I was wondering about any liability issues of adult hosting.

I wildly assume that the claims of ISP's/webhosts of not being responsible for content is legal...

But how to the Law Enforcement types feel about it ?

If (in some really odd circumstance) someone decides to upload illegal porn, would servers get grabbed for evidence or would the law be happy with mirrored copies of the drives for evidence ?

(So that material could be deleted, etc and accounts closed or what have you and not affect the rest of the operations of the webhosting business.)



Thanks

This is UK Legislation on E-Commerce pertaining to web-hosting:

Hosting

6.7 Regulation 19 provides that where an information society service is provided which consists of the storage of information provided by a recipient of the service (e.g. the provision of server space for a website or newsgroup), the service provider (if he otherwise would) is not liable for damages or for any other pecuniary remedy or for any criminal sanction as a result of that storage provided that:

(a) the service provider—

(i) does not have actual knowledge of unlawful activity or information and, where a claim for damages is made, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which it would have been apparent to the service provider that the activity or information was unlawful; or

(ii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove or to disable access to the information; and

(b) the recipient of the service was not acting under the authority or the control of the service provider.

6.8 Again, the Regulations do not specify how “actual knowledge” or “awareness” is obtained by a service provider. It is expected that the onus will be on the party alleging that liability has arisen to demonstrate that a service provider had actual knowledge or awareness but did not act upon it appropriately.

Not exactly "illegal" content as such, but adult content in Australia can receive a takedown notice since the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act No 90 of 1999 (Cth).

http://www.comslaw.org.au/research/Internet/19990825_BSAOnline.html

When it first came out, certain forums were full of posts by competing adult webmasters comparing their compaints forms against each other, all trying to get each other taken down.

Cheers

Gary

Fazel, would you mind telling me where you got that snippet? I wouldn't mind seeing the rest of the document.

Thanks :)