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The town is no longer friendly for business

swombat.com

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Re: The town is no longer friendly for business

#31

Post by rmc »

nextparadigms wrote: post #10
shareme wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you better re-read what is happening in Australia, what you describe better fits their situation than the US one.

It could be, but US has much more influence on the world, and it used to be the beacon of freedom. So all this is happening in the country that was supposed to be the most free in the world. Whether it's more fascist or less fascist than other countries, that's besides the point. They are already fascist enough , and the trend is going up, not down. And the fact that this is happening, while it's still the most power…

it used to be the beacon of freedom

No, the US narrative is that it thinks the rest of the world looks on it as a beacon of freedom. A lot of countries do not think "do what the USA does" is a good idea. (Just look at labour law or socialism for one example)

Re: The town is no longer friendly for business

#32

Post by rmc »

a_a_r_o_n wrote: post #5

"My servers are in Germany." The author's granttree is at .co.uk, but woobius is at .com. My understanding is that the US claims domain over anything serving .com and .org, and that first world countries (do we say that anymore?) will roll over for the US on domain issues.

(do we say that anymore?)

No, we say "developed countries"

Re: The town is no longer friendly for business

#33

Post by ht_th »

powertower wrote: post #28
ht_th wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be also a form of social segregation you're experiencing. For example, people charged with terrorism acts nowadays are found mainly in extremist religious circles and extremist right wing anti-government circles. (In the 1960s/1970s it would be extremist left-youth and extremist black-emancipation circles) The background of people in prison is often a weak economical-social position coupled with bad childhoo…

Where's the evidence that what happened to JotForms was a malicious act designed to shut them down? From what has been made public, it was most likely a blunder. Mistakes and oversights happen. > I often wonder about the agenda of these journalists/news outlets Headlines sell. > That does not mean that these reports aren't exaggerated. Out of the 300 million people living here in the US, half on the edge, I'd say if…

Similar to yours :-) I don't have any family, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, or even connections to those people in jail or branded as terrorist. At the same time I do know that there are a lot of people in jail.

Similarly, I don't know any poor people. Or any people with serious mental problems. Or people living off of welfare. Or religious people. Yet there are a lot of those. Does that mean that all the reports on these groups and their problems are exaggerated?

Re: The town is no longer friendly for business

#34

Post by jacquesm »

dav-id wrote: post #27
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you a product exporter? Your counterpart in the US would be the importer. As a bit of a counterweight, yes, the US is 'sue happy' but being abroad typically takes a good part of the wind out of the 'I'll see you in court' attitude. It takes a lot more from the litigating party to set up a lawsuit with an overseas party, on top of that the courts in the UK are much less likely to award idiotically high damages.…

We ship direct to customers in a way similar to how you might buy from ebay an item from a seller overseas and they will send the item. We want to make the process as easy for our customers as possible so we through our couriers will take care of all customs clearance and duties if they apply. Our biggest advantage of not setting up in the US apart from the legal aspect is being able to avoid a lot of the taxes. When…

Have a read:

http://www.wassom.com/personal-jurisdiction-can-my-ar-app-ge...

I think that contains some information that bears on your situation.

My short form advice to you would be: don't worry about lawsuits that you have not been confronted with. It's fine to look ahead but this is something that most likely will never come to pass and you have no control over whether and when it will. Such lawsuits are typically reserved for companies that are wealthy enough to defend against them, a proverb in my country says that 'you can't pluck feathers from a frog' so if you're not a very plump target with assets in the US then you have little to worry about.

Concentrate on your product quality, market it with realistic expectations and you'll likely be just fine.

Re: The town is no longer friendly for business

#35

Post by jacquesm »

powertower wrote: post #17

I live in the US. I don't know a single person that's in prison. I don't know a single person that's been charged as a terrorist. I don't know a single person whose business has been adversely affected by the government (such as the above). Seriously! But they keep telling me that it's happening all around me. They tell me it's a fascist police state.

How many people do you know? Do they make up a reasonable cross-section of the US population?

Re: The town is no longer friendly for business

#36

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
powertower wrote: post #17

I live in the US. I don't know a single person that's in prison. I don't know a single person that's been charged as a terrorist. I don't know a single person whose business has been adversely affected by the government (such as the above). Seriously! But they keep telling me that it's happening all around me. They tell me it's a fascist police state.

How many people do you know? Do they make up a reasonable cross-section of the US population?

[deleted]

Re: The town is no longer friendly for business

#37

Post by jacquesm »

J3L2404 wrote: post #25
wavephorm wrote: post #4

The United States is very quickly becoming an ever more scary looking country. From the outside, it appears to be converting itself into a full-on fascist regime, hostile to insiders and outsiders alike. The walls are going up, the spy-cams and wiretapping are springing up. The SOPA/PIPA powered nation-wide firewall is being constructed. Local authorities are increasingly becoming subservient to a centralized federal…

> full-on fascist regime. This why you can't judge the world by watching TV. It is really sad to see normally intelligent people go batshit crazy and start spewing nonsense. Europeans should know better than to throw around the word fascist. I am so sick of whining Europeans that I would almost support stalling the U.S. economy just to drive the E.U. into a ditch.

> It is really sad to see normally intelligent people go batshit crazy and start spewing nonsense.

> I am so sick of whining Europeans that I would almost support stalling the U.S. economy just to drive the E.U. into a ditch.

Indeed. Pot, meet kettle.

Re: The town is no longer friendly for business

#38

Post by swombat »

a_a_r_o_n wrote: post #5

"My servers are in Germany." The author's granttree is at .co.uk, but woobius is at .com. My understanding is that the US claims domain over anything serving .com and .org, and that first world countries (do we say that anymore?) will roll over for the US on domain issues.

I'm not managing the woobius.com domain anymore at this point. swombat.com itself is a dot-com, for sure, and so it is vulnerable to ICE-like shutdown, but not to the level that a GoDaddy domain would be.

Re: The town is no longer friendly for business

#39

Post by gregpilling »

dav-id wrote: post #27
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you a product exporter? Your counterpart in the US would be the importer. As a bit of a counterweight, yes, the US is 'sue happy' but being abroad typically takes a good part of the wind out of the 'I'll see you in court' attitude. It takes a lot more from the litigating party to set up a lawsuit with an overseas party, on top of that the courts in the UK are much less likely to award idiotically high damages.…

We ship direct to customers in a way similar to how you might buy from ebay an item from a seller overseas and they will send the item. We want to make the process as easy for our customers as possible so we through our couriers will take care of all customs clearance and duties if they apply. Our biggest advantage of not setting up in the US apart from the legal aspect is being able to avoid a lot of the taxes. When…

Someone in the US would sue you in their state, which if you lost they could potentially seize your assets in that state. If you are UK based, this would entitle them to nothing upon winning. You have literally nothing to lose.

I have been manufacturing a product (not software) since 2004 and have had the pleasure of verbal threats of lawsuits a few times. After 100,000 products sold I am still waiting to see my first letter from a lawyer telling me a suit has been filed.

While the US is very litigious, the risks are not there for you. You do not have the same legal exposure as McDonalds or Wal-mart so I would not be overly concerned about it. Sell to the US as much as you want and don't worry about lawsuits. The only time you would need US insurance would be to sell to large distributors who will demand proof of insurance. For my product that used to cost $20,000 per year for insurance, now it is down to $6000 a year because of the lack of lawsuits.

Re: The town is no longer friendly for business

#40

Post by swombat »

skrebbel wrote: post #16
a_a_r_o_n wrote: post #5

"My servers are in Germany." The author's granttree is at .co.uk, but woobius is at .com. My understanding is that the US claims domain over anything serving .com and .org, and that first world countries (do we say that anymore?) will roll over for the US on domain issues.

The .com doesn't make random US agencies able to look what's on the servers. Worst case scenario, they could block the domain. Quite a difference, I'd say. This is my reason for never deploying an app on anything that runs on e.g. AWS (thus incl anything on Heroku). It's like personally, directly, with no notification and no warranty, selling out your users to the NSA.

You can get AWS on european servers, and iirc that falls under digital safe harbour laws, so the US govt can't get access to it.
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