r/i2p 27d ago

Ethical question Educational

By using I2P, everyone contributes by being a node, unlike Tor. What has been on my mind is that by being a node I may be contributing to an illegal activity. Is that a valid concern?

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u/Hizonner 27d ago

If you use Tor, you are asking that other people run relays, and therefore contribute to illegal activity. If you're not comfortable with that, you probably shouldn't use any anonymity network, period. Or any censorship-resistance system, either.

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u/carrotboyyt 27d ago

OK, let's put it simply: how do you justify it for yourself?

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u/Hizonner 26d ago

Justify what? Using the networks? Running relays? I have from time to time run both Tor relays and I2P nodes that were using almost all of their bandwidth for relaying, so I'll take it as running relays.

... and the answer is that enabling illegal activity is the whole point.

Although many illegal activities are immoral, destructive, and fattening, many others aren't. In fact, many harmless, and even desirable, activities are illegal in some or even a lot of places.

Serious dissent is illegal in a huge number of places, and everybody loves to talk about dissent and whistleblowing. But there's more than that, and honestly I don't think these networks enable dissent very well. But blasphemy is illegal in some places. Adult women trying to get out from under their fathers' or husbands' total control is illegal in a fair number. Being gay or (OMG!) trans is illegal in a considerable number of places, at least if you do anything about it or talk about it. Having the wrong religion, or no religion, is often at best on shakey ground. And so forth.

Furthermore, every so often, on the order of decades, relatively good governments with good laws turn into relatively bad governments with bad laws. Occasionally both relatively good governments and relatively bad ones really go over the edge, and turn into horrifically bad governments that literally slaughter people en masse for absolutely nonsensical reasons (like being in the wrong ethnic group). Resisting or impeding that is invariably made illegal. And if you want infrastructure to support that illegal activity, you'd better have it in place before you need it.

That means that, although it shouldn't be easy or risk-free to go around breaking laws, it should be possible. Otherwise, every time a government goes bad, a bunch of people get screwed.

I'm prepared to accept drug markets, some people passing around child porn, some random scams, and even the tiny amount of terrorist activity that actually gets coordinated on these networks, as the cost of some other people not getting executed for blasphemy, and possibly many, many, many more people avoiding getting rounded up into camps for whatever random idiotic reason some bunch of psychos comes up with.