IT - Filesharing - Cloud - VPN | Company jurisdication

[aurigae]

Iam in the process to find the right jurisdication for a company that will engage in the niche fo filesharing (similar to mega.co.nz) and VPN (similar to hidemyass.com StrongVPN.com).


Beside that the company will also engage in web Hosting solutions (similar to hostgator.com).


I guess the difficult part is the VPN connections and filesharing business.


Users will be able to use my servers ip to access the internet. I have no idea yet how to protect myself from illegal activities of my users.


Same problem with the filesharing business. The site will function in pretty much the same way mega.co.nz does. Users have encrypted folders where i have no access to, only the user knows his passphrase to access te stored files.


Right now im looking for a hint on the best suited jurisdications and probably some legal advice.


Thks for any support!

 

[berin]

i also have this question


any help?


Thanks

 

[berin]

seem to major torrents and vpn in sc, cy

 

[wakh]

If you are planning to do filesharing and VPN, then don't only worry about the jurisdiction of your company. Consider the laws and regulations of the country of your residence as well. As you will be subject to both of them.


In which country do you reside?

 

[berin]

If you are planning to do filesharing and VPN, then don't only worry about the jurisdiction of your company. Consider the laws and regulations of the country of your residence as well. As you will be subject to both of them.
In which country do you reside?

seychelles


what are you think?

 

[aurigae]

If you are planning to do filesharing and VPN, then don't only worry about the jurisdiction of your company. Consider the laws and regulations of the country of your residence as well. As you will be subject to both of them.
In which country do you reside?

I reside in germany, However, i dont get why its important where i reside as for example a limited as far as i know is a independent legal person.


Thanks for your time, indeed.

 

[globetrotter]

Technical as well as jurisdictional issues


Firstly the aprpoach Kim Schmitz (now Dotcom) has taken with Mega makes good sense. By using strong crypto he has plausible deniability for the content uploaded to his service. I'd look at that for the filestorage/sharing aspects. For the VPN anonymiser a similar approach would work, better if you have the crypto key information generated dynamically by an external engine for which you have no access etc. You should also consider seedboxes in your offer, they're becoming big now. A competent technical architect would be able to design the back-end system to be scalable and portable, with geolocation and geoindependence for flexibility and adaptability to different and changing legal situations. Basically you want a scalable private cloud.


The legal ownership structure is more something for this site and it seems to me that locations such as Seychelles and BVI offer company ownership without public disclosure of the individuals who are officers or shareholders. Maximum obfuscation would be wise in such a high profile business...


Good luck!

 

[aurigae]

By using strong crypto he has plausible deniability for the content uploaded to his service

Yes indeed, this was our main thought. We have the abilites and technical knowledge to take this approach to the next level.


However, but i as admin have the full control over the server, iam really not sure how bullet proof this is in legal practice.


The other part is, to hosting location, with my company located in seichelles, can i host copyrighted content in lets say france or most probably i get trouble with french law in this case??


If i get that right i not only need the company setup in the right jurisdication but also the hosting, if thats the case the budget planning is gone like the wind and bandwidth becomes a major problem when my customers are sitting in europe.


Indeed the main problem right now is the tight budget and in that relation the lack of legal advice.


Concerning the anon VPN i have given up to provide such a service with a public company.