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.
Not as a marketing posture — as a legal reality. The statute simply does not reach our infrastructure.
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.
「DMCA 是美国联邦法律的产物。其通知与下架程序在美国法院框架内运作,不是国际条约,不约束外国服务提供商。」——国际知识产权学术界对 §512 的普遍解读;参见康奈尔大学法律信息研究所注释。
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="/zh/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).
| 司法管辖区 | 等效法律 | 下架触发条件 | 留存义务 | Cryptoservers 的状态 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saint Kitts & Nevis | Copyright Act, Cap 18.08; Electronic Transactions Act, Cap 4.21 | 法院命令 | ISP/主机商无强制要求 | 具有约束力(公司注册地) |
| Iceland (IS) | Act on Electronic Commerce no. 30/2002; IMMI framework | 法院命令 | 有限;被欧盟裁决推翻 | 具有约束力(数据中心) |
| Netherlands (NL) | EU eCommerce Directive Art 14; DSA Art 6 (Reg 2022/2065) | 法院命令或实际知悉非法行为 | 无强制要求 | 具有约束力(数据中心) |
| Romania (RO) | Law no. 365/2002 (eCommerce); DSA | 法院命令 | 2014 年裁决后无强制要求 | 具有约束力(数据中心) |
| Switzerland (CH) | ZGB Art 28a; URG (Copyright Act); FADP | 法院命令 | 对主机商无要求(BÜPF 豁免) | 具有约束力(数据中心) |
| United States (US) | 17 USC §512 (DMCA) | 私人通知(无需法院) | 无强制要求 | 不具约束力(无美国存在) |
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.
刑法无论如何均适用。 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.
DMCA 司法管辖区的用户仍可能直接收到针对自身的通知。 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.
Intermediary liability is a moving target. 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.
「忽略 DMCA」≠「防弹主机」。 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).
Eight questions buyers and journalists ask us most about the DMCA-ignored property and what it means in practice.
一手资料:
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