's hard to promote any site that offers nothing unique and is just a clone of thousands of other websites out there...

 

so i need to come up with a unique idea... I have kinda thought that over.
I have three unique proxy domains:
OffshoreIP.com
GeekProxy.com
NSFWproxy.com
each of those are kind of a niche proxy idea, but two of them are just asking for illegal activity.

 

just because they have nice domains doesn't mean they're a unique service.

 

I haven't seen one bit of evidence to show that service providers are liable for actions of others on their site when it comes to proxies. In fact, I can state many examples where courts have found that service providers hold no liability for the actions of their users. You can look at the DMCA to see that service providers are explicitly protected against claims of infringement based on the actions of their users. There was also a recent case where the California Supreme Court ruled that a site owner was not responsible for 2 libelious emails that a user had posted on their site. Also, the link that Disgust posted, from as far as I can tell, expressly states that you must have knowledge of the act in order for it to be illegal. There is also the fact that I have never heard of an ISP being shutdown and the employees arrested when the cops bust a child porn ring and find out they used accounts with that ISP. I'm also taking into account that I have never heard of any proxy sites (and there are some major corporate ones) being shutdown or arrested for merely operating a proxy site.

I think its misleading to claim something is illegal when you have no evidence to show that. Now I may be wrong, and I'm perfectly willing to admit if I am wrong, but like I said, I haven't seen anything to refute my claims.

None of us are lawyers as far as I know, so anything we say with the best of intentions could potentially be misleading. All we can really do is offer a viewpoint and it should never be used in place of real legal advice. Some people aren't looking for real legal advice or they wouldn't be posting here. They just want a general assurance that they're doing alright. And general assurances, regardless of position, aren't always right, and in some cases could lead to serious legal problems. But thats the risk you assume for taking the shortcut.

 

@disgust, naturally I would try to make them unique and promote them to a unique audience.

 

As far as advertising goes, make sure that you register at proxy.org. That should get you some followers. Just so you know, adsense tends to ban proxies, so you can either accept the risk and run adsense for as long as you can, or run bidvertiser.

Legality wise, proxy.org states a lot of the arguments for proxy rights. I don't think that you could be arrested for operating a proxy or for having members that did illegal things on it. That said, they could arrest you for impeding an investigation or abetting criminal activity. Just make an honest attempt to block the bad users and you'll be fine.

Civil responsiblity is a huge issue though. I remember seeing a thread here a few weeks ago (I can't find it, ununique title) where Ebay was filing a lawsuit against a proxy user because he made no attempt to stop a bunch of hackers from using his proxy to post tons of scam auctions. Just be aware of this and be vigiliant.

 

I was merely commenting on your statement:

"As an online provider you have no liability as long as you dont promote illegal activity."

The problem is that you make a blanket statement that people are free and clear so long as they do not promote illegal activity. That is simply not true. There are many crimes that they could be liable for without promoting. Child pornography just being one where mere posession is a crime.

I was not saying that anything was necessarily illegal either. I was just taking issue with your statement that your are 'in the clear' if you don't promote. I don't think people should rely on that advice.

Other than that, I will let people get their own legal advice.

I do note that it is funny that you think it is misleading for me to claim something is illegal (you will note that is something I never did) ~ but it is okay for you to claim that something is legal and put other people in jeopardy following your advice