Would it be illegal if one had to setup a proxy server in South Africa?

Hey,

I would like to know if it would be illegal if one had to setup a proxy (circumventor) website in South Africa on a shared hosting plan in South Africa.

Thanks

No it wouldn't be illegal, but the type of websites that people will visit might be frowned upon

No I'm pretty sure its not illegal.

However, the person that signed up for the hosting plan is responsible for the traffic to and from the server so you may have some explaining to do if someone satisfies their kiddy porn habbit via your proxy. If you do plan to do it I would suggest that you keep te logs.

Have a look at http://www.torproject.org/ its got the tech in place so its easy to just use it.

It's my business wtf I surf and no-one else's, especially the ISP and government. As such I use sstp for my browsing, on that note I've yet to see local offerings for this though not sure they can par with 5-9usd p/m for such a server at unlimited up/down with multiple vpn/proxies.

I've setup a vpn as ssh proxy before abroad, but you have to make sure that that host allows this and what is not cool with them.

As for "questionable" content
It can be debatable as for example a religious person (of certain religion) would frown onto you if you surf things that's not in-line with their system. Same as with porn as some can find that gay porn is questionable where as strait porn is cool with them. Socially across the board the consensus is that kiddy/animal/rape/snuff porn is wrong which I agree with.

Meh, easy answer.

Go to your ISPs website, and find their TOS.

In there, there should be a section to proxies. Allowed, not allowed etc. If they cool, host it. If not, hell, still host it.

Also, are you going to make it a browsing only proxy, or downloadable?

If downloadable, make sure you keep NO files on your PC.
Also, logs don't have to be present.

You do, however need a disclaimer. This needs to state somewhere that you do not monitor what is passing through the proxy, and that you do not store any traffic from the proxy on your server.
However, if a written complaint is handed to you from your ISP, you will be eligible to shut-down the proxy without notice, pending investigation.

Investigation, you might ask? Well, don't worry about that my friend, because this is the reason why you did not monitor, nor store any traffic to your proxy server.

Basically, all you need to do is see how Rapidshare etc do it. I know they aren't a proxy, but they have a way of allowing any data to be stored on their server, until a complaint is written. Also look at other free proxies, and read their disclaimer. There is a way around everything. The points above is but a few.

I will support your proxy, and anything forward from there.
Good luck.

Not sure if you will be able to run traditional proxy servers on a shared hosting setup. You would probably have to run some kind of web service type proxy. But I doubt any hosting companies would allow this.

Dedicated hosting. Different story.