What does offshore mean?
Offshore simply means abroad. In web-hosting, offshore nowadays heavily relates to anything non-US and more towards Netherlands, Sweden, Russia where US bodies like DMCA have little to no jurisdiction.
Why go offshore?
There are 2 major reasons for choosing offshore hosting.
1. Protecting your content/site from being taken down.
This is the case when your site's content is considered illegal in one country. Popular examples are Warez and Porn sites. Warez is banned in US and many other countries. Such countries have specific laws which prevent illegal and copyright content from being hosted on their servers. If your content is hosted on their servers then they can easily produce a court order to have the datacenter delete the hosted data. Porn is also banned in several Islamic countries.
Therefore people move to countries where Freedom of Speech is given more importance and laws pertaining to copyright content are lenient to non-existent.
2. Geo-location
This simply means hosting your website in the(or to the nearest) country from where your major customers/visitors are from.
Consider this, you are selling products in India but your site is hosted in US. Due to this it takes longer time for your pages to be downloaded in India as the data needs to travel a very long distance. On the other hand hosting in India itself results in quick surfing. The difference in time period between both the options in almost negligible, however increases page load period are unattractive.
This is the major driving force for new datacenters opening up in developing countries. Countries like India and China have huge populations and therefore MNCs are hosting their websites on servers based in such countries so that they can reach their target customers easily and quickly. This is why cloud hosting is getting popular since in cloud hosting your data is hosted across several servers across the world resulting in improve page load time and staying 24/7 online.
What all activities and content can offshore hosting protect?
Different countries have different laws for Internet. Depending on it people host warez(copyrighted content), porn, etc. Some datacenters also allow activities like DDOSing, hacking, phishing.
NOTE: No countries laws can protect you from hosting Child Pornography. Child Pornography can result in serious consequences, so stay away from it! Also it would be highly unethical to indulge in such a heinous business. Drugs are another exa
Choosing the right tld
TLD, also known as top level domains(for eg. .com, .org, .in, .eu, .ru, .nl) are also governed by countries. Popular domain extensions like .com, .net, .org are governed by US. So using US TLDs for hosting content against US laws can result in your domain being seized. This is how it looks once your domain is seized: http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/5219/hnqt.png (taken from Libertyreserve.com).
Once again the safe domains here are:
Netherlands- .nl
Russia- .ru
Choosing the right company for domains and web hosting
Even though you may obtain a .ru domain and Swedish hosting, it's important to run a check on the provider of these companies. Several US companies are registrars of .ru tld domains and Swedish hosting, but being based in US, they are still governed by US laws and therefore choosing them is not a good option. To know where the company is based, the best way to check the "About Us" page located in the bottom of the site or you can simply contact them and ask.
Using a WHOIS Privacy guard for your domain
To protect your personal information being made public, you can use a WHOIS privacy guard to hide your personal information displayed when a WHOIS search is performed on a site. Such search can reveal not just your name but also your address and contact number used during the domain registration. This is important if you want to be unreachable to authorities like DMCA.
NOTE: Do not fake registration details! If any issue occurs, you might be asked to product Address and photo ID proofs.
Effective Terms and Conditions
Just going offshore doesn't mean you've protected your site. You also need to maintain a Terms of Service page which separates you from your members.
For eg., on a warez forum, you should mention in your terms and conditions "yoursite.com is note responsible for the data/content posted by a member on yoursite.com". So even if you are taken to court by a lets say Movie publisher, your Terms of Service will save you tons of money from a copyright infringement case.
These are some some of the sites you can use:
prq.se - domain registration and web hosting, expensive but effective in protecting your data can your identity
For more hosting providers, check: http://www.wjunction.com/#hosting
internet.bs - For domain registrations
If I have missed out anything or have any queries, feel free to post below
Offshore simply means abroad. In web-hosting, offshore nowadays heavily relates to anything non-US and more towards Netherlands, Sweden, Russia where US bodies like DMCA have little to no jurisdiction.
Why go offshore?
There are 2 major reasons for choosing offshore hosting.
1. Protecting your content/site from being taken down.
This is the case when your site's content is considered illegal in one country. Popular examples are Warez and Porn sites. Warez is banned in US and many other countries. Such countries have specific laws which prevent illegal and copyright content from being hosted on their servers. If your content is hosted on their servers then they can easily produce a court order to have the datacenter delete the hosted data. Porn is also banned in several Islamic countries.
Therefore people move to countries where Freedom of Speech is given more importance and laws pertaining to copyright content are lenient to non-existent.
2. Geo-location
This simply means hosting your website in the(or to the nearest) country from where your major customers/visitors are from.
Consider this, you are selling products in India but your site is hosted in US. Due to this it takes longer time for your pages to be downloaded in India as the data needs to travel a very long distance. On the other hand hosting in India itself results in quick surfing. The difference in time period between both the options in almost negligible, however increases page load period are unattractive.
This is the major driving force for new datacenters opening up in developing countries. Countries like India and China have huge populations and therefore MNCs are hosting their websites on servers based in such countries so that they can reach their target customers easily and quickly. This is why cloud hosting is getting popular since in cloud hosting your data is hosted across several servers across the world resulting in improve page load time and staying 24/7 online.
What all activities and content can offshore hosting protect?
Different countries have different laws for Internet. Depending on it people host warez(copyrighted content), porn, etc. Some datacenters also allow activities like DDOSing, hacking, phishing.
NOTE: No countries laws can protect you from hosting Child Pornography. Child Pornography can result in serious consequences, so stay away from it! Also it would be highly unethical to indulge in such a heinous business. Drugs are another exa
Choosing the right tld
TLD, also known as top level domains(for eg. .com, .org, .in, .eu, .ru, .nl) are also governed by countries. Popular domain extensions like .com, .net, .org are governed by US. So using US TLDs for hosting content against US laws can result in your domain being seized. This is how it looks once your domain is seized: http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/5219/hnqt.png (taken from Libertyreserve.com).
Once again the safe domains here are:
Netherlands- .nl
Russia- .ru
Choosing the right company for domains and web hosting
Even though you may obtain a .ru domain and Swedish hosting, it's important to run a check on the provider of these companies. Several US companies are registrars of .ru tld domains and Swedish hosting, but being based in US, they are still governed by US laws and therefore choosing them is not a good option. To know where the company is based, the best way to check the "About Us" page located in the bottom of the site or you can simply contact them and ask.
Using a WHOIS Privacy guard for your domain
To protect your personal information being made public, you can use a WHOIS privacy guard to hide your personal information displayed when a WHOIS search is performed on a site. Such search can reveal not just your name but also your address and contact number used during the domain registration. This is important if you want to be unreachable to authorities like DMCA.
NOTE: Do not fake registration details! If any issue occurs, you might be asked to product Address and photo ID proofs.
Effective Terms and Conditions
Just going offshore doesn't mean you've protected your site. You also need to maintain a Terms of Service page which separates you from your members.
For eg., on a warez forum, you should mention in your terms and conditions "yoursite.com is note responsible for the data/content posted by a member on yoursite.com". So even if you are taken to court by a lets say Movie publisher, your Terms of Service will save you tons of money from a copyright infringement case.
These are some some of the sites you can use:
prq.se - domain registration and web hosting, expensive but effective in protecting your data can your identity
For more hosting providers, check: http://www.wjunction.com/#hosting
internet.bs - For domain registrations
If I have missed out anything or have any queries, feel free to post below