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Can Web Sites Go Offshore For Free Speech?
invoke asks: "All the recent stories about Web pages being yanked for various supposed violations of DMCA make me worry that I may inadvertently irritate some large corporation. What I am seeing now in America and the EU suggests that I would most likely find my Internet connection terminated with no real recourse, causing me no end of hassle. I can't afford to lose my connectivity, as I run several domains off my static IP. Therefore, I'm looking for a safe-harbor solution for hosting a 'vanilla' free speech site. I'm not intending to host warez or serialz, just stuff that might irritate people-with-money. Any suggestions?"
The ideal of free speech, as desirable as it may seem to all of us, is in the real world nothing more than a pipe dream which those in power want to convince us we have. True free speech has never existed, and will probably never exist under the current socioeconomic models of today, in which aggressive competition is the force that shapes our society and the lives we lead in it.
The capitalist system which dominates the world is based upon older social systems such as feudalism, and inherits from them a kind of "caste" system in which money replaces birth as the indicator of rank. The only real difference is that there is an illusion of opportunity which is deliberately fostered by those at the top in order to keep those at the bottom happy. After all if you think you might be able to rise up the social ladder through hard work and skill, then you are going to be content with your lot, believing better things are around the corner. This is the basis for the "American dream".
The struggle to gain status and power within the system is an aggressive and competitive one - there is less room at the top than there are people trying to rise there. This creates a climate where backstabbing, slander and other forms of socioeconomic rape become accepted and acceptable means to gain something over others, either pushing yourself up or your rivals down.
Whilst this infighting serves those at the top, keeping the masses busy fighting each other rather than challenging them, things like free speech are a danger to them. Their positions of power are based on an intricate web of money, power, reputation and connections, and annoyances like public opinion can topple even the mightiest giant.
So rather than have their positions exposed to the free speech of the public, they will instead fight using their considerable resources to quosh it, preferrably using pre-emptive legislative strikes. We see this happening across the Western world at the moment with laws like the UCITA and so on. So surely the obvious choice is to go offshore, outside of national laws?
While this may work for a while, the globalist coterie of people in power aren't themselves tied to any particular nation. Sooner or later they will find a way to pressure national and international bodies into "harmomising" international laws or some other excuse that will involve extending the reach of anti-free speech laws.
So in the short term this may work as a solution to oppresive national laws, but it's only a matter of time before legislation catches up with you wherever you are.
Thus the only way to solve this problem is to buy up some land - preferably islands for defense reasons - and start our own country, which would intentionally not form any treaties with anyone, and completely ignore any and all foriegn intellectual property and/or censorship regulations. A "rogue" nation, with a single purpose in mind. There is still the problem of physical connectivity. Putting up a satellite would be a start, but it might be that nobody bothers to pick up the signal. Pipe piracy would, in the long run, probably be the only solution. Oops, Japan's not connected any more. Instead, we are.
Of course, it'd probably be easier to just have a revolution in the US. There will be sooner or later anyway...
A friend and I have been proposing that gopher be resurrected for this purpose -- an "underground" internet-based source for truly free information.
:^) I think this would most easily accomplished with a reformed gopher architecture. That way, there can be no images can be loaded into the information, and there are no layout tags. Just free information. Plain Old Text.
The web (in its current state) has become a playground for everybody, and it's gotten quite messy. Banner advertisements are constantly being shoved down one's throat; the same goes with ALT tag ads if you've turned image loading off. Everybody's "corporate interest" is leading to this or that company or government or organization trying to stop the freedom of speech that we enjoyed on the Web only a small time ago. Escaping corporate interests will be harder and harder as time goes on, because it looks like it's going to become illegal to do so.
So, the solution that a friend and I thought of would be to make a second internet -- one without the "crap".
If anybody else wants to investigate this as a team project, send me an email -- I'd love to talk.
Jon Abbott
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
ship has an American reg US law still applies.
IANAL
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
" capitalism demands a pyramid structure of wealth and power, "
/. of the growing threat of corporatism, globalization, and erosion of rights, we're mostly pretty happy that US corporations had the freedom to invent transistors, microchips, software, ethernet, etc. And that the PEOPLE were fleeced with high taxation to fund the development of the internet, or the space program (even if that was just a glorified cold-war pissing contest).
I've always hated that description, a pyramid is a three-dimensional structure. You're talking about a hierarchy which can be mapped to a simple two-dimensional tree structure. It ticks me off to hear these terms being abused like this in a cheap attempt to over-dramatize an idea - in order to rouse emotional responses from the reader. But that's what Marxism was all about wasn't it? Compassion for one's fellow man, hate for those who could be twisted in one's mind to being non-human, because they're rich.
No, I haven't believed in this system my whole life. In fact, back when I was in college, I was quite taken with the whole Marxist ideal. Now that I've "grown up", and I've become that what I used to hate: A white, employed, middle-class, male, with a wife, two dogs, SUV, two kids, watches sit-coms, has a 401k, etc. etc. - I look back at my childhood, and saw that I hated the rich because I had no hope that I would ever possibly become rich. None at all. It happened quite unexpectedly, after eight years of hard work. I have improved my standing in life, I rose from the level of the proletariat, I took advantage of the opportunities I had in my native-born country, and yes, I played the sick game of consumerism, and was rewarded with a shiny new credit history.
All I can say is, I'm glad I'm not living on a commune growing tofu.
And while we're all pretty aware here on
I didn't have this perspective when I was 24, and making $6/hr delivering pizzas. I couldn't have.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
To do the same, or something similar, with a web server demands some additional resources, but is actually not that different in practice.
Instead of being parked outside of the physical legal domain, you now have to be parked outside of the virtual legal domain.
What does this mean, in practice? Using "pirate" IP numbers, a "pirate" DNS, and (most importantly) NO logical connection.
If there is no logical point of connection, then there is nothing to shut off. There is also no easy way of tracking where the server physically is.
In short, you must be able to intercept packets for your server at arbritary points on the physical network, and inject synthesised packets also anywhere in the physical network.
(By "anywhere", I mean more than 1 place, and the more places the better.)
Tunneling to a large number of proxies (ALL of whom have the same vhost IP/name) would be one way.
Another, less legal, way would be to borrow the same idea as used in DDOS attacks, but install a distributed proxy service instead.
A third method would be to extend the Gnutella protocol to support anycast proxying. (Essentially Gnutella is 9/10ths there, so this wouldn't be overly difficult.)
A fourth, -definitely- illegal and strongly NOT recommended method (but perhaps the most water-tight) would be to use one of the first two methods with injected routes. By this, I mean transmit valid BGP4 and/or RIP2 packets to a random set of routers, of which at least one is connected to each proxy. The injected routes would create randomly and continuously shifting paths to each proxy, making it much more difficult to figure out where anything is. Combine this with a randomly shifting IP address, and it becomes impossible to block or trace. Individual sysops could remove proxies, if ordered to or if not approved. However, with no burden on any one proxy and no continuous load along any one path, it's unlikely any given proxy would ever be found, or even objected to, if it was. (Most computer-literate people are closet Robin Hoods, whether they'll admit to it or not. Provided something is not interfering with legitamate use of resources, is unlikely to bring the Wrath of God down on their heads, and doesn't compromise "security" (read: bring their prawn collection to the attention of the media), most sys admins are likely to decide it's more hastle than it's worth... ...and bookmark the website for future "reference".
All these methods boil down to The Golden Rule of Real Security: DON'T put your eggs in one basket, and keep moving the baskets. It royally buggers up the egg-smashers.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Wasn't there another similar project a few years ago called Oceania, only founded more explicitly on Libertarian/Objectivist ideology? Are they still around, or have they disappeared?
Isn't their constitution based primarily on the writings of Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein?
Interesting premise, considering that the interconnectedness of the net these days makes it virtually impossible to isolate a substantial subsection of the internet.
Don't be too sure. If it becomes a problem to The Powers That Be, i.e., if servers sprout in non-WIPO countries offering MP3s and war3z, I'm sure the copyright industry will push vigorously for tying Internet connectivity to an IP treaty. Chances are countries such as Britain, Australia, the EU will quietly sign it with perhaps a few concessions; countries such as Russia won't get much in the way of choice. And if the treaty prohibits signatories from providing connectivity to non-signatories, it's unlikely that Cuba or Libya or whoever will be able to set up a data haven.
The copyright industry has enough lobbying clout that they got copyrights extended to virtually perpetual terms; if such a treaty regime is at all possible, they could get it put into place.
Once upon a time, it was possible to occupy unclaimed land offshore and found a sovereign nation; that's how the Principality of Sealand was founded, on an abandoned defense platform off the coast of England.
They closed this loophole in 1978 or so, though; now claims must be approved by the nearest neighbour, even if the land is in international waters.
What if the State Department or someone issued an order requiring special dispensation to connect to a specific "pirate" state, much in the way that it is illegal to export web browsers to Libya or Iran? It would be a lot easier to enforce than export restrictions on downloadable software.
If it was illegal for US ISPs to connect to country B, but legal to connect to C, and C allowed connections to B one might be able to get around it. Unless we then made it illegal to connect to C (secondary boycott enforced by our gov't) or banned routing of certain IPs.
The whole point of the treaty scenario is that if C is a signatory and B is not, it will prohibit connections to B; if C is not a signatory, connections to C will be prohibited.
The only thing the gov't could do then is make the penalties so huge (20 year prison sentences) that people wouldn't do it. And many still would. And monitoring/finding everyone doing it is impossible, and any halfway effective attempt is extremely expensive.
It won't be more expensive than finding war3z sites on the web and shutting them down. And if there are a few high-profile examples (multi-million-dollar fines, lengthy prison sentences), that alone will have a persuasive effect on others.
Which means that there's nothing stopping, say, AOL Time Warner from paying someone to sink your data haven in international waters, slaughtering everyone on board in the process. And there are many hired guns who may be willing to do such a job; if one of the South African mercenary contractors won't do it then surely a pirate crew can be found in South East Asia who are not averse to doing a bit of extra work and making a few hundred thousand on the side.
The problem here is that the "offshore" site (non-US, non-EU) must connnect to the rest of the world through some physical connection. That connection is most likely provided by a peering arrangement with one of the global telecomm providers. And there is a major asymmetry of power between the smaller country and the {US,EU}.
So when your posting annoys someone with serious clout, they have a quite chat with the State Department and the interconnecting telecomm player. They in turn have private chats with their peers, and your site disappears. The alternative is for, say, voice service into that country to "stop working" for a few days, until the point gets across.
IMHO the best choice is to set up your own site with a local or regional ISP in your home country, get some legal advice, and fight the battles you need to fight. That's the only way to prevail in the long run.
sPh
I'm not suggesting that China is some great haven for free expression, but their government seems to take great pleasure in (what they percieve to be) anti-capitalist expression such as mp3 trading, linux, etc. The _massive_ HK warez scene operates above ground and unchallenged.
I just got a free webmail account on mol.mn (Mongolia online, in the Mongolian People's Republic), and I am going to try and see of I can get webspace there also specifically for DVCSS-type information.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
hopefully in the future there will be strong enough interconnection
Really? All I can see is big companies merging with big companies to form bigger companies.
The bigger they get, the harder it is for a new player to come into the market of international backbone connections.
And the fewer players, the easier it is to get denied service.
This is not Fidonet where you could dial another node.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
From WordNet (r) 1.6 [wn]:
liable: subject to legal action; "liable to criminal charges"
libel: a tort consisting of false and malicious publication printed for the purpose of defaming a living person
(This is intended to inform, not complain or ridicule)
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
I don't think he's skulking off, AFAICT he just doesn't want the ISP pulling the plug at the first sniff of a defamation or copyright lawsuit against themselves.
I don't think the purpose of this Ask is to avoid all responsibility, it's to avoid having the ISP pull the plug at the first sniff of a libel or copyright suit against *them*.
This may be a moot point. I do not know the nature of your specific case, but it seems like if you were running a business in the US you could still be found libel. Hence even if Napster relocated their servers to some obscure island nation, they would still be out of San Mateo and still be in trouble. I seem to recall reading something on this before but can't quite remember. Anyone want to add anything?
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Consider this a plug for Vince Cate and Offshore Information Services. For a reasonable price, he'll run your webserver and set up your anonymous Anguilla corp. You have to comply by his TOS, but that should be pretty easy if you're not planning to host pr0n or defraud people.
(Disclaimer: Vince is a friend of a friend, so I'm not entirely free of bias here. He renounced his US citizenship a few years ago to make all this easier, which was deemed sufficiently noteworthy that the New York Times ran a piece about it.)
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
Unfortunately, Brunei is an Islamic sultanate. Countries where bare arms on women are considered obscene are not likely to be good places to set up uncensored web sites. (Aside from the ethical implications of doing business with countries that treat women like animals.)
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Is your only hope to escape any censorship with impunity.
Join freenet and host a freenet server. Then, your information will be distributed via many hosts in a dynamic way.
Use your static server as an index into the freenet content. Let people know what is out there, but dont provide it explicitly on your server(s).
Otherwise, no matter where you are, or what you do, you piss off the wrong people and your site is history. If your lucky that would be the end of it, if not, welcome to big fines and jail time.
Why do you think most major cruise lines have non-US registry, such as Liberia? Liberia is an unmitigated hell-hole on the west coast of Africa, but a lot of fancy ships seem to come from there. Reason? More beneficial laws.
Similar to incorporating in Delaware, I suppose.
How would moving to South Africa solve the problems associated with copyright infringement? South Africa has agreements to protect the copyrights of American companies, otherwise ya'll wouldn't be able to buy your Brittney Spears albums or go see _Battlefield_Earth_ at the theater (when it's released there, that is).
It seems like you'd be banking on teh fact that they'd never get around to prosecuting. Well, in my experience, money changes everything. I think that if MS were sufficiently pissed, a few well placed "political" contributions and the South African Justice system would get its ducks in a row enough to prosecute an enemy of Dollar Bill's. It's not like they'd be asking the government to do anything illegal.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
When Mattel contacted my university, they buckled. So I had to take my mirror of cphack down. So I hosted it at a free website company. First I tried geocities, but they threw me off for 'hacking.' So I went someplace called 50megs.com, where they have yet to give me any trouble.
Check it out at my home page.
Sam TH
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
If anyone does send you a letter asking you to take stuff down.
If that were how it happend, there would be no problem. However, they do not send a letter to the site owner, they go straight to the host provider with accusation of DMCA violations or copyright violations (often not true) and scare the provider with lawsuits. The provider (not having any desire to get into a lawsuit over content they don't care about in the first place) will nearly always buckle under the preasure and drop the site and the customer without even investigating the claim.
Universities are historically better about this, but even noe they are scared of companies with money.
Finkployd
I'm fully aware of how the DMCA is supposed to work (both the good parts and bad). However, many are not. And when a large business utters the phrase "DMCA violation" in an small ISP's genneral direction, they will do shut downy site, and kick off any user to avoid a costly legal battle they cannot win. Mattel can claim that someone's page with a picture of a furby on it is a DMCA violation, and I'll bet it get's pulled. The ISP's aren't being gutless, they are simply protecting their interests. Unfortunatly that means rolling over on any threat from a big company, legimate of not.
Finkployd
The guy was my great-great-...-great uncle, ok?
If he was your great...........uncle, then he wasn't one of your ancestors. One of his siblings was.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It isn't semantics. It's not like a typo. If that was a crime I'd be on death row. It's an outright misrepresentation.
I invented the internet.
I am descended from Captain Kidd.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I see a lot of "host your site in *" posts. Well, no government eyeing the ecommerce pie in the sky wants to look like pirate island to the rest of the world, so a cryptonomiconesqe "crypt" would be too difficult to set up, not to metnion easy to attack (one location). Why not set up a distributed vhosting protocol with freenet-like anonymity? It's harder to track down and sue the owner of a website when the http server is a different box depending on where you connect, possibly even localhost. Also, if this vhttp network had it's own top-level domain, or used httpv or something as the protocol, then we can hack mozilla so that the protocol has it's own DNS that will block ownership seeking lookups, so that if somebody in a third world country wants to combat the goverment-sanctioned death squads by organizing a resistance, the death squad will be SOL. We could just say "use freenet", but the people you're tyring to reach with such messages may be intimidated by even the web, so we have to make it simple for use by anybody.
Possibly, this can be done differently by adding the functionality onto freenet, and have users point to a node for their DNS.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Here's a vauge thought: the world is pretty
much divided into people who understand the
importance of free speech, and people who
understand the importance of economic freedom.
So if you decide to try running some sort of
off-shore "data haven", I recommend making sure
that it's also a bank.
Some of the sites I host include:
Key is to know your rights as well as having some money to burn...sadly the more money one has, the easier finding hosting becomes. In regards to location - I find it comical as well as downright scary when I see others advocating that the safer places for hosting is Russia...wow that really goes over the top!! Have things changed that much since the Cold War??
As some other posters have pointed out, while some people here in the U.S. are looking offshore, many people from all around the world host their content on servers in the United States. If a U.S. citizen has to worry about hosting legal, but contraversal, materials on servers here then perhaps it's time for another Revolution.
In regards to your hosting choices:
Verio - Big hosting company (world's largest?). They have numerous divisions and each is somewhat different in what they allow (some allow adult, but most don't) though in general Verio has a hands-off policy.
Valueweb - An economy host. Service is what about what'd you expect for the price. I've hosted protest sites there and never had a problem - I even got a Cease and Desist letter for a site I had hosted there and they kept it running.
Concentric Networks (formerly 9 NetAve) - good rates and decent virtual hosting, but avoid their dedicated hosting since they've had problems. In regards to freedom of speech...many controversal sites are hosted with them...however if a site is adult and/or draws a lot of bandwidth, expect to pay MUCH more. It's too early for me to say how them now being owned by Concentric Networks affects things - so far I've seen no change.
Rackspace - Good service and they generally mind their business and leave the content upto webmasters.
In regards to who to avoid...the free hosting places (Tripod/Geocities, Go Network, etc) as well as small Mom and Pop hosting companies in general since they'll usually cave in quickly since they're often at the mercy of their of their upstream provider(s) as well the owners may have strong personal opinions of their own.
If one is looking offshore, I'd recommend NetNation - many sites, in particular many illicit drug related sites, have moved over to them as a result of the possible passage of the Anti-Meth bill.
Hope this helps...feel free to contact me if you have further questions and/or want to hear my view regarding a particular website you plan to put up.
Ron Bennett
yes, they were in there, but not in the manner they're used today.
The Congress shall have power.. To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
In other words, the constitution only includes patents and copyright to a reasonable, non-unlimited extent, and "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". This isn't what we're complaining about. This is a good thing. What we're complaining about is patents and copyrights used as weapons for corporations to silence individuals, something that was added much, much later, far after the first amendment bits.
What was originally there is more or less to _protect_ people-- i.e. to stop someone from taking the work of others at the expense of the original creator, such as burning 3000 copies of "Dre 2001" and selling them on the street, in which case Dre is in a very real way failing to recieve money that was his due, because 3000 people who would otherwise have bought the album from Dre bought them from the guy on the street. Making the case that the patent/copyright stuff in the constitution was intended to prevent people from taking ideas and concepts from a work and using those ideas and concepts to create a new, independent work, as is done in the case of a parody or the music of Negativland.. well, that doesn't seem to use the same spirit as the parts of the U.S. constitution, seeing as a new work as such would be progress of useful art, and the original creator suffers no loss.
You'll also notice the bits in the original constitution do not contradict free speech, really, and i see NOTHING in there to support the idea of preventing the spread of information-- i.e. preventing information about a technology from being spread. The idea behind the patents was originally to encourage the spread of information-- that in order to convince someone to allow science to progress, they would tell the world how their process worked, and in return would be granted a limited-time monopoly on that process. The idea that something like the DMCA could prevent someone from spreading information they found independantly about a process-- say, cyberpatrol's encryption scheme-- is completely antithetical to the original idea of a patent and what the constitution says, even if the information about said process is in a language other than English (say, C++..)
You'll also note the "for limited times" bit. Current copyright/patent laws extend far, far past the useful lifespan of the ideas they encompass, and the lifespan of a copyright seems to get longer every time that the date of the expiration of Mickey Mouse's copyright comes within the forseeable future. You think it will _ever_ be legal for me to distribute a Legend of Zelda 1 ROM, no matter how long i live and no matter how many years have passed since Nintendo has gotten a penny from that game? Ha.
So yeh, copyrights and patents do predate free speech in U.S. law to an extent, but not in any manner that is antithetical to the idea of free speech.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Hosting overseas, say, on an island that doesn't recognize US law may not help you at all.
If you live in the US, and you are the owner of a web site, it really doesn't matter where you host it. If you are making the stuff available to Americans, and you yourself are in America, you are accountable for your actions under american law. Perhaps the US courts can not force the overseas provider to yank the page, but they can force YOU to yank the page (or go to prison for violating a court order)
Think tax evasion. You start up an offshore company to keep your holdings. A very *VERY* important part of this process is making sure that the offshore company can *NOT* be tied back to you!
Actually... bans on spam rarely went beyond the 2nd level provider. Major backbones were not in a position to ban spam, as far as I know. They charged by the byte, and were dealing with lots of money. To this day, you still can't complain to MCI because some 3rd level provider beneath them is spamming. They don't care.
Generally, first level providers care (your ISP), and second levels MIGHT care (large ISP)...
Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission.
And just because the CRTC isn't going to regulate it, doesn't mean sites can't be regulated. There is a difference between laws and regulation.
Regulation serves to make sure something stays usable and good for all people (ie: without telco regulation.. telco's would NEVER have been where they are today.)
With Internet, there is not need to regulate.
If you use your site to do something illegal, it *can* be shut down. It is merely an insturment of your own actions.
a project to build a mobile libertarian haven
What makes you think it's going to be a libertarian haven? From what I've seen, this looks like a overpriced floating combination of a rich folks retirement home and a time-share condo complex.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
You can still be shut down by your DSL service provider in the same way that your web host provider can shut you down. Nothing has changed.
Remember how in the old days, the internet was designed to discourage spam/commercial activity. When you got internet access, you promise not to do a bunch of things. One of them is spam so let's use spam as an example. The penalty for sending spam is that you get your service pulled and your account terminated. Your service provider had the same kind of contract with it's service provider. If your service provider allows it's customers to spam then it's service provider can cut it off. This continues down the line to the backbones. They have the same kind of contract. The agreement states that they will exchange data as long as there is no spam. The penalty for a backbone allowing it's customers to spam is that the other backbones will cut them off, they will not exchange data.
Remember the Spam King and the Ageis network? The Spam King became his own service provider connected directly to the Ageis backbone. It seemed like an ideal solution. The problem was that all the other backbones threatened to cut off Ageis' access to their backbones. Ageis was forced to pull the plug on the Spam King even though they didn't want to. If the other backbones had cut them off, they would have gone out of business.
Think about this globally. The US can pass a law that the US backbones cannot exchange information with "rogue networks," networks that don't follow US law. The US can pass a law that they will not trade with countries that don't pass similar laws. The UK can do the same. Pretty soon, there is no where to go.
If you don't think that this can be done, remember that until very recently, the US phone networks were prohibited from connecting to the Cuban phone network so you couldn't easily make a phone call from the US to Cuba. Yes, I know that the internet has obvious ways to route around this kind of block but big governments can put a lot of pressure on service providers.
Remember that service providers are corporations. Like it or not, they are amoral. Their loyalty is to shareholders not to your freedom of speech. If the CEO of a corporation puts your freedom of speech above shareholder value, he can be sued and he will certainly loose his job.
I was interested in the tax benefits of off shore companies and IIR its perfectly legal to create an off-shore shell corporation (as long as you report all earning to the IRS). Many countries do not require you disclose the owners of the country nor do they make them public (which is a big attraction for many people).
Some of these countries don't even require your name to setup the company - just a legal contact who can be a local lawyer. These shell companies can then get ISP space in that country and serve web pages. The local lawyer will also (for a fee of course) forward all of your snail mail back to the US so you have an instant foreign headquarters.
A US company could sue you, a US resident, as an officer of the company but they have no way to determine who you are or what country you belong to. I read an article about sex.com, which was stolen from someone else. The domain is worth hundreds of millions so naturally they are trying to get it back - but sex.com was sold to an offshore company which is believed to be owned by the same guy - but no one except the IRS can prove it. I don't know if there are any procedures for getting at IRS records - but I would suspect they are very hard to obtain.
Of course this is all from my very limited knowledge... My research was targeted at legal activity and what you are proposing is semi-legal to illegal. Some of these countries have laws that allow them to disvolve companies and seize bank accounts from known drug trafficers and other illegal types.
-- Virtual Windows Project
I wrote a discussion on how one might do anonymous/untraceable publishing on the internet:
http://jonathanclark.com/diary/anonpub/
I wasn't aware of freedom net at the time, but they use many of the same ideas. They do not do publishing (i.e. only outgoing connections) mainly for fear of legal problems.
Another method I've seen tossed around is to use redirecting proxy servers where URLs look like this:
http://site1.com/XXX
where XXX decrypts to -> http://site2.com/YYY and
YYY decrypts to http://site3.com/actual_content.html
The only trouble is getting people to run the proxy servers.
One other idea I have played around with is to use spoofied ping packets to transfer content semi-anonymously. It work by the connecting party somehow requesting the content and the posting their IP address. Then you, the server, send it to some random machine on the internet inside of a ping packet with a spoofed return address to them. This can be used to make the chain of computers between you and them very long - also making it travel through countries that are hard to get search warrents.
The main problem is making the initial request, but that could be done with a Gnutella like network.
The other problem here is the receiving computer needs to somehow specifiy which packets weren't received (because ping is lossy).
food for thought...
-- Virtual Windows Project
A dining cryptographer network allows you to communicate data without anyone being able to determine where the data is coming from.
It does require sharing a lot of bandwidth.
However it seems like some Gnutella like clone with a dining cryptographer based protocol would be a very useful tool for free speech. Then you only need servers operating in LAND based countries.... Get enough of them and since no-one knows where the data is actually coming from, no-one can attack it...
It would help to have laws that made it hard for the local governments to attack a website participating in such a network based on the fact that there is absolutely no evidence that any given site is hosting the data.
While you might lose some servers in the less free countries, if you have randomized replication, and multiple countries involved, you'd have a very robust information service.
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) http://www.endpointcomputing.com a scientific approach to custom computing.
A lot of those changes have been extremely positive.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
That's why you register with one of the flag of convience countries. You know those little Carribean nations that do little but serve as banking havens and such (the Caymans jump to mind).
Well here's a couple solutions for some of those problems. Set up a large greenhouse and grow your own food. Set up solar panels and wind rotors to get your own power (with some backups of course). There are all kinds of companies supplying this kind of equipment for not that much of a investment. Orbital recorded a entire album using solar power to run all the equipment. As for water and storms drilling rigs today support all kind of computer for running things. I'm sure they have some kind of way to deal with the problems. It would just be a matter of finding out (any offshore oil drillers in the audience care to speak up).
And if your worried about being attacked or harrassed you can always broadcast what is happening to you over your connection (unless it gets taken out). You could do the same with a ship. Bruce Sterling talked about a ship with these kinds of ideas (free food and energy, etc) in a short story called Green Hills of Brunie (I know I misspelled that). Get enough bandwith and you could also be looking at setting up a service like the Crypt in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (you ever notice how some of the great ideas are covered in so called "escapist" [Sci-Fi] writing?).
I hope that someone does put this into effect. And I'm hoping I can get a job with them.
However, they couldn't be considered to be in any shape or form "floating" - they are solidly attached to the seabed that is only a few meters deep at that point :+)
--
-=DaveHowe=-
1) host your own web site. Get a T1 and your own hardware. This puts the responsablity onto your own sholders. .uk it doesn't - the ISP that sold you the T1 is still liable, and will happily redirect your DNS entry to a 404 server of their own if someone threatens them with a lawsuit.
I don't know about the US, but here in
2) Don't put stuff up in violation of copyright. It does not belong to you.
Under copyright law there is usually a "fair use" clause (much eroded under DMCA) - and a simple copyright claim doesn't cover most defamation and libel lawsuits, which are the most common form of takedown request here.
3) If anyone does send you a letter asking you to take stuff down. Talk to your lawyer. Near as I can tell the stuff that they are going after falls into a few very specific catagories. (Copyright violations etc)
You will end up talking to a lawyer anyhow - usually to try and get your site back after the ISP shuts down it's end of the pipe. I virtually guarantee there is a clause in the contract that allows them to do that.
--
-=DaveHowe=-
I'm not sure if someone is already doing this (gnutella?) but what we need is a RAID5 of webservers, i.e. you download a java applet which then contacts n servers, each server only has a part of the data, the applet uses these parts to reconstruct the original webpage, thus shutting down any one server doesn't affect content, indeed no server actually carries all the content. As one gets shutdown, a "hotspare" automatically starts up and reconstructs its part of the data from the remaining webservers.
...is that they suck. Hopping the pond on either side of us incurrs 100ms of latency, and if you have to hop a sattelite link, you're looking at 500+ms. All the time. Internet around the world just isn't up to snuff compared to what we have in the US right now (at least connecting from the US->the rest of the world and vice versa). So be aware you're going to take a performance hit when you more offshore.
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
according to the 'ministerie of economische zaken' (probable dept. of economics or something the like) making your own DVD player (ie deCSS) is perfectly legal (I had to be sure, got the answer yesterday). The ISP in question is probably XS4ALL, what used to be Hacktic. Indeed they do have a reputation for free speech.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
The fact that the idiots who make policy for the government with regard to computers seem to favour making it a crime to publish information on computer crime i.e. publishing on the internet the fact that a security hole exists in their OS would be a crime, as well as extending laws for the criminal acts themselves. (Of course it is explicitly legal to tell somebody, or to print in a newspaper that a security hole in said OS exists).
These suggested reforms don't seem to have anything to do with events in New Zealand, but are driven by US and other countries policies.
They seem to favour a situation which ensures nobody in this country actually knows anything about their computers, and then makes them responsible for using them intelligently.
Why don't we just unplug them all, go back to the farm and fuck sheep until our economy corrodes away to nothing, and then our entire country can be bought by some giant US corporation. Yeah, thatd be great.
Of course its in the US's best interests to bog down everyone else in restrictive 'digital copyright' and 'computer crime' laws, while their own government departments openly flout all of them under the auspices of 'National Security'.
And of course US 'National Security' extends to every other country in europe and the pacific where Echelon etc. exists.
This is like the US-led WTO calling for 'Free Trade' and then generously subsidising it's industries so they can compete.
This is like the US demand for India and Pakistan to lay down their nuclear arms when they happily point their enormous nuclear arsenal at Russia.
If our government wasn't so deluded, then maybe this country might stand a chance of benefiting from the IT revolution, instead of being trampled into the mud, like every other small country by the US.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Wouldn't it be ironic if, in order to protect things like free speech and free enterprise, sites had to move to places like Russia (perceived lack of free speech) and China (haven for software [etc] piracy). Wouldn't it be ironic if sites had to flee the US, with it's supposed protection of free speech, open enterprise, and innovation. Oh the irony...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Various countries are fine about this.
...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *
I suggest St Helena/Ascension to reg' the ship. They're "kinda" British, but not quite, so the flag is a flag of convienience. Also, if you station yourself there, Ascension has this really fat pipe...
Failing that, simply get a load of flags, and decide which one to use, depending on where you are and who is bothering you.
Remember Radio Carolina?
Mong.
* Paul Madley
*...Slacker, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Remember: Nothing is Cool.
Powered by potatos... :)
I vote along with what another person said --
paraphrased: "the enemy of your enemy is your friend"
OFTC: By the community, for the community
I've followed some of the comments here, and would like to make some observations. I have extensive experience in hosting servers in Taiwan, and have been involved in projects in several other countries (HK, PRC, Philippines, Singapore, etc.).
1) It is not necessary for one of the Major Powers to cut Internet connectivity to your offshore host. It is merely necessary for your host organization to consider (by themselves, or with outside prodding) the consequences of having their net connection shut off. Your host organization will probably decide that your business is not worth the potential consequences.
2) With development comes stricter IP laws. The old pirate havens of Korea, Taiwan, and Hongkong have all been pressured very hard (and effectively!) to enforce IP in their territories. Other countries (Indonesia comes to mind) are still something of a piracy haven, but acquiring bandwidth will be difficult, and I don't know if I would want to host a "free speech" site in a country with a two-year history of multi-party democracy.
3) Banking privacy and copyright are two different sets of laws. I would be wary of current or former British colonies. Most have rather nasty "prior restraint" laws which could complicate your life.
4) Other things to look at are the existence (and viability of) libel/slander laws, etc. These are much more commonly used in most of the overseas territories I've had the pleasure of living or traveling in.
5) There was a wonderful site on the web for several years at taxbusters.org which offered services to get numbered bank accounts, second passports, etc. The owner of the site always seemed to have trouble keeping his site hosting, no matter what exotic corner of the world the server was parked in.
6) Most importantly, prepare for sticker shock. Dedicated T1 connectivity gets very expensive (i.e. around US$60-70,000/month) when you're almost anywhere in Asia. I can't speak for other parts of the world.
In summary, I'm not very optimistic about this avenue of exploration, but wish you all the best just the same.
j.
I assume you mean "Distraction". I enjoyed it pretty much; it's not everyday you read a SF novel whose "hero" is a ... political campaign organizer. ;^) Also, I enjoyed some of the technology described, such as the self-organizing distributed-labor auto-building houses (sounds weird, but is cool), and of course the throw-away cell phones. Ah, a link to Amazon, perhaps: right here. Remember: you don't have to buy it there...
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
Here's a simple solution, how about a throwaway ISP. You can easily start a corporation which gives you the same liability limitations the big dogs get: do what you want, no one will take your personal stuff - unless its a worker's comp suit. If and when the big lawsuit eliminates your company, call it quits and backup all the data to be sent to the next throwaway ISP.
In the downtime users could get a lot of sympathy off-shore mirror servers until they find another throwaway ISP. There's even the small possibility that after enough censored ISPs are taken down it might raise public awareness on the issue.
Here are a few reasons:
1) AFAIK there are few laws here regarding the Internet related things. Child pornography is the only one they come down hard on.
2) Even if there were, our Law Enforcement groups are so useless that the only crime rate that is on the decline are traffic violations, which they are coming down hard on.
3) Free speech is very well protected here, especially in relation to our political past.
4) There are a few companies that will host your domain and give you self administration for a very low cost - for less than US$50 per month for 10Mb hosting. This price is dropping as our currency declines along with the situation in Zimbabwe.
The reason I say you'll sacrifice speed is because we still have a monopolistic Telco, and bandwith is _EXTREMELY_ expensive. It will change in the next fews years though...
--- Brian the Wise Friend to Small Fury Animals Everywhere...
Was it always a scam? Or was it a couple of well-intentioned guys who didn't have a clue what they were into? Not sure.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
no-no, no russian componies... they are ok so far. But... there's such thing as SORM-2 (that's russian abbreviation for special searching and investigation activities). SORM-1 included phone tapping and such stuff during soviet years. Now here is SORM-2 which is about to become a law (or already is). To put it simple it suggests that each ISP should have a dedicated line to FSB/FAPSI (special presidential information agency) to allow certain authorities control/check content flowing thru that ISP. Of course between makin a law and it's realisation in .ru there is huge distance... So for now it's ok, but who knows what will happen next years. I wouldn't rely on current situation.
And unlike goverments, large corporations can be multinational. They can assert causes of actions from local subsidiaries or divisions.
Any webhosting company, anywhere in the entire world, when given a choice between fighting a costly lawsuit and cutting off a site, has a very strong incentive to cut off that site.
To people who say "run your own web host", apply all the above to "net connection provider".
Welcome to what happens when megacorporations woke up to the Net.
For the record, copyright and patents are part of the original constitution. Free speech did not show up until constitution rev. 1.1.
There is not one single country that support "all freedom for everyone" Nor is there likely to be a person who does, exept in theory. The average /.-er, for example, is very likely to support freedom of speech to great extent. He (I guess the average /.er is a "he") is probably less likely to support some companys (*cough* MS *cough*) freedom to do business how they please. (hold thy flamethrower, that includes me as well)
In practice you never get more freedom than your neighbour allows. The trick is to choose your neighbour.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Your best bet is to find a host who agrees with your views.
Second best, find someone who might not agree with you, but likes to be trouble to the same guys who might not like your content.
Anti-MS: Post it on /.
Anti-Linux: Go MSN
Anti-[generic US company]: Post it in France
Anti-$cientology: Germany
etc.
Remember that *your* powerful enemies has *their* enemies too. They might not be your friends, but they could be your allies. Just be prepared to move when the wind changes...
All opinions are my own - until criticized
You could base it here:
http://www.freedomship.com/
(a project to build a mobile libertarian haven
disguised as an overgrown cruise ship)
So far, most of the posts on this article have sugested moving to a server either in somewhere such as Russia or China, or into international waters. O.K, so that's your server outside of the US.
However, even with the hardware outside of the US, is the admin still responsible for any content? Could a cival lawsuit still be brought against you for being admin of a site outside of the US (That contravines US law?)
Also, if your server only has one link into the rest of the internet (Via. a US router, for example), can whoever-you-may-or-maynot-have-pissed-off legally have your link disconected (Perhaps with the threat of legal action against whoever hosts the router you're linked too?)
Just wondering if anyone has thought of any of this.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Funnilly enough, these were known as "Pirate radio". It seems that in modern times, the word "pirate" has transformed from its original meaning of a murderous cutthroat to someone who annoys the rich and powerful.
FWIW, while these ships were in operation, the British government engaged in a campaign of constant harassment and intimidation, arresting anyone who supplied them, watching in case the winds caused them to stray an inch into territorial waters, training (big) guns on them and feigning ramming actions. You may want to take that kind of thing into account when you set up your offshore ISP.
Rich
The whole Neal Stephenson Datahaven bit is a neat idea. The problem is that while your website may be out of legal reach you are not. It seems fairly clear that the borders of where the HTTP transaction is taking place does matter to US judicial system.
Remeber etoy? Because one of thier memebers lived in the US they were able to be sued here.
Also of note are the operators of offshore gambling sites. They were recently found guilty of accepting bets from states where gambling is not permitted. Those webmasters aren't expected to see the light of day for 5-10 years.
Just because they can't take your site out doesn't mean they can't take YOU out.
In the Netherlands they tend to be more respectful of the individuals rights, and you a bit more realistic when it comes to lawsuits.
Of course, they also had unbelievably bad customer service, and would probably charge you for re-connection after they had accidentally dug out your connection with a bulldozer.
Find funky gifts
Here in the UK Graham Waddon was prosecuted for running a porn site in the US.
.oO0Oo.
We was prosecuted here because he ftp'd the images from his UK PC so was deemed to have published them in the UK!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990701-000018.html
here or google
And the land of the free (tm) has some interesting judgements :
http://www.theregister.co.uk/990728-000008.html
here or google
A supreme court judge in New York may have changed the landscape for Internet companies who base their services in out of the way countries.
Justice Charles Edward Ramos has ruled that an Antiguan gambling site is covered by the laws of New York state simply because the service can be accessed from there.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I live in the Bahamas, and host OneBahamas.com which actually is on a server in the states. The service is for Bahamians to get free, no ad, web hosting. The reason why we host in the states is that there is no infrastructure to host it here. I have a cable modem, but it only runs at 128kB/s. The telecommunications company is going to be implimenting DSL in the near future, but get this. The cable company, Cable Bahamas, who I get my cable modem from now is going to be running a wide fibre optic pipe to the states. Very soon, you should be able to get up to T3 access in the Bahamas. The poorly implimented copyright laws, as well as poor legal inforcement of anything, along with the fact that no one here besides a friend and I know anything about computers would be an excellent reason to come here to avoid free speech problems. Now the only problem that I can see lies in the TOS of the cable company, but I can tell you this: we didn't have to sign anything when we got our cable modem, so watch for it. The Bahamas will be an excellent place to avoid everything. Email me if you want any more information or anything.
P.S. Bahamian Sunset t-shirt and mousepad here for just $12.99. They're cool, just look at them.
http://www.freedomship.com/
(a project to build a mobile libertarian haven disguised as an overgrown cruise ship)
Not Quite.
From the Freedom Ship Web Site (my emphasis added):
Governing Laws
Freedom Ship is only a ship, not a political entity. It will operate under the same rules and regulations as any cruise ship. As a sea-going commercial vessel, it will fly the flag of a specific country (to be determined at a later date), enjoy the protection of that country, and be subject to its laws and regulations, as well as to maritime law. In addition, its residents will be subject to the ships Rules and Regulations.
==
"This is the nineties. You don't just go around punching people. You have to say something cool first."
We host our sites over there to avoid liable laws.
blog and junk
FreeNet, Gnutella, HotLine are all VPIs
You can't handle the truth.
I wonder if setting up a satellite-based ISP on a boat or something in international waters would work. Basically a big floating server farm, with high-speed satellite links.
If the Simpsons has taught me anything (and it has), it's that anything is legal in international waters :)
But seriously. It would have the benefits of being mobile and outside the jurisdiction of everyone. Of course, you would probably have some weather-related problems, plus the fact that you might have to "go down with the server"
Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
If you don't fight now, you won't be able to say anything later.
Fight Spammers!
A large company may convince the ISP to shut you down, with the threat of a lawsuit. Or they can just file a lawsuit against you and run up your legal costs.
Even if you win on the basis free speech (or even truth), you would have had paid out large legal bills. That is why the both Massachusetts and California have implemented Anti-SLAPP statutes.
Fight Spammers!
I could claim that someone copied my site w/o my permission.
But having an anonymous site, does not have the impact of a named site.
Fight Spammers!
If you reside, or have asets in a country that will recognize the rulings from a country that makes it illegal, then they can take those asets.
A court can grant juridiction over a website because it is targeted to an area that they have jurisdiction. Since it is then intended to cause the harm in an area that the court has jurisdiction, you can be sued in that court.
If you don't appear, you will be defaulted. If there are assets that can be reached by the court, even though the website can't be, you lose.
If in Boston, you have your death ray satelite kill someone in Boston, they still will arrest you in Boston. They don't have to have jurisdiction in space.
Fight Spammers!
You keep talking about off-shore - what about Richard Bransons island? Can't remember where it is, but I'm sure he'd be more than willing to offer some kind of service. not sure about how you'd hook it up though.
:) :)
:)
Well, anyway, he's got a number of things going for him
a) Shameless self-promotionalist
b) Likes money
c) Enjoys taking on the big boys (Virgin - Airways, Records, Net, and today, Virgin Cars in the UK
d) Mad enough to do crazy things (balloons for one) to get press
e) Enjoys a joke on the powers that be.
f) All-Round Great Guy (TM) - for evidence watch 'Derek and Clive get the horn' to see Mr Branson wearing a big furry coat and smoking a spliff
Ahem. Anyway he gets my vote, now who is going to approach him?
Think of the publicity - 'Richard Branson gives Big Brother the finger'
IANA Journalist, but you get the idea.
Wow, this is a great idea, I can't believe I thought of it
~~~ huh?
Seriously, the Libertarian party is the only one dedicated to all personal and property rights, including the much-abused right to free speech and the trampled right of protection from unreasonable search and seizure. Sure, it won't be overnight, and it probably does make sense to set up something overseas in the meantime (I'll be looking into it) but please take to time to also get out there and vote!
And if it feels hopeless and overwhelming, remember that there is a fast-growing party out there of like-minded folks who are actively paving the way (there are now over 300 Libertarians in public office, all of whom are fighting to end this kind of rights-trampling crap).
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
Interesting premise, considering that the interconnectedness of the net these days makes it virtually impossible to isolate a substantial subsection of the internet.
I would recommend that you get a high speed DSL/Cable connection to your home and use one of the free DNS providers to ensure that people can always reach your IP from a domain. Many cable/phone companies have explicit provisions that prevent you from operating a server using the connection, but you should be able to find one in your area that does not. This way, you are your own host and you are thus solely responsible for your content.
/. when it is completed!
If this solution is not practical, check out Russian hosting companies. They are immune from US/UK censorship and are generally reasonably priced. I am in the process of designing a similar site and have decided to go with a well-known US ISP. If they decide to take down my site, it will result in bad publicity directed towards them that will probably accomplish more, as far as drawing attention to the problem of Internet censorship, than the site itself.
Good luck, and post the URL on
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
I don't think that offshore is the answer. The Internet is a GLOBAL community. I think that big business is just that, BUSINESS. They are in business to make money and anyone that thay percieve is attempting to take away their fair share of the pie is subject to their intervention. How do we create a global community that is not subject to big business intervention? I propose a VPI. (Virtual Private Internet) Has anybody done this yet? Maybe Big Business is reading this right now and will steal the idea. Free speech is a constitutional right. Copyright is not. The only way to prove copyright is with sufficient documentation and witnesses to stand up in a court of law. I declare this message copywritten in my name. That is all the notice I need to put on this work to copyright it according to US law. International copyrights are a different matter. Now if anyone tries to use any of the words in this post I could try to sue them. (maybe Merriam Webster should sue the entire english speaking world) It won't stand up in a court of law, but I could still try. Once again I think a VPI would be the way to go. "hackers" could support "hackers" and exclude "big business" from infringing on that "net". W3 was a good idea. How about a new consrtium? VPI1?
Hey, we could take over Cuba! Shouldn't cost too much to drop a backbone across the 90mi stretch between Cuba and Florida. Of course, in a matchup between Cuba's Mighty Army and a bunch of nerds, it'd be a tossup as to who would win the coup.
Heck, we could maybe even get corporate sponsorship from the likes of Redhat and Corel and such.
Just my 2 pesos.