safest place to host off shore?

panama or costa rica.

Hosting can be *anywhere* crockett - it does not have to be "offshore" in the true sense - just not in US territory assuming to are intending to avoid 2257 blah problems.

Better say ... If you are a US citizen, setting up activities in eg Costa Rica, does not necessarily mean you are "offshore" in any way. There will still be an obligation to declare you biz in IRS filings (defeats the concept of offshore privacy) and comply with US laws and well as whatever local laws (otherwise they have US Marshal flights back to the US on a weekly basis). If you are not a US citizen - no problems with any of the above.

http://www.webair.nl

seems to be down

Hit up webair, they have decent Amsterdam hosting

Hosting in the country that you LIVE offshore and that you are a CITIZEN of...

That's the safest place to host 'offshore'...when you're 100% offshore.

Otherwise they just follow the money and that is NOT hard these days.

100% correct TheJimmy

There is no such thing as a real "offshore" unless you are actually living it in the "real world" and have whatever offshore structures in place (corps etc).

Living in the middle of the EU or US is not, and never will be, "offshore"

Yea I understand the IRS deal as that's how they end up busting 99% of the offshore companies is tax evasion.

Nothing is fool proof of course but I figure it would make you less of a target if the servers were off shore as well as the whois info. At that point there is no way they would know if the site is owned by an American citizen or not unless they really dug deep enough to check out your affiliate programs and so on.

But in reality there isn't much I could think of that could track a specific site back to me as an American citizen with out a in depth search. Meaning they would have to dig into host payments, affiliate accounts and so on, which they can't do with out a warrant. So you would really have to grab their attention IMO by doing something wrong.

At least that's my thoughts on the matter, please elaborate if you think otherwise. I'm all ears.

The biggest red flag you can wave infront of any countries tax collectors is to suddenly stop paying taxes.

Make sure your ducks are in a row.

The checking and tracking of affiliates is no biggie crocket - easy shit - got some friends in US law agencies that deal with far more complex net stuff than that - and they are pretty successful at it.

Won't say here, but in theory if you started a corp, say in Costa Rica, you would have a US tax lawyer here handle the affairs with the IRS and declare whatever needs declaring and pay taxes on this. (Doing otherwise just causes sheer shit and hassle)

Your corp will have a bank account - not necessarily in Costa Rica, but not in the US. From that corp account all hosting is paid and all revenue paid into it. This corp is not "you", but a legal entity which you own 100% shareholding.

All hosting is outside US territory.

If you are actually living in eg Costa Rica, the IRS will allow approx $80K/year "allowances" for non-US residency.

Bottom line - sure, make sure all relevant tax stuff is maintained and it's far less likely your corp will be in the front line for US inspection on "porn laws".


PS There are other scenarios, tho these are more complex and not something that needs to be declared/discussed on a chatboard, but the effect is the same.

In todays world Robert Vesco (anyone remember him?) would have lasted about an hour and a half .....

Vesco never was "free" - he walked with the full knowledge and cooperation of US govt agencies and where "others" took the proceeds of his crime until it was time to give him up and pass him back to the US. That's one amazing farce


PS .. Met his family a few months back - they are still enjoying life.

Yea see that's all I'm after, I'm not looking to go spam or do any dirty biz, however I want to continue to operate like I do now. I can't run my sites and deal with the whole 2257 BS that who knows what will happen with it.

I'm not talking about making big money or anything like that, but rather just making a good living online. I don't want to have to change up my entire biz model when I'm finally starting to get somewhere with what I've been doing.

Otherwise I think the only real option, if these changes to 2257 go through is to run my own paysite and promote it myself with maybe a few invite only affiliates. Im' just not in the position to do something like that at this time. However being in the free site market as an affiliate I could see all my income go bye bye with the new additions in the Adam Walsh law.

So I'm just sick of dealing with the BS of not knowing what is going to happen or what's going on. I know it's not a fool proof way to do it, but I have some very nice listings in the search engines for several top teen keywords and I believe I could possibly be a target if they start going after guys that are running free sites such as TGP's and blogs. Even though I would never touch anything CP related and I only promote well known affiliate programs.

I mean if they start going after secondry producers then the first things they are going to look at is the search engines and who ever is listed IMO.