What about the ability to spread out a particular request to many exit nodes? This would probably require the establishment of new formats and protocols. How about image formats with the same sort of information as Bittorrent? (Can someone be prosecuted for downloading a fraction of something?) As mentioned in the Rivest article posted recently, there are also "packaging transforms" that allow one to divide information up into n parts, such that all n parts must be provided to retrieve it.

I am surprised that such protocols haven't been devised yet. Yes, this would enable those engaged in child pornography. But those so engaged will just concoct yet another mish-mash of obscurity in any case. (Like using encrypted Windows Remote Desktop connections to virtual servers with encrypted archives on them.)

Just because Bittorrent is used by so-called "pirates," doesn't invalidate it or its use to distribute ISOs of Linux distributions. Likewise, such protocols would patch TOR's weakness at its exit nodes.

The owner of the Tor exit node would still be in the logs, even if they only downloaded part of a file.

Remixing the bits doesn't really change anything.

http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506986

If the server supports HTTP Range headers you can easily download portions of files. I'm not sure what percentage of servers do, though.

Yeah, I think I'd prefer not to have my IP address downloading "portions" of child pornography, thanks.

Look at Freenet.