========================
 Public service hosting
========================

I see various public services being hosted by phloggers, and for a
while thinking of hosting some as well (or simply making private ones
I maintain less private), yet the primary obstacle seems to be the
legal aspects of it. Well, doubts about it being worth the effort and
expected service abuse also contribute.

For instance, the laws here seem to oblige online services to set
backdoors if any cryptography is used, store all the transmitted
information for up to half a year (and share with LEA on request),
censor information when requested, and so on. It's coupled with things
such as a strict blasphemy law, and even restriction of swearing
should be enforced by larger online services, apparently. It doesn't
seem to be strictly enforced, though sometimes "enforcement" goes
beyond the laws. Simply ignoring the law seems rather risky, while
following it -- unethical, as well as pretty complicated and insecure,
if possible at all. It's also easy to get screwed by local LEA or
other government services even if you're following the laws and not
doing much at all.

So, it should be in some other jurisdiction. Assuming that there are
nice ones, I'm not sure how to set a service in a way that it would be
a subject only to that jurisdiction: apparently one can't simply set a
company in another country and work there, at least not without
substantial financial investments. Maybe it's fine if the service gets
registered on a nice jurisdiction's resident, and maintained by
volunteers from elsewhere, but that's just a hopeful guess. And I
don't think simply hosting a service there would work, though not
sure. Apparently laws of user locations (i.e., where a service is
available from) are relevant at least to further availability of a
service from those locations (which can at least block access to it if
they don't like it, though there also are some international
agreements to cooperate: "5/9/14 eyes", copyright-related ones,
probably more).

Then there are user agreements, and some other non-technical things to
sort out; those do not seem as hard to resolve, but should be
resolved, too.

I tried to look up some guides on setting services like that, but
haven't found much. Maybe one should find a lawyer specializing on it
and ask them.


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:Date: 2019-01-10
