.ag Antigua is a domain to keep an eye on. They used to be THE place for online gambling. Until they were shut down by the US. However they have recently applied for and been given permission from the WTO to suspend the US' intellectual property rights. Meaning that they could potentially be able to sell pirated media without having to pay royalties or any other taxes.
They have not implemented this yet, but are instead using the permission as a bargaining chip to make the US backdown over the Online Gambling issue which has been ongoing since the late 90's
In the meantime there is one system that you could implement to make you as close to untouchable as possible.
Firstly, i agree with
firefop, running your own server is the best way to start. It means that you don't go through any companies who will offer you up to governments as standard practice if they think what you are doing is a bit dodgy.
Secondly, get your hands on a nice wallet of Bitcoins and use them to register your domain, under a pseudonym. Domain Resellers and Registrars don't have the resources to check if those details are authentic, all they do is verify that you own your email address. To add another layer of anonymity to the formula go for a registrar who offers a trustee service, meaning that they will put
their own details on the registration form, the same info which pops up in a Whois query. The difference this makes, is that instead of your bogus info being public and easy identified as false by anyone who investigates, the info will be of your registrar. This info will check out and be more trusted than your own.
BEWARE, the registrars who offer this service will most likely require a signed contract (written or e-sign) to protect themselves from your online activities.
Finally, if you complete the first two steps there is a third step which could be used. It's a bit of a nutty idea, but here goes. Don't publish any links to your site. Instead send marketing emails and post the link address, but don't actually hyperlink it to your site (
www.yoursite.co rather then
www.yoursite.com). Its a bit like the first two rules of Fight Club! Also host the site on a subdirectory (
www.yoursite.com/gambling/ rather than
www.yoursite.com). Your traditional homepage can be just a single image with the subdirectory address depicted (not text, not hyperlinked). All of this stops google or other webcrawlers from crawling your site and flagging your purpose. Crawlers are only able to read your root, which will allow them to read your default.html/index.php or alternative. these files will refer them to your subdirectories and their pages. If you dont link to the subpages a spider won't be able to crawl your site. PROBLEM - terrible for marketing purposes, its almost anti-SEO.
But all of this is like building a house of cards. In theory it works, but all it takes is someone to flag your IP or for you to make a silly mistake and it could cost you big. Its all very well for frivolous activities, but it will definitely not stand up against an anti-terrorism or online criminal investigation.
