Does Server Location Matter ?

[Brad Mitchell]

At the risk of opening myself up to scrutiny, I think it's still prudent to comment.. These are simply my opinions and not meant as a statement of fact - let's leave that to the legal professionals.

1) If you selling videos through the mail or memberships online and are a US citizen with or without a US corporation I believe it is safe to say that the US government is most interested in simply following the money if they have a problem with what you are selling. Foreign hosting and foreign corporations might obfuscate the situation some but at the end of the day if they disagree with your business practices I would make the assumption that you are at the same risk.

2) As far as I know, every predominately "adult host" that has a european presence has not gone to the effort of actually doing a proper incorporation in the EU and not completely seperating it from their US corporation. In other words, same support numbers, same merchant accounts, same US company just basically buying resold servers/bandwidth/IP space from a european host and reselling it as their own with their layered technical support on top of it. In case you weren't listening, pretty much everyone is a reseller and nobody owns their european hardware/network and also doesn't have their own staff over there. Someone please feel free to teach me otherwise, but if the Department of Homeland Security sends a proper warrant to ABC adult hosting's corporate office in Atlanta for a server in Amsterdam then they're required by US law to respond and provide whatever is asked for. IE, you are not protected as a customer and neither is your host with operations in Amsterdam.

3) This prosecution wasn't specific to the State of Florida, it was a Federal case. Based on my understanding, this truly could have happened in any of the Federal districts. Pretty much everyone is transacting business across all 50 state borders so if you have US residency regardless of whether or not you have US hosting or a foreign corporation it would be my guess that your level of risk is ultimately the same in all scenarios.

As many of you know we have our datacenter and one of our two offices in Miami, Florida. Everyone needs to make the decisions that are best for their business. I am of the belief that regardless of where you host inside of the US if you are a US citizen you have the same basic risk. It would come to me as no surprise if some parties out there say hosting in Florida is a big no-no... we're a provider to which everyone loses customers but virtually none gain, ever.

Best Wishes,

Brad