Is it legal to host a directory of .onion urls?
<blockquote>
  <p>.onion is a special-use top level domain suffix designating an
  anonymous hidden service reachable via the Tor network.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>.onion. (2016, March 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:46, March 23, 2016, from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=.onion&amp;oldid=709560870" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=.onion&amp;oldid=709560870</a></p>

<hr>

<p>I would like to host and maintain a directory of .onion urls on the normal Internet. I am not sure if this is 100% legal because these urls often refer to highly illegal services. There are already directories on the Internet but that does not mean that they are legal.</p>

<p>I am living in Germany and the servers will be hosted in Germany too.</p>

<p><strong>Is it legal?</strong>
<strong>Do I need a special disclaimer?</strong></p>

<p>Generally speaking, you are only linking to other resources on the web, and generally that's not illegal. But that <em>could</em> be different depending on the country that hosts the site and the country of the user's access.</p>
<p>This site seems to have no problem: <a href="http://thehiddenwiki.org/hidden-wiki/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://thehiddenwiki.org/hidden-wiki/</a> Read their TOS, too: <a href="http://thehiddenwiki.org/2013/06/26/terms-of-service-and-privacy-policy/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://thehiddenwiki.org/2013/06/26/terms-of-service-and-privacy-policy/</a></p>
<p>That site is hosted in Romania (the domain is privately registered in Malaysia), but Germany and Romania are both EU.</p>
<p>Now, what users may use those links for may be illegal. And that's still in legal flux in some jurisdictions, i.e. the hosting of a site of BitTorrent links that allow downloading of copyrighted material while the link itself does not contain the material themselves. See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_BitTorrent" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_BitTorrent</a></p>
<p>Besides, a list of <code>.onion</code> links on the regular web is useless unless you know how to use the links; you're linking to resources on the &quot;dark&quot; that are not even directly accessible from those links on the &quot;bright&quot; web.</p>
<p>Someone who wants to go to an <code>.onion</code> link needs to install Tor <a href="https://www.torproject.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.torproject.org/</a> to enable the DNS changes to access the <code>.onion</code> TLD (Top Level Domain). <code>.onion</code> is not even in the Internet's Root Domain; it's a special case TLD. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion</a></p>
<p>Installing and using TOR is one more step that someone has to take to make use of a link in the &quot;bright&quot; web to reach a link in the &quot;dark&quot; web. So your links are &quot;isolated&quot; in one more sense from usefullness, and that could be a legal defense, if it even comes down to it.</p>
<p>Like anything, do your own research and draft a good TOS for your site.</p>
<p>And, at the same time, using TOR is not illegal itself <em>(but could be in some countries)</em>, but can result in illegal activity: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)</a> Read TOR's own legal FAQ: <a href="https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en</a></p>

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