Well, it's not enough not to violate Swedish law and avoid extradition if you have assets in the U.S. - they can sue you here, get a default judgment against you (assuming you don't show up), and then try to go after anything owned in the U.S. If you're using Adsense or something based in the U.S. as your revenue source, they can go after the debts Google owes you. I'm not sure this is a likely scenario - you'd need to have a couple of hundred thousand for this to be worth it to anyone, but it's something to think about.
Wasn't the Kazaa guy the same as the founders of Skype? Or was it just some of the same investors? I don't know much about it but I thought the press a couple years back was that Kazaa was launching a new business Skype. Now I think they could say screw the music industry, who needs it. Just demolish the telecom industry. IMHO eBay will make out happy with Skype, the application and network effects are staggering. It's kind of like why did Apple pull out of PDA and refocus on Music, it's a much bigger application. Also the network effects are there. Voice is not like e-mail in that there is a free or open routing application for making free VOIP calls. It is greatly aided by having a company providing the directory and application, so Skype will get bigger and bigger with eBay's handling of it, it will become the de facto telecom company of this century. I guess I got off on a tangent. Eric
UK limited company on shares about £80 but you need to file accounts once a year and file company details once a year. File details £15. Draw accounts and file via accountant £700-800. If you have cash no problem as no bank will loan the ltd anything untill you guarantee as director or have a decent trading record. License the core idea / application / content / anything to the LTD and when it goes pear shaped walk away and license it to the next one. Expat
@mightyb my first legal threat was very serious, big company saying I was using their name (Same name, just one letter different; completely different area of business). I was shocked, frightened, couldnt sleep etc. My business partner at that time, much more experienced (as I was a novice), he just said: "ah, that's nice. let them sue us, great free publicity." and that was the end of the story - never heard from the 'big guys' again...
I use an email account on one of my domains which is simply forward with copy to sender never hear anything further. Expat
I have my website hosted in the US but I live in Germany. The responsible contacts for all my websites are in Austria and that's the address I get legal stuff send to. I got several threats already that I will be sued if I don't remove specific content. According to the attorneys sending me these letters I am bound to the court that is mentioned in the terms of service of the company I have stolen material of, if any is mentioned. I usually don't take this threats very serious since I only use material within the DMCA fair user policy and also no company never made a threat true. I only remove images that someone posted on my site which was copied from a member section e.g. wireimages. Getty Images is also a very sues loving company. I don't know why they are against showing their small watermarked images though?! When I display them on my website I advertise their product, I do not damage their business in any way because no one can take those pictures from my website and use them commercially and I don't use them commercially myself as well. Also it's clear who owns the copyright when there is a watermark. Still they absolutely don't tolerate their pictures being taken to other sites. Well, so I can't tell really what would happen if someone from the US really sues you, but if the damage is big enough distance will be no problem for sure!
I'm actually interested in this - ie getting sued in the UK by someone in the US. Someone has actually threatened a lawsuit unless we removed some certain content (which references their website) from our site. The content was sourced via an article bank and was used within the TOS of that article bank and there are numerous similar articles in numerous article banks. We are still awaiting an answer as to whether they posted the content which appears in the article banks. If they did then it will certainly be tempting to tell them to shove their lawsuit where the sun doesn't shine.
Interesting post... I'm actually on the verge of being sued by an American, if I don't give into his greed and extortion, but I am currently studying in the UK and will be for a year. I am however an American being hosted by an American company and I'd hate for the company (who are great people) to get legally involved. Would shut down my site completely if it meant everyone saves money and doesn't got to jail. My UK/Canadian friends are astonished at how sue-happy Americans are. Reason #1,254 why I don't want to live there anymore.
I'm on the other side. I'm an American who has had his web site content copied and placed on a Canadian server. The offending Canadians are like Take off, eh?
so what can you do? is it just netiquette being ignored or is your content protected? is there an issue due to the two countries?
Or just throw a few baseball bats in the back of your car and grab some buddies for a roadtrip beatdown. Of course, an ominous C&D letter usually does the trick for people within your country or an extradition country.
You are NEVER too small to set up a corporation. For 100 pounds ($200US) you can set up a US corporation and have liability coverage in case there is something that does go wrong (someone sues you etc...). I would talk to an attorney (at the least an accountant) about this. For a small company an LLC or S-Corp. will be the way to go for you Zelo (NOT a lawyer!)