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kohlrak: TOR isn't there to make it so you can do bad things
tor is just a technology. While "bad" and "good" things are subjective and may vary. Obviously somebody will use it to bypass censorship, while others will sell cp on darknet. Same way, as with any other technology - nuclear power may be used to bring you electricity, but also to make huge booms.

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kohlrak: In other words, it's perfectly reasonable for GOG to ban TOR users
nope, its not. For "usual user", tor is nothing but a free vpn. So - banning it is kinda overkill, since, again, normal people use it too.
Personally, I think that they should go cloudflare's way. E.g not ban IPs, but force them to solve captcha. This way, normal customers will be able to connect even if they are travelling tru country with strong censorship, while bots will be caught in the loop of loginscreen
I'm assuming that Tauto being gone the last several days is just a coincidence?
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kohlrak: I'm not sure we know for sure that GOG bothered to IP ban
IP bans are worthless. I know I complain about my library being IP banned every so often. I discovered that they're so fed up with it themselves that they're now obtaining a new IP address every so often just so that they can reach Wikipedia and other websites.

Takes me about 10 seconds to reboot a router and get a new IP address when I'm somewhere working.

As to TOR, many (most?) exit nodes are known and on lists. Just discovered that they even make a list of them:

https://check.torproject.org/cgi-bin/TorBulkExitList.py?ip=1.1.1.1

I have to watch out for my kids. We block them when we see them.

Having said that, we have a few clients who are in places where they don;t have full Internet access. Not going to go into details but we do our best to help them. :)
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kohlrak: I'm not sure we know for sure that GOG bothered to IP ban
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drmike: IP bans are worthless. I know I complain about my library being IP banned every so often. I discovered that they're so fed up with it themselves that they're now obtaining a new IP address every so often just so that they can reach Wikipedia and other websites.
In other words, they're not worthless for people who don't know how to get around it. Name bans aren't worthless, either, for people whom never think to make an alt, right? That seems to be what the library is teaching us.
Takes me about 10 seconds to reboot a router and get a new IP address when I'm somewhere working.

As to TOR, many (most?) exit nodes are known and on lists. Just discovered that they even make a list of them:

https://check.torproject.org/cgi-bin/TorBulkExitList.py?ip=1.1.1.1

I have to watch out for my kids. We block them when we see them.

Having said that, we have a few clients who are in places where they don;t have full Internet access. Not going to go into details but we do our best to help them. :)
Right, and those people without full access (actually, Europeans and US citizens have a hard time getting access to some things they have access to) need help. However, they're playing a risky game to begin with. Think of this like the gun debate: Bad guys use it for bad, good guys use it for good. The difference is, with proxies, when you ban the good guy with a gun, you also actually do ban the bad guy with a gun, as well. I like the far-easterners, too, but i'm curious how they make purchases, here if they're blocked by their country.
At least you didn't click on that.

Could have been way worse though.
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kohlrak: That seems to be what the library is teaching us.
Actually the library is teaching us that their patrons' abuse isn't their concern and the rest of the Internet must put up with with their *cough*.

Actually had spammers tell me that as well over the years.

My point is that IP and username bans are easy to get around. There are other ways to deal with abusers.

For our clients, we have ways for them to reach their servers and websites. That's a method we can control. TOR is not one of those methods.

Put it this way. I work for a webhosting company that caters to soccer moms and their kids. If you want to have a discussion, I'll be happy to do so as long as we can discuss child porn which is something I don;t think GoG staff wants us to cover here. Mothers who receive dick pictures sent to their kids is not what we would call a happy topic.
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kohlrak: That seems to be what the library is teaching us.
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drmike: Actually the library is teaching us that their patrons' abuse isn't their concern and the rest of the Internet must put up with with their *cough*.
Well, that's the message that the librarians themselves are telling us. I understand most libraries are underfunded and really can't monitor people, which is fine, but we need to finally accept that the library is not the place to get internet access if you don't have a computer. I know people are poor, but if you have a child, you really do owe the child to invest in their future, no matter how poor you are otherwise (if you can't invest in your child's future, you shouldn't be doing it). A cheap netbook can be bought for less than 200 bucks, and an even cheaper desktop can usually be found for 50 bucks or less, and someone can easily do the work of installing linux for you. That thing will last for years, and even a 32bit system can survive in today's ecosystem. Sure, it's not going to run microsoft word, but microsoft word should not be the exclusive standard for school projects.
Actually had spammers tell me that as well over the years.

My point is that IP and username bans are easy to get around. There are other ways to deal with abusers.

For our clients, we have ways for them to reach their servers and websites. That's a method we can control. TOR is not one of those methods.
I agree. There's no reason why GOG can't have a complicated "exceptional passthrough" for known proxies where those special customers.
Put it this way. I work for a webhosting company that caters to soccer moms and their kids. If you want to have a discussion, I'll be happy to do so as long as we can discuss child porn which is something I don;t think GoG staff wants us to cover here. Mothers who receive dick pictures sent to their kids is not what we would call a happy topic.
That alone says enough: no manner of government censorship or regulation, no manner of tech, not even a whitelist can protect your child from a dick pic. If you can't accept your child seeing a dick pic, they should not be on the internet nor should they have a cellphone with MMS support. If they need a computer for school, wiregap it. If the school is requiring internet before you've given your child "the talk," then you need to properly protest. "Monitoring your kids while they're on the internet" is way too slow to prevent the dick pics from showing up. We don't need to go as far as deeply discussing the topic, so much as accepting that the internet, no matter how hard we try, will never be "safe for kids," and soccer moms are not tech savvy enough to handle the issues of things like 4chan, so we're being irresponsible when we give them that false sense of security (even though they should have the agency to know better on their own).