A precise definition. The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 USC §512) is a United States federal statute. It has no extraterritorial force. Hosts whose corporate entity and physical infrastructure sit outside US jurisdiction are not bound by it — DMCA take-down notices that arrive in their inbox have the same legal weight as a strongly-worded email. Cryptoservers is incorporated in Saint Kitts and Nevis, with datacenters in Iceland, the Netherlands, Romania and Switzerland; we do not honour DMCA notices because they have no operative effect over our infrastructure. That does not mean copyright is unenforceable — it means takedown is routed through local court process, not a private letter.
No como postura de marketing, sino como realidad legal. El estatuto simplemente no alcanza a nuestra infraestructura.
The DMCA is codified at 17 USC §512 as part of US copyright law. Section 512(c), the safe-harbour provision, conditions a US online-service-provider's liability shield on a notice-and-takedown procedure. The statutory text addresses "service providers" as defined in §512(k), and the enforcement mechanism — the §512(j) injunctive-relief framework — sits inside the United States federal courts.
None of those mechanisms have force outside the United States. A foreign court will not enforce a US copyright statute as a free-standing cause of action; bilateral instruments like the Berne Convention oblige member states to <em>protect copyright</em>, not to import US procedural rules. As a Nevisian company with infrastructure in Iceland, the Netherlands, Romania and Switzerland, we sit outside the reach of §512 entirely.
Practically: every week the abuse mailbox receives DMCA notices. They are auto-classified, the customer is informed (so they can comment if they wish), and the content remains up. We do not act on them because we have no statutory obligation to and because doing so on a private letter would amount to private censorship without due process. That is not a service we offer.
"The DMCA is a creature of US federal law. Its notice-and-takedown procedure operates within the framework of US courts. It is not an international treaty and it does not bind foreign service providers." — common reading of §512 in international IP scholarship; see e.g. Cornell LII annotations.
Cryptoservers is not "above the law" and we have never claimed to be. There are five categories of legal process we are bound by, all narrower than the DMCA.
A binding order of the kind above gets a documented response. Our <a href="/es/canary/">warrant canary</a> publishes the count of orders honoured per quarter (and signals if a US, Five-Eyes or other foreign-jurisdiction order has ever been complied with — by going un-signed if so).
Every country has some intermediary-liability framework for copyright. They differ in whether a private notice triggers takedown, or whether a court order is required. This table lays out the five jurisdictions touching our infrastructure (plus the US for comparison).
| Jurisdicción | Ley equivalente | Disparador de retirada | Obligación de conservación | Estado para Cryptoservers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saint Kitts & Nevis | Copyright Act, Cap 18.08; Electronic Transactions Act, Cap 4.21 | Orden judicial | Ninguna para ISP/hosts | Vinculante (sede social) |
| Iceland (IS) | Act on Electronic Commerce no. 30/2002; IMMI framework | Orden judicial | Limitada; anulada por sentencia de la UE | Vinculante (datacenter) |
| Netherlands (NL) | EU eCommerce Directive Art 14; DSA Art 6 (Reg 2022/2065) | Orden judicial o conocimiento efectivo de la ilegalidad | Ninguna obligatoria | Vinculante (datacenter) |
| Romania (RO) | Law no. 365/2002 (eCommerce); DSA | Orden judicial | Ninguna desde la sentencia de 2014 | Vinculante (datacenter) |
| Switzerland (CH) | ZGB Art 28a; URG (Copyright Act); FADP | Orden judicial | Ninguna para hosts (excluido por BÜPF) | Vinculante (datacenter) |
| United States (US) | 17 USC §512 (DMCA) | Notificación privada (sin tribunal requerido) | Ninguna obligatoria | No vinculante (sin presencia en EE. UU.) |
The pattern is consistent: every jurisdiction we operate in requires a court order or its equivalent ("actual knowledge" under the eCommerce Directive — interpreted by Dutch and German case law as effectively requiring a court adjudication for ambiguous claims). The United States is the outlier with its private-notice trigger; we are the outlier in not being subject to it.
The honest section. Confusing "DMCA-ignored" with "lawless" gets people in trouble — they assume we are a haven for things we are emphatically not.
La ley penal se aplica igualmente. Saint Kitts and Nevis, Iceland, the Netherlands, Romania and Switzerland all criminalise the same core categories: child sexual abuse material, credible threats, fraud, money-laundering, terrorism financing. None of that becomes legal because the DMCA does not reach us. If your business is in those categories, no offshore host should sell you service — including us.
Los usuarios en jurisdicciones DMCA siguen recibiendo notificaciones dirigidas a ellos mismos. A US-resident user accessing our VPS may see DMCA notices arrive at their home ISP, naming the user's home IP for the access traffic. The notice does not reach Cryptoservers, but it does reach the user. EU users may face Article 14 routing letters from their own ISPs. Operating an ID-tied home connection while running a service that draws DMCA fire is its own threat model, separate from where the VPS lives.
La responsabilidad de los intermediarios es un objetivo en movimiento. The EU Digital Services Act (effective 2024 for VLOPs, 2024 for general intermediaries) tightened notice-and-action rules, increased transparency-reporting obligations, and gave national regulators more enforcement teeth. Romania's DNSC and the Dutch ACM now have direct supervisory authority over hosts in their jurisdictions. We comply with DSA reporting; that compliance does not change our practical position on private DMCA letters but it does add procedural overhead we now meet.
"Ignorar el DMCA" ≠ "a prueba de balas". Bulletproof hosting is a black-market term for hosts who knowingly accept obvious criminal customers. We are emphatically not bulletproof, and conflating the terms damages the legitimate use case (journalism, activism, security research, archival, censorship-circumvention).
Las ocho preguntas que más nos hacen compradores y periodistas sobre la propiedad de "DMCA ignorado" y lo que significa en la práctica.
Fuentes primarias:
17 USC §512 — DMCA (Cornell Legal Information Institute)
EU eCommerce Directive 2000/31/EC, Article 14
Digital Services Act — Regulation (EU) 2022/2065
Romania Constitutional Court Decision no. 440/2014 (data retention)
Iceland — IMMI (Icelandic Modern Media Initiative)
Wikipedia — Digital Millennium Copyright Act
EFF — DMCA issue archive
Cinco jurisdicciones offshore, sin influencia del DMCA, pago solo en cripto, sin KYC. Elige el país en el momento del despliegue.
