On 1 October 2014 11:00, Brian Wolff <bawo...@gmail.com> wrote: > <snip> > > > > > > There also needs to be a good answer to the "attribution problem" > that > > > has > > > > long been identified as a secondary concern related to Tor and other > > > proxy > > > > systems. The absence of a good answer to this issue may be > sufficient in > > > > itself to derail any proposed trial. > > > > > > Which problem is that? > > > > > > > If I understand it correctly, right now we attribute edits made without > an > > account to the IP address. Allowing edits via Tor should probably not be > > attributing such edits to the exit node's IP. > > > > This quite frankly seems like a contrived problem. A random (normal) ip > address hardly associates an edit to a person unless you steal an isps > records. Wait a year and it would probably be impossible to figure out who > owned some random dynamic ip address no matter how hard you tried. I dont > think attributing edits to an exit node introduces any new attribution > issues that are not already present. > > I wish it was a contrived problem. However, this is the conceit by which the edits are attributed for licensing purposes, and it's a non-trivial matter. While I'm fully supportive of finding another way to do this, it is a fundamental issue that would require fairly extensive legal consultation to change, given that we've been using "IP address as assigned to a specific individual" as the licensee for...what, almost 14 years?
We know that Tor exit nodes are (by definition) not IP addresses assigned to the contributor, and there is no reasonable prospect of tracing back to the original IP address (unlike many other anonymising proxies). Thus the attribution issue. I've copied Luis Villa on this specific email just as a heads up that this matter might land on the Legal & Community Advocacy doorstep, but I don't think we should expect a formal legal response about this. Risker/Anne _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
