China tries to block its citizens from seeing porn and foreign news sources. Although, I've heard they're not very successful at doing it, people just use proxys and stuff to get around it.

True. They're also trying to close down porn sites that are hosted in China.

The seized servers were in London, England.

Sections from http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Indymedia/ :

Two Internet servers, known as ahimsa1 and ahimsa2, provided space to more than 20 Independent Media Centers in the United States and around the world, offering independent journalists a soapbox upon which to speak in a public forum. Independent Media Centers are autonomous portions of Indymedia, a global collective of independent media organizations and thousands of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage of news events. IMCs publish information often missed by mainstream media organizations, and offer unique perspectives on world events. The IMC content is widely read, with the two servers transmitting over 3.2 terabytes of information a month, serving over 18 million page views a month.

Through the Ahimsa servers, Indymedia IMCs had access to Internet services for news websites and an online radio server. The hosted websites included local IMCs from Western Massachusetts, Andorra, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Galzia, Italy, Poland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Uruguay, multiple sites from France and Belgium, and popular Indymedia Internet radio streams. The Internet radio streams used the domain radio.uk1.indymedia.org, providing about ten streams to the public.

The servers provided email services for BLAG (Brixton Linux Action Group), syndicate.org.uk, and foref.org (For Refugees), and a beta test email service at indymail.org. The servers also contained an archive of the email communications from the ahimsa techs.

In addition, the servers hosted www.blagblagblag.org, a website offering BLAG (BLAG Linux And GNU), a version of the GNU/Linux operating system, along with technical support and forums for communicating about the software.

Yes, and they were hosted by Rackspace, a US company. Which is probably why the FBI handed Rackspace the court order instead of Indymedia.

Indymedia.org was suspected of supporting terrorism and they were being hosted by a US company, so it's not really surprising that Rackspace handed over the servers.

That scenario doesn't prove that US authorities can just wander all over the world taking whatever servers they want.

That's .... UN-American :1orglaugh


PS: I already mirrored my sites with servers in Montreal. I also have a Euro Billing setup. If the shit comes nearer on the horizon, a flick of the switch and it is " Asta la Vista US "

So you are confirming that the " Free Usa " has regressed to the " opressed China " level....

Nice.

So... if someone opens up a Google Group that is suspected of supporting terrorism should we expect to see the Google/Yahoo servers turned over until the matter is sorted? :upsidedow

country you want to sell IN ? If I sell a membership to an american.. THat american is coming to ME .... We sell beer to 18yo americans here..

SplitInfinity has an offshore solution for those interested. We have a datacenter in Costa Rica and can cater to most of your non spammy needs. :-)

Your missing the point. The USA has to first issue a warrant for your arrest before any such action would even be discussed with a foreign government. They are not going to extradite you just so the USA can search your records. That's not going to happen and every country on earth would laugh at that request.

Just because you host, bill and live abroad does not mean your in trouble. You would first have to deny the USA access to your records. Then they would have to issue a warrant. Then they would have to negotiate with the government that controls the country you are in, bill in and host in... MAYBE they will assist the USA on such a bull shit matter. Maybe not.

There are plenty of countries that will not extradite people for rape and murder, they would laugh hysterically at the US request to do so over documents that may not even be illegal.

The bottom line is this. The porn industry will evolve over this and the smart hosting, billing and domain registrars who are not already overseas, will set up there to avoid this bullshit.

It's time for another step in porn evolution... :thumbsup Bring it on.

50....,....

This is the kind of stuff I like to hear:thumbsup

Pick the answer you like the most and go with it :thumbsup
That's how I make all my decisions that could affect my future and freedom :upsidedow

Is it worth even trying, just do everythiugn straight up

How I can I?
Tracking getting the proper documents from all content brokers and sponsors (I'm not even sure if they'll find the documents for those content on their banners, HPA, FPA, etc.) I have on my servers is pretty much unthinkable and deleting pages after pages would most likely get my domains blacklisted.... :(

I agree with Dirty White Boy - also...

unless you are a really big player or blatantly promoting and/or distributing underage content, the U.S. isnt going to bother figuring out whether a US citizen owns an offshore company with an offshore bank and offshore hosting.

I'm thinking about it for the future just for reasons of privacy and not wanting to deal with technicalities & the feds. I dont deal with anything illegal and Im not trying to get out of income taxes.

If almost every major US based multinational company has an offshore component that lets it do financial and business matters in a different way than they would be allowed to in the states, why cant webmasters?

Megabondage

Just one correction -- a person outside the US, of non-US citizenship, can host a non-2257-compliant site on a US server. ISPs and service providers are exempt from the 2257 compliance requirements, so they're not responsible for sites owned by anyone, US citizens or not. The only one responsible is the actual owner of the site.