It should be underscored that unless you have access to unlimited good, free legal help, you probably have no business running an exit node, and you should have that good, free lawyer make sure that the laws in your jurisdiction are Tor-friendly, as some places have been passing laws that hold the IP's owner responsible for all activity, regardless of excuses ("open wifi" doesn't fly either).
The sad part is that this means Tor exit nodes will continue to be primarily the province of large organizations who are more likely to be in cahoots with ruling authorities, which weakens the strength of the network for everyone.
>> I don't get how the rest of your comment supports this statement.
It doesn't. I didn't make that statement - you did.
I said they don't destroy lives _on purpose_. Neither are they trying to stop people from running exit nodes. They don't know what an exit node is. Somebody is doing nasty things using Tor. They look at the Whois record. Your name pops up. They knock on your door. End of story (I don't like the story either).
@cookiecaper:
The last paragraph of your comment isn't true. The Tor Project itself trusts and supports these organizations (like torservers.net - I'm sure there are many others like it). All nodes under control of one organization are marked as such inside the network so Tor clients can avoid using more than one of them at a time.
This talk might help: Defcon 21 - Safety of Tor Network Look at Network Diversity, Relay Operators & Malicious Relays (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=864FxA3jmHk)
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By the way. What's with all the downvotes? You do realise that I'm not responsible for anybody's house getting raided by the police, yes? I'm tired of blaming the police while nobody is willing to sit down with them and explain to them how Tor works. It's just not helpful.