I want to self host a suite of services and make them public.

What kind of services? Well, all kinds. Matrix, lemmy, bookwyrm, and I may think of others in the future.

The problem? I don’t even know where to begin from a legal stand point. Not only that, I am a barely legal immigrant (vulnerable to deportation) from a country that is not very liked by the gov. I am afraid to put myself in a vulnerable position and get more trouble than the typical US citizen.

Is there a reasonable way to be able to self host public services without legal trouble? Is there a resource I can follow for best practices to avoid issues?

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzB
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    9 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    IP Internet Protocol
    VPN Virtual Private Network
    VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

    3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.

    [Thread #617 for this sub, first seen 20th Mar 2024, 02:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
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    9 months ago

    Truth be told, I haven’t really considered legality when hosting anything. Most of my stuff is self created with open source software for personal use. I’m going to guess and say all that is good.

    The only legally questionable stuff I can think of is sharing public access to licensed software or somesort of copyrighted media downloader. Stay clear of those and you should be good.

    There are also legal things such as TOR and, yes sometimes VPN, that can raise eyebrows. While they aren’t illegal, many sites and services block them. I ran a TOR node for a few days, and within a week it seemed like 1/4 of the internet blacklisted me. Wasn’t really fun. Had to change my MAC address and snag a new IP address from my ISP.

    I don’t really open my servers to non-family and friends. I don’t want to spend the time being a babysitter for 20 sites. If that’s a concern, perhaps rethink who you give access to.

    Trust your gut. You kinda know if you’re walking a line.

    Good luck!

  • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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    9 months ago

    Uh… don’t? I mean, why rush it? Host it privately. What compels you to host publicly facing such high risks?

  • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
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    9 months ago

    Truth be told, I haven’t really considered legality when hosting anything. Most of my stuff is self created with open source software for personal use. I’m going to guess and say all that is good.

    The only legally questionable stuff I can think of is sharing public access to licensed software or somesort of copyrighted media downloader. Stay clear of those and you should be good.

    There are also legal things such as TOR and, yes sometimes VPN, that can raise eyebrows. While they aren’t illegal, many sites and services block them. I ran a TOR node for a few days, and within a week it seemed like 1/4 of the internet blacklisted me. Wasn’t really fun. Had to change my MAC address and snag a new IP address from my ISP.

    I don’t really open my servers to non-family and friends. I don’t want to spend the time being a babysitter for 20 sites. If that’s a concern, perhaps rethink who you give access to.

    Trust your gut. You kinda know if you’re walking a line.

    Good luck!

  • oleorun@real.lemmy.fan
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    9 months ago

    You can host overseas and use a proxy for hosting. I mostly don’t worry about it though because I don’t do anything illegal.

    • matcha_addict@lemy.lolOP
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      9 months ago

      I don’t plan on doing anything illegal myself, but apparently that’s not enough.

      Where overseas can I be free of legal issues? Can you elaborate on what you mean by using a proxy for hosting?

      • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        If you’re not doing anything illegal/copyright violating, then you can host whatever you want. Self-hosting isn’t illegal, in fact it’s what nearly every business does in some fashion. It’s just risky from an intrusion perspective

        But if you’re going to host something, it should be via a secure channel - a VPN, Reverse Proxy from a VPS, Mesh Network (perhaps with a web-hosted entry point), etc.

    • matcha_addict@lemy.lolOP
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      9 months ago

      I don’t plan on doing anything illegal myself, but apparently that’s not enough.

      Where overseas can I be free of legal issues? Can you elaborate on what you mean by using a proxy for hosting?

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    9 months ago

    Assuming your in the US legally you shouldn’t have an issue. If you are illegal and are not suppost to be in the US self hosting services isn’t going to change anything.

    Anyway I would not host any services at home as that’s a major security and privacy risk. If you are wanting to access your own personal stuff use a VPN or route traffic though a VPS. If you want to host a public server you can do so though a VPS where the risk to you is much lower. It also will have the benefit of having high availability by design.

  • Luna@lemmy.catgirl.biz
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    9 months ago

    This is also one of the biggest reasons for me why i stopped hosting things for strangers. My country is insanely backwards with when it comes to internet law. For example Mastodon (and others) caches media and text-contents of posts from remote instances on your own server, you are now distributing - you don’t even need to directly follow someone who posts media (attachments) or even just links to a website thats hosts unlawful stuff and you’re on the hook and considered just as responsible as the original poster. Insanity.