Slashdot Mirror
Is the Government Scaring Web Businesses Out of the US?
suraj.sun sends this quote from an article at Techdirt:
"The federal government has been paying lip service to the idea that it wants to encourage new businesses and startups in the U.S. And this is truly important to the economy, as studies have shown that almost all of the net job growth in this country is coming from internet startups. ... With the JotForm situation unfolding, where the U.S. government shut down an entire website with no notice or explanation, people are beginning to recognize that the U.S is not safe for internet startups. Lots of folks have been passing around [a] rather reasonable list of activities for U.S.-based websites."
Is slashdot scaring away developers with more political submissions? Remember when there used to be a Developer section instead of all this political BS? I swear YRO has ruined this site.
If you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear. Just make sure you follow the law.
Deleted
It's not US government shutting down US sites.
It is US government shutting down all other sites, so that users around world end up having to use US based 'service providers'.
That and "intellectual property" are the only 2 things that can keep US economy afloat for bit longer.
And they're betting big on it.
The ars technica article has some useful background: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/secret-service-asks-for-shutdown-of-legit-website-over-user-content-godaddy-complies.ars
Sounds like a good reason to leave GoDaddy, IMO.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
we stand on guard ....for theee...the usa has hollywood ram you so badly that it causes none to do any business there OH good one.
NOW we can add copyrights kill business.....
Just wait until Santorum gets elected and he will because liberals are too butthurt to stop him.
do you trust a US based web hosting company after recent events?
Godaddy and Jotform.com comes to mind
http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/02/16/231212/jotformcom-gets-shut-down-sopa-style
The US government, under pressure from the entertainment industry is doing it. Companies like godaddy are making things worse.
It's rather fuckin moot to try to plan ten years ahead when the laws change to being more and more draconian and unconstitutional every couple days/weeks.
This is full spectrum disruption. Who dare run a music blog when the lables don't even know what the current law is? Who dare hire employees when health-insurance, and tax is unstable and unpredictable, with a monetary system that is unregulated and corrupt to the fuckin core? Who dare take a loan in this depression/inflation enviornment? Who wants to pay for video bandwidth, when streaming a video is now a felony?
Who suffers? ebay, paypal, amazon, domain sellers, hosting, isp's, software developers, bloggers, bands, labels, video production, video promotion. You want real people to discuss fixes, better get rid of all this fascist, war on terrorism, cyberwar propaganda psychopathic bullshit.
Put hosting in countries where the RIAA hides its money from the tax man, Switzerland, Luxumbourg, etc... Being a bully to a country that has dirt on you is a line they won't cross. I think.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I keep seeing various statistics about where all (or some percentage of) the "net new jobs" come from, but I'm not sure I understand what it means. Are they just saying "Internet startups (or whatever) added 100 more jobs than they lost, and the economy as a whole added 100 more jobs than it lost, so all the gain came from internet startups"? That doesn't seem like a legitimate claim (any number of other categories could have had the same net job gain, as long as enough jobs were lost from at least one other category...)
What we're actually seeing is the open source community maturing. Since Slashdot was one of the first major gathering points for open source advocates, we're seeing this maturation happen here first.
While open source software had its roots in the political upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, the number of true old-timers ("neckbeards", if you will) pales in comparison to the younger generation who really made open source software take off. I'm talking about the Linuses and the Alan Coxes and now even those open source advocates born after 1990.
These younger people are finally seeing how important politics is in any movement. They're now seeing that the technology is one part of the pie, but playing the political game is another big chunk. You're damn right that politics is becoming more important to these people!
Technology is so intertwined with politics these days that you can't unwind them. You get them both, and you need to learn to enjoy it this way.
At this rate data, information and knowledge will be the new thing to smuggle. But there doesn't seem to be a "border"... yet. We will all be the mules. Like anything good they will try and cut it off. Who will be the 21st century's Pablo Escobar?
The sky is still blue. Water is still wet, and fire still burns.
Does anyone know what the fuck happened to ompldr.org?
Did they get busted or just run out of money? No FBI/DHS/ page or anything, because DNS is busted too.
It went *poof* and there's nothing I can find anywhere about it.
TIA.
--
BMO
Companies will always try to invest as little as necessary to keep their revenue high. For most companies, the best of all changes would be exactly none. ANY change means having to adapt to it, and adapting costs money.
Now that the last of the big corps has caught on that it's cheaper to buy laws than to change strategies, the "new" (ok, not soooo new, but think of it in terms of magnitude) way to increase or at least keep revenues high is not to adapt, innovate and improve past the competition, the strategy is to buy laws to eliminate the competition.
And the biggest competition for big (and hence wealthy, and thus able to buy said laws) companies is "the internet". Face it, few of the big ol' ones really benefited from the internet's success. New competition arose and they have an edge. Faster to respond, easier to use for their customers, there's just very little big old ones can do against that directly.
So what they can do is change the rules of the game.
Changing those rules, though, means that the power stays in the hands of old companies and new startups get squashed, not by superior products or better service, but simply by the monetary power to change the rules.
And that's pretty much anathema to capitalism, folks. What we're getting here is the worst kind of socialism. Remember why the USSR fell? Outdated production means that were artificially kept alive while the rest of the world passed them, which made them completely uncompetitive on the global market.
Welcome to the future USSA.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's the Scumbag corporations that are greedy ass hats that refuse to share the pile of money out there.
Want a target, target the MPAA,RIAA and every company that sues others over software patents. They are the real enemies of the State.
Because they are the ones that bribe the Congress men an women to fight for evil things like SOPA. ANY congressman that supported SOPA is proof that they are on the bribe payroll.
Work hard to vote out anyone that ever touched that evil thing, and make it clear that any future support of anti-freedom laws will also be met with swift opposition.
Wait, this is the USA... All the populace does is watch TV and moo....
Mooooooo..
not all of the Govt is scaring web business away.........just the part of it that carries out the laws according to its interpretation.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
people are beginning to recognize that the U.S is not safe
It's not just on the internet anymore...
Of course the US governments attitude to websites is going to have an affect on the confidence of website operators to be able to locate there and may make many look at other countries to host it instead. The prosecution of the web site owners for the actions of their users, which they cannot control, most stop, as well as the PIPA and SOPA nonsense, and the country needs to implement full Network Nuetrality. That is a recipe for creating a truly pro-consumer, pro-jobs environment that is also good for website operators.
The fact is that the GOP pretty much is an enemy of freedom, and has for years been the paid agent of the large media corporations which seems to want to trample over free speech turn the webpage in to a one way TV MTV equivalent. Another concerning thing is the fact that the conservatives are regressives and often driven by extreme theocratic tendancies, ready to force their religious ideas and moralities on others and trample over freedom of speech as a result.The high levels of income inequality that the GOP has caused through our low taxes on the wealthy has also been detrimental to other businesses, by draining money out of the pockets of the middle class, and shrinking the middle class significantly. if we really wanted to live in a country that was healthy we would restore the millionaire tax bracket to what it was in the 50s and 60s and elect liberals to office that will respect our freedoms, are not religious whackjobs, who will eliminate ridiculous laws that conservatives try to pass that lead to censorship and try to force the government into deciding what is "indecent", the government has no right to decide such a thing and things which are indecent cannot be censored, but we have social conservatives in the GOP who are basically totalitarian theocrats who would like to destroy free speech and force their religious moralities on everyone. We dont need a bigoted, theocratic religious whackjob religious nutjobs banning harmless and consensual activities such as pornography and other harmless, indecent things.
There needs to be a internet bill of rights that would also ban any censorship, that would prohibit ISPs or government from storing any information on traffic that can be used to monitor individual users such as source and destination IPs and so on, would stop ISPs from discriminating against certain traffic and so on. The fear based tactic they so often used exploits anxieties, and obscure the fact that any action or policy is not justifiable to prevent crime, such as survellience, tracking and monitoring without warrant are unacceptable in a free society and these things cannot be justified in order to prevent crime. If we allow these activities we open the door as well to their abuse by corporations and governments, they are perfect tools for trying to keep track of people who have unpopular views and opinons, and use that information against them. The less right to privacy people have, the less safe they are.
Many large corporations , such as the major record labels, have interests opposite that of small businesses and common people. Their goal is to maintain and consolidate wealth and that means hoarding and consolidating wealthy by suppressing the wages of other workers and using their control over large parts of the money to basically consolidate wealthy. We need common, average people to have a lot of money in their pocket and to avoid having certain corporations dominating much of that, through suppression of wages, thus crowding out small businesses as well as impoversiing common workers. The policies that the wealthy elite hate the most, a high income and corporate tax on the wealthy, is exactly what the country needs to put more money back into average peoples pockets and to give workers more power such as through unions, all things that will give common people more spending power, money to buy things other than to shop at wal mart. The attacks on unions and the demands for more tax cuts for the rich are ultimately unhealthy, they allow a few corporations t
Dude, the days when slashdot was read attentively by developers and other IT decision-makers is long past (just don't tell that to InfoWorld, which still pays a premium to astroturf here).
This is a tech-and-gadget flavored Newser.com, with open-source stories replacing the celebrity bits ("Linux instead of Lohan!"). Wired Magazine was exclusive and tech-elite when it started as well, and now it's all "Green Energy" and Rolex ads.
The word "geek" has lost all meaning; one need only note all the slick sales-and-marketing suits now smugly referring to themselves as "movie geeks."
Language changes. Media evolves. And writers and media-owners gotta pay the bills somehow...
the beacon of hope, equality, liberty, women and kid saver, democracy imposer, so and so... reached this stage.
not sure what is in store in other countries now.
Competition over scarce resources isn't just the founding principle of capitalism, it is the founding principle of life.
If you want something, you have to compete against others who also want it. And if you get it, that means that someone else does not.
There are a few exceptions...like air....but political power is definitely *not* such an exception. Wealth is the same thing.
So of course those who have it are fighting to keep it, and of course they are striking the best balance they can between what seems most likely to work and what they are most likely to be able to get away with. They have every incentive to do this, just as you have every incentive to knock them down and take from them as much of their wealth and power as you can.
Sit and whine about how evil they are for wanting the same thing as you, or jump into the fight, it's your choice.
And here I was, thinking that maybe it's worth moving my two UK-based SaaS businesses to the US, since I am a US citizen (well, there's also the weather difference)..
One of the main reasons I opted for the ISP I'm using for my business is not the fact that they're cheaper (it's only $10/month difference), but the fact that SaskTel hosts their data center in Florida, and the one I'm using is hosted in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
I don't want my business anywhere near US regulation and control without oversight and intervention by Canadian authorities. The US has been proving to be insanely jackbootish about their approach to the internet for the past 2-5 years, and I simply do NOT want to take the chance of having them interfere with my business.
Or rather, I don't want US media companies interfering with my business. They don't do proper checks before issuing their takedown requests, and were I in the US, I'd be effectively subject to domain seizure and content takedowns without due process and the chance to defend myself. That is an UNACCEPTABLE BUSINESS RISK when it is so easy to avoid.
Worse, the US dollar is in such a sorry state that I will not be accepting payments in greenbacks. I want to be paid in a stable currency that I don't have to pay exchange rates on in order to spend -- namely Canadian dollars. For years I've had to pay extra to convert my Canadian currency to US dollars to pay for goods and services ordered out of the US. The shoe is on the other foot now.
Even if I work a contract in the US for a US company, I'll either be paid in Canadian dollars or charging a 5% premium for the hassle of converting US currency to Canadian dollars (it's a 2-3% bank fee as well, so 5% isn't as much as you might think.) Add in the fact that all foreign payments get held by the bank for 30 days, and the resulting lost opportunity cost of having my money tied up and inaccessible, and I find I really don't have much interest in business south of the border at all right now.
Besides, if I have to travel to service a customer, I may as well visit somewhere I've never been before, preferably China, Australia, New Zealand, or Germany. (I've just always wanted to see those countries some day. I've already spent about 12 years living and working in the US, so I've seen the US. I want to see someplace different next.)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
To the tech business owners I know the so-called "Buffet Rule" (kind of a second bite at the alternative minimum tax apple) is far more frightening than any specific takedown action.
Or other Scandinavian countries.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Is the USA screwing with any websites that host only original content?
Isn't Sweden that is prosecuting Assange on behalve of its American masters? Or went after the pirate bay which wasn't breaking its own local laws on behalve of its Amercan masters?
At least Americans can vote out their leaders, Swedes can only vote for which puppet is stuck on the hand.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Are the exorbitant prices charged for US software also an attempt at fostering business in America??? (Adobe CS5 is double the price in many places abroad and there are ridiculous mark up prices on steam games purchased outside of the states-originally mark up was thought to be due to the currency exchange-but found to be false once America's dollar went to s#it)
We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
I had a site shut down, when I get back on my feet, I'm going to take it to Canada... this is NOT as easy as moving the server!
As I plan my recovery, I'm learning that it isn't enough to just move your server over there. You've got to actually *be* Canadian if you don't want your site taken down. (sure, you could lie about it, make it appear to be from Canada or Panama or wherever, but if you're in business, this is hardly a viable option.. they'll find out you're really a US citizen) for me, this means finding a very trusted Canadian to "take over" for awhile, until I can collect enough material to prove myself worthy of Canadian citizenship.
From what I've studied, the problem is the lobbyist influences. Startups do NOT donate money to campaigns, most of them will never donate to campaigns because most start-ups fail. If you want to make it in the US, you have to have enough money to hire lobbyists that are more powerful than competitors lobbyists. It really is that simple.
For most of us, the plutocratic system of government is irrelevant, but if your small niche business threatens the established companies who are running the country, AND they notice you (or your industry), you can expect them to run you out.
Ultimately, we can look forward to these same lobbyists pushing OTHER countries around, much as the US already does for the oil lobby. It'll be interesting to hear them justify a war with Panama or Canada, it'd be nice if the citizens wised up to the game before then, but I'm not holding my breath.
Slashdot is enduring as the best technology oriented hive-mind on the whole Internet. Insights you get here are often rare and unparalleled. I bet lots of new devs and also industry veterans still around.
The U.S. isn't safe for ANY kind of business. The government we have now is so anti-business, a person would be a fool to start one. They will either shut you down, tax you to death, or put so many nit-picking requirements on you that you'll have to go under.
Destroy the US economy now and in the future, disarm us, but use our might to hand the entire Middle East to the Muslim fanatics. And he's carrying out his agenda swiftly.
USA is very dangerous to start ANY business, not just a web business. With all of the taxes, regulations, inflation caused by counterfeiting operation at the Fed and the government banks. The confiscation of private property that was clearly displayed in GM and Chrysler case and just a couple of months ago with MF Global - where cooperation between financial institution (JP Morgan) and government agencies allowed for customer funds to be stolen, in fact gold bars with serial numbers assigned to specific holders of account at MF Global (which is basically an insurance company for farmers - future trading is used to insure against uncertainty of future crop prices) went "MISSING" and nobody is being held accountable for it and apparently everybody is aware that JP Morgan and the feds have agreed on something, which is pretty damning - the bankruptcy court was instructed to run the bankruptcy as if MF Global was an 'investment' company, which makes their counter-parties to be first in line to receive collateral, while actually MF Global wasn't an investment company, it was an insurance company, and under those conditions it would have been the CLIENTS who would be first in line to get their money out.
But this is just an example why it is dangerous to deal in USA now, other things are of-course all of the regulations, all of the executive branch departments acting as if they are the Congress and as if they can pass laws, the fact that US courts are on the side of the government in all of this.
Again, it's not just about web businesses. Don't forget, as Steve Jobs told Obama - those jobs, they are not coming back.
You can't handle the truth.
Who hosts Wikileaks? It would seem to me they would be target #1 for the feds and so resistant to random (or malevolent) acts of bureaucracy. It's actually quite an endorsement.
Don't Bogart that joint, my friend.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Two Bitcoin exchanges have cited or hinted at regulatory pressure as part of their reasons for shutting down. ExchangeBitcoins (exchb) was rumored to have been shut down due to government pressure though that is not their official statement. Tradehill http://www.businessweek.com/technology/bitcoin-exchange-shuttered-nerds-rattled-02172012.html While the primary exchange has avoided troubles so far as it is based in Japan. Right now mtgox.com does 15 million a month in volume of which it takes 1%. I think the US will be scaring all kinds of businesses away that would have generated additional economic activity. I suggest that MTGOX start using a non .com domin name......
I am facing this "problem" of soon having to choose if I will locate my new company avoiding USA or not. Business will be 100% legal, but the US web-policies appear very unfrindly. Recently I've been thinking (most positively) about using only EU investors, EU-site, EU-domain but it may be hard to avoid all e.g. Visa / Paypal / Mastercard connections to USA. Maybe it's worth it maybe not. But for me the news topic is true, The US Government is Scaring Web Businesses Out of the US - or at least it's doing it's best in keeping me away.
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes [imdb.com]
âoeJohn Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, thatâ(TM)s power. â
âoeThe United States has itâ(TM)s own propaganda, but itâ(TM)s very effective because people donâ(TM)t realize that itâ(TM)s propaganda. And itâ(TM)s subtle, but itâ(TM)s actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but itâ(TM)s funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, itâ(TM)s funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesnâ(TM)t necessarily mean it really serves peopleâ(TM)s thinking â" it can stupify and make not very good things happen.â
â" Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio [imdb.com]
âoeWeâ(TM)ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.â â" William Casey, CIA Director
âoeItâ(TM)s only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because thatâ(TM)s what people do. They conspire. If you canâ(TM)t get the message, get the man.â â" Mel Gibson
[1967] Jim Garrison Interview âoeIn a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you canâ(TM)t spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You canâ(TM)t look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they wonâ(TM)t be there. We wonâ(TM)t build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. Weâ(TM)re not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isnâ(TM)t the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same. Iâ(TM)ve learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. Iâ(TM)ve always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Governmentâ(TM)s basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But Iâ(TM)ve come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, âoeFascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.â Iâ(TM)m afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.â
Here in Canada they want the no warrant thing too.
So what to do?
Do I put the servers at the ISP? Where some clueless script kiddie with a USB stick, a cop badge and a batmobile can come in unannounced, wreck the whole thing, then oooops, ssshhhhh, sneak the fuck out and tell no one. Me not knowing until the phone rings off the hook with client's lawyers spouting the most dreaded words "Contract Cancellation" and "Business Interruption"? If there is not just a hole in the racks where the servers used to be?
Or do I keep the servers in the house with the wife and kids and the dogs and the goldfish where some trigger happy kid with a cop badge and an mp5 can shoot them all?
What if I am out of town, doing something, like, I don't know, earning a living? Are they going to start harassing friends, familiy and ciients looking for me? Spreading fear and lies? Ruining lives and reputations?
How does one deal with this? What's the plan for zero downtime operations in a no knock, no warrant police state? What are the hardware and software requirements? What OS is best? Jesus, where's all the cash going to come from? How do I admin this from the secret prison that they don't have to tell anyone about?
Who's gonna pay my bills, alimony, taxes, rent when I am in prision, and the cashflow from the businesses stop because they broke them all?
Hey spooks. I'm gonna say it here, real plain, so you don't need to bother stealing and/or wreaking my servers and my businesses.
HARPER IS AN ASSHOLE.
That should be a lesson that US authorities can reach out and touch you no matter where you are. Granted, they may have been breaking some laws. But the emphasis here is on may. Sites have been shut down prior to a court verdict.
You want a system that features redundancy (multiple hosting sites, distributed between several jurisdictions) and untraceability (feed content through encrypted TOR pipes). Once some sites have been located and their owners identified (and inevitably some will) you'll need to have the ownership of those sites hidden behind some shell corporations. Likewise, you'll have to hide your income source within a different corporate structure. By all means, pay your taxes. But avoid the extravagant lifestyle and braggadocio of Dotcom. The ideal lifestyle to adopt would be that of fictional character Johnathan Higgins. Just a lowly caretaker of some other rich guy's* mansions and yachts. But make sure you pay the taxes on those as well.
*A fictional Saudi Prince would be a good choice. F*ck with him and the US risks losing its middle east ally. A Chinese businessman/Communist party operative would be better. F*ck with him and have all your loans called in.
Have gnu, will travel.
Which registrars take the position contractually that the domain is the property of the registrant and will not be taken down without a court order? Find a registrar that doesn't have "sole discretion" language like this, from Network Solutions: We may terminate this Agreement or any part of the Network Solutions services at any time in the event you breach any obligation hereunder, fail to respond within ten (10) calendar days to an inquiry from us concerning the accuracy or completeness of the information referred to in Section 4 of this Agreement, if we determine in our sole discretion that you have violated the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy ... or for any other reason in Network Solutions' sole discretion upon written
notice to you.
Other failing registrars with "sole discretion" terms include NameKing, Register.com, Name.com, DomainIt, GoDaddy, eNom, Backslap, PairNIC, Best Registrar, Havaname LLC, DomainName, Tucows, Melborne IT...
I'd far rather pay a predictable first world tax rate and not have my business constantly mired in software patent troll cases and other expensive 'IP' nonsense than pay low taxes and have a completely unpredictable and potentially business-destroying IP environment. But that's just me.
This is quite biased, I don't know why it is a 5...
If the wealthy and Wall Street can truly dominate the political process, why is Mitt Romney losing to Santorum? Why was Newt Gingrich able to temporarily make a good showing in spite of much of the elite hating him? (Newt has LOTS of enemies) What about Ron Paul and his good fund raising abilities? Would eliminating 3/4 the top 1%'s wealth prevent them from spending a billion dollars on a major election every four years?
Maybe the Republicans oppose Net Neutrality, because they think the government will screw it up. Think Sarbanes Oxley is beneficial? Think Fannie Mae was beneficial? Maybe CEOs make lots of money because boards of directors are stupid, and shareholders don't know how to run their property. The Koch brothers might agree.
Slashdot used to be a lot better back around the dotcom days. Now there's way too much tinfoil conspiracy shit and suddenly all haters switched to hating Apple instead of Microsoft which leads me to believe most of them just hated Microsoft because they were successful not because their tech sucked (which it did) since Apple comes out with well designed unix based products and these guys whine about it. I don't wanna hear that shit. Also "Free Software" jumped the shark with GPL3 so the open source fanboi shit is a lot less compelling too. Oh and also these days there seem to be less "science minded" posters since every climate change article has a bunch of anti-science nuts talking about how melting ice caps and evolution aren't happening...
Then again you were probably trolling in which case, IHBT.
Namecoin is based on bitcoin. http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page
Seem to me that the most likely outcome of a startup in the US, is that their will sued out of existance the minute they start to make money or take a bite of one of the big guys cake
The reason Switzerland is a good place for hosting is because the Swiss government has some idea of what due process is all about. Remember when Wikileaks moved to wikileaks.ch? No place is perfect, but the government here screws up a lot less than in many other countries...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Just you and an ever-increasing number of other entrepreneurs.
True, this place seems to have picked up a lot of "cargo cult" types that love technology but have an absolute loathing for the science and mathmatics involved. That and the obvious paid PR guys (cut and paste long first post with a PR agenda etc) has almost driven me away.
If you are not a citizen or resident of the country that shuts down the service that you are a customer of then you are of little or no consequece to the legal system there. If you are so far away that you can't easily arrange a face to face meeting with a lawyer that can do something in the justice system where the service is hosted it's going to be difficult, time consuming and expensive to get anything done at all and even then you may still be ignored as a non-citizen.
So it's not just a US only problem.
I looked into hosting for low volume FTP traffic some years ago and the best option at the time was a virtual machine from Linode in Texas instead of in my own country. Then I heard that some of the first data likely to be hosted there was old Russian seismic data collected in Afganistan (bought by a US company and then processed in Australia), and then some datacentre raids and confiscations hit the news. It's a slim chance that some wanker acting out of imagined patriotism would notice a bunch of suspicious filenames and the stuff would be confiscated and given to a competitor of the US based client and there would be little I could do about it other than lose a client and spend shitloads on international legal hassles. It just was not worth a small saving for the potential legal hassles even if it was a remote chance.
All this SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, censorship, surveillance and service provider liability stuff is making a lot of businesses make sure they have nothing to do with the US, and avoiding US by all means.
A lot of our customers most important choosing criterias is that we are not US based, and servers are not in US.
We also dropped US servers almost completely, only 2 remain to be removed very soon.
US servers were also a lot more expensive to operate due to all the regulation, and paperwork related in pleasing MAFIAA.
We are just a tiny sample, but i hear from a lot of fellow enterpreneurs avoiding US as well.
Does anyone know why the fuck I keep writing my username at the end of my posts, even though it's clearly stated above them?
Am I ignorant or just plain retarded? No reason for doing this, but I just keep doing it.
My common sense went *poof* and there's nothing I can do about it.
TIA.
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BMO
Today the Web. Tomorrow the Cloud. This problem has lots of room to grow.
Oh hell yes they are. I can tell you that I know of at least one software app company that is NOT going to sell into the US or other markets where there's a credible risk of being sued over software or "process" patents. I think a US based company electing to not sell into the US market is about as basic a definition of "discouraging innovation " and "scaring companies away" as you can think of.
Bitcoin rewards early adopters greatly if there is a large pool of later adopters buying a thing of no apparent value. In other cases that thing is called a "ponzi" or sometimes a pyramid scheme. In each scam there is some feature to make the overvalued item attractive in some way to the targets.
Bitcoin is a textbook ponzi scheme aimed at defrauding people that are interested in fast computers and encryption.
Brilliant. Exactly. Waiter.. whatever this man is drinking!