It has come to my mind, what may happen if I broke the law of a country by doing something on the web that's OK to do in my land. (I'm from EU) I remember the piratebay case, where the Sweden owners were proudly displaying removal request mails&faxes, some of them from US antipiracy organizations. In addition to displaying these notices, they also added answers so rude even 10 yo. kids would be ashamed. I'm sure most of you know what happened then. After lots of pressure from US govs, Sweden police assaulted the server room and took all servers. Later the case got cleared out and owners were not thrown in jail, however this still bugs me - what can be the possible consequences of violating foreign countries laws? Eg.. Copyright infringements, adult materials accessible by teens, being rude and insulting, spamming, hacking etc.
In general, if it looks legally risky, I wouldn't bother attempting it to find out As for trademarks, keep in mind that there's such a thing as an international trademark...they're very expensive, but the big companies all have them, so you can never be safe from that.
There is no simple answer to this question. The issues are what country you live in, what countries laws you are breaking and what you are doing. Countries that have strong ties to the country you are breaking the law in are more likely to respond to requests like this. European counries are more likely to respond to the US than some countries in South-East Asia. It works in reverse as well. The particular laws in play can make a difference as well. While the activity may be legal in your country, there could be a treaty in place that would effectively make the activity illegal on the web. The extent with which you violate the law can make a difference as well. One thing you can do is to prevent access or services to people from countries where the activity you are doing is illegal. For example, there is (or was) a mail order pot website in Canada. He was not shut down by other countries. While anybody could view his website, your order had to go to a valid Canadian address. By the same token you could make pages inaccessible to IPs from countries where the activity was illegal. I agree with markn26, though. It's probably just best to forget it.
Great, thanks for your replies. I wasn't actually planning to do spooky stuff, just was confused about the thing I see daily on web.
I believe there is/was an agreement between many countries to work together to catch cyber criminals... but there were some problems with it and to a certain extent it failed. However, businesses on the web must follow the laws of a foreign country if they wish to do business there. Yahoo, google, mirosoft have all aided the Chinese government in filtering illegal websites. Yahoo had to remove Nazi paraphernalia on its auction websites for French citizens and revealed IP addresses of Chinese citizens who used yahoo e-mail addresses to publish in the U.S. the atrocities going on in China to the Chinese government. In Austrial where defemation laws are strict, the Dow Jones was sued and lost for an internet article published in the U.S. where it was legal. The list could go on and on. How can these companies follow so many conflicting laws without sacrificing rights in home country (like freedom of speech) and not breaking laws in another (like China where freedom of speech is against the law)? They have to filter web vistors based on geography. While it is easy to get around filters, most countries just demand a responsible attempt be to eliminate liablity. Most people think the Internet is anarchy -- that is false, the Internet is regulated.