They convicted him on "supporting the transfer of underage pornography", i.e. he ran an exit node that "allowed" the upload of CP to an Austrian image hoster. Apparently, he wasn't protected because he ran the exit as an individual, not a registered company. Most likely, the Austrian authority checked who uploaded the images, and found his IP address, which became the basis for convicting him. He didn't have any of the materials because all those stuffs were encrypted in transit.

He mentioned that law that was used to prosecute him was changed a few weeks later to protect individuals as well. He apparently now ran Tor exits under an offshore company.

In summary, from what he said, he just happened to run an unrestricted exit node that some people used to upload CP.

He was convicted (and given probation) for supporting the transfer for Child Porn, not for accessing it or creating it.

I read in one of VPS rental service Discord that someone rented a VPS to run tor exit node and HDDs of the server were confiscated without prior notice.

Sorry I am not very techy, can someone eli5 what is an exit node? What is the point of running an exit node? Should the user have known his exit node (not sure if i am using the term right) could be used for cp?

This is insane! It's like prosecuting a postman for delivering child porn content to a customer.

I don’t care if he was guilty or if the government whatever, the post title makes me sick already.