What laws do I need to follow if I am running a webhosting company where my servers are located in the USA but I live in the UK? Is there a place that I can read about all the laws and such?
In terms of your business, I wouldn't do anything to contravene US law. At the same time, you must remember that US law has no bearing on you personally being from the UK, provided you have not submitted to the jurisdiction of any US law. In short, try to keep on the right side of both.
You need to keep on the right side of both but you also need to define in your T&Cs which law governs the contract between you and your clients. Which market are you intending to target? If you are looking at the UK market I would suggest against USA servers, we would never place one of our UK clients sites on a US server due to the SEO implications
IANAL and without knowing too much about your operation, in general you would have to make sure your claims of service are not fraudulent, have a statement in your T&C (Terms and Conditions) stating that it's against your policy for customers to traffic in banned items (certain types of porn, govt. secrets, copyrighted materials, anything on the ITAR list. Oh and least we forget that American citizens and financial institutions are banned from any type of online gambling or processing payments for Americans for online gambling purposes. Just because your servers may be hosted in the UK doesn't mean the long-arm of Uncle Sam can't shut you down. Ref to Title VIII: Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement, Sec. 803.
People outwith the US aren't bound by US law unless they agree to be so bound. The US has no jurisdiction over someone on the internet in the UK, regardless of whether or not they think they do. Unless you submit contractually to be governed by US law, 'the long arm of Uncle Sam' is irrelevant. The US doesn't officially rule the world.
For your servers, you must follow US laws, IE with any data stored etc. You will also have to hand over web logs etc, or any data from your servers if the US authority ask for it.
Exactly. You might not have to face criminal or civil penalties if you run afoul of US law, but they can do pretty much anything allowed under US law to your servers. One example would be online gambling. It's pretty much outlawed in the United States, and if someone were to try to run a casino on your hosting service (which would be stupid anyway), the US would shut it down and you'd have little recourse. In fact, those operating such things as online casinos with US customers are violating US criminal law, and could be arrested if they ever visited the United States. The CEO of SportingBet knows this all too well.
Yes, the US can govern what is done on servers within its country, but we are essentially missing the point here altogether. The original poster asked which laws he should follow running a hosting company in the US, to which I responded a bit of both for safety's sake. As far as his servers are concerned, if he doesn't work within US law he might get them shut down, whereas he may want to focus on a jurisdiction that is relevant to him in dealing with his customers, i.e. the UK. The comment was made about servers hosted in the UK, and the US government having control over them. This is not correct. If servers are in the UK, what claim does the US have over what is put on them and what isn't? US law doesn't apply worldwide, and it is of no more relevance than the law of the UK, India, China, France - by that reckoning, authorities in Pakistan or Germany or Japan could force compliance from anyone running a website, which I doubt sits nicely with this pro-US attitude.
To clarify, the US does not have jurisdiction over the servers if they are hosted in a foreign country. But the US gov. can ask the British govt. to investigate the matter. If the British govt. deems that any local, international laws or treaties have been broken, then they could take action.
I agree with your clarification - if international laws have been broken, we're talking about a completely different issue altogether. In that case, you could certainly end up facing the consequences of any unlawful actions.