Response template for Tor relay operator to ISP

Written by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Last updated May 31, 2011.

Note to Tor relay operators: In this litigious era, anyone providing routing services may face copyright complaints for transmitted content. Fortunately, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbors should provide protections from many of them both to you and to your upstream provider. If your Internet host forwards a DMCA copyright complaint to you, you can use this template to write a response, though you will need to customize it to your situation. Please also ensure all the statements are true for you. (The Tor Project has an abuse collection of templates to help you respond to other types of abuse complaints, too.) Before sending any response to your ISP, you may want to seek the advice of an attorney licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.

This template letter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Whether and how you should respond when you or your ISP has received a DMCA notice will turn on the particular facts of your situation. This template is intended as a starting point, but you should tailor it to your own circumstances. In addition, it's up to you to comply with your ISP's terms of service. If you're not comfortable including so much legal explanation, feel free to invite the ISP to contact EFF for a fuller discussion.

If you do not believe the safe harbors apply to your particular situation, don't use this template as a basis for your response. Specific information about safe harbor qualification for "transitory digital network communications" is provided on the Chilling Effects website here and also in the template, below.

Also, if you received this document from anywhere other than the EFF web site or ../eff/tor-dmca-response.html.en, it may be out of date. Follow the link to get the latest version.