I am in the retail industry selling home furnishings and although the US are more friendly (than the UK) with their duty free rate of $200 the legal system is making me consider whether I can even do business there from the UK.

It is too big of a risk to take selling physical products to the US when one legal case can take me out of business.

If anyone can recommend me a UK based insurer who will even quote on a product importer to the US I would be delighted to know.

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.

As a first stop, before talking to insurers I think you should talk to a UK based lawyer that has experience defending a UK party from a US party suing them to get a good idea of the lay of the land and the likely hood of such a lawsuit.

As soon as you incorporate in the US your chances of being sued will go up enormously, and so will the cost of your defense. In the UK it will be manageable, in the US it will likely put you out of business. As one friend who runs a consumer electronics company said "The US is a very large market and we can not ignore it. But the cost of doing business there in terms of legal hassle is something that we simply pass on to the consumers in the US, which is our way of dealing with it.".

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 I spoke to the insurers here they told me that should someone in the US sue us it would be in a US court and not a UK court where as you mention the damages are potentially extortionately high!

As we are a very young company our exposure to the US is low but it is something that I cant ignore as a risk. Intuitively I would agree that the likelihood of being sued is greatly reduced not being registered in the US but it is a market I would like to grow into.

I think seeking advice from a lawyer with experience with US defense is a good advice and I will do this, thanks.

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.

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.

The US version of this proverb is "you can't squeeze blood from a turnip".

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.

A decent comparison can be found here: http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/us-d.html#privacy

No, we say "developed countries"

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.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patri...

Besides, it's all pointless anyway; any mainstream business (a category including any mainstream cloud provider) wants to be on the good side of the US government, so they'll bend over backwards at the first occasion.

If I had a time machine, after I killed Hitler, I'd go back and fix DNS so it didn't map to geography or institutional type. There is just no reason for it.

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.

- has AIDS or is HIV+

- is being restricted from enjoying a freedom due to religious dogma

- who has been a rape victim

- who has been bullied in school for being gay

- who has been discriminated against because of their race

- who has been abused as a child

However, I have no doubt whatsoever that there are many, many people out there (even in my city), who have suffered in one of these ways. And I'm grateful that there are those who support causes even when they don't know anyone personally effected.

*Edit - typo

That does not mean that these reports aren't exaggerated -- I often wonder about the agenda of these journalists/news outlets--, but it does neither mean you're anecdotal experience is un-biased in measuring the situation.

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?

Which is exactly why we should be concerned about the removal of longstanding checks and balances designed to catch such mistakes before they do damage.

Judges aren't perfect either, but requiring the government to have to convince a judge of its case before shutting down someone's business is still a very important piece of due process.

To put it another way, it's certainly true that it is still possible to live a happy and basically free life in the US, and many other countries. However, it's also true that unjust laws has seriously negative effects that make many people less happy and free.

These aren't contradictory. It's also possible to be basically healthy but have an illness, basically financially stable but have unexpected expenses, for a team to have good fundamental teamwork but still have some coordination problems, etc., etc.

Despite an overall good state of affairs there can be bad things that are important to consider, especially when the trajectory seems to be that things are getting worse.

But, understand that, even if the USA was a fascist state, you wouldn't notice a thing. Check out this excerpt from They Thought They Were Free. This should be required reading for every citizen of a democracy.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

That said, I think we impoverish our understanding when we label everything we don't like as fascist. There's a vast array of horrible ways to run a country. In the 20th century alone we've had all sorts of variations, from Hitler to Honecker to Pol Pot. If you ask me, Americans aren't headed towards fascism, but something more like a banana republic.

It actually costs more to send a person to prison for one year than tuition at Princeton!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/chart-on...

I just think you don't get out much.

I don't know a single person who works in construction.

I don't know a single poet, or truck driver.

I don't know any chemists, or anyone who has worked in a nuclear power plant.

In fact, I've never even met a dog groomer.

Seriously!

But they keep telling me that it's happening all around me. They tell me that there are people that exist that I haven't met yet, and may never meet.

Similarly, stating that JotForm is a one in many occurrence fails to account for how that type of regulatory uncertainty poisons the well at the margin (when one is deciding whether to avoid US jurisdiction when setting up web infrastructure).

The right seems to generally want to support a new military-industrial complex focused more on immigration and monitoring the population and less on building aircraft carriers. The left seems fine with this, although they'd never openly admit it, aside from a bunch of pundits complaining, as long as they keep and energize their voter base with their issues.

The left seems to generally want to support a class warfare us-versus-the-corporations narrative which seeks to make more and more laws about all companies, 10 employees or a 1000. The right seems fine with this, although they'd never openly admit it, aside from a bunch of pundits complaining, as long as they keep and energize their voter base with their issues.

The political debate itself seems to be in a spot where the trick is not to get holding the bag. Do only as much as it takes for voters not to blame you. It's much more crisis-driven than it ever has been.

These trends don't look well for conducting international business. I don't think there's any disaster coming, but I think the complex social and political systems we've created will actually become less and less stable the more we try to over-manage them.

Right now my money is on "friendly for business" but the situation is slowly and inexorably changing for the worse. So if I were a foreigner looking do do a startup, I'd probably be in the states -- and probably would not plan on staying there. (insert long discussion about qualifiers that might change that plan, such as requiring a large, trained workforce or special infrastructure issues.)

EDIT: This "instability in complex systems" I brought up is exactly illustrated in the JotForms case. The law over-allocates power to an agency, registrars bend over backward to comply with whatever the agency wants (lest they get on the shit list too.), then some pencil-pusher kills several man-years of work. Not out of malice or evilness -- just by simply not being aware of the implications of her actions. The most frustrating thing is that there are no nazis or evil political parties required here. For the most part it's just good, smart, clever, and responsible people all acting as best they can. That's the real tragedy. It's not some kind of comic book, good-guy-versus-bad-guy situation. It's a bad system created by a bad dynamic, and it looks to get even more bad as that dynamic keeps reinforcing itself.

    So if I were a foreigner looking do do a startup, 
    I'd probably be in the states

However, if you look at the current US congressional seats, you will see only those two organizations. Correct me if I am wrong, but that seems fair to say that despite whatever efforts other political parties are making, they are largely irrelevant with respect to effective policy being made.

I recently moved from Austin, TX, to SF. Austin is a better place to live and work, in terms of business friendliness and cost, but is a significantly worse place to start a startup, due to worse investment climate, and lower critical mass of developers, customers and support group familiar with the startup culture.

Even though SF is at the leading edge of the the trends the author describes, it's still a better place to do a startup. I expect that will remain true for a while, even as things get worse.

Also, who else is looking forward to the war with Iran? I hear it's going to be in HD this time.

While I agree with your general sentiment, I want to add that Ron Paul is not the only such candidate for President in the US. If one expands their worldview to include "3rd Party" candidates, there are a few guys pursuing, for example, the Libertarian Party nomination, who hold views very similar to Ron Paul. Gary Johnson and Thomas Hill come to mind.

Of course it's easy to convince oneself that "3rd party" candidates don't matter and to exclude them from the conversation, but that just feeds into a self-fulfilling prophecy, IMO.

You mean like England, the land of ubiquitous CCTV?

Have a look at what's happening in Syria to see what a real dictatorship is like.

Discussing US politics "as adults" means being willing to accept and confront difficult truths... such as the fact that our system is drifting precariously close to what can be best described as "fascist." Placing our hands over our eyes, sticking our fingers in our ears, and pretending that we don't see and hear what is actually happening is to abdicate our responsibility to behave as adults.

Only by those ignorant of what fascism was actually like, and lacking the knowledge and/or imagination to label "bad government" with more appropriate labels.

No one ever talked about denying that there are problems in the US, but coming up with nonsensical, hyperbolic, historically inappropriate labels for them is not a means to direct the debate in a useful direction, either.

Falangist regimes usually have grandiose rhetoric, but unlike fascist states their main enemy is their own breathtaking mediocrity.

--http://www.jamesrmaclean.com/archives/archive_fascism_falang...

Simon Johnson, formerly of the IMF, argues the USA has problems similar to an emerging market in crisis, because the government is unable or unwilling to get tough on its elites, particularly finance.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quie...

However, we've never seen a state like this that has the wealth, power, and technology of the USA. Americans are inventive people and I have no doubt we will be adding another -ist word to our vocabulary after all of this is done.

  An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of
  government and social organization.
  (in general use) Extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or 
  intolerant views or practice.

  A government, esp. an authoritarian one.
  A system or planned way of doing things, esp. one imposed from above.

It's possible that you only used the words because they were correct, and do not share the emotional connection to them that most of your readers will have. If that is true, you should note the common effect of that phrase, and avoid it in the future during rational conversation.

He didn't make that claim. He made a specific claim. Rather than debate that claim, you're attacking the word he used. Have you got a better word? As far as I know, the term "Fascist" is the most clinically correct term for that type of system. If someone were to use the less correct, but more emotionally charged term "Nazi", then your line of attack would have some merit.

Ironically, you've made rational discussion impossible because you're using your emotional reaction as an argument against the use of the most accurate term.

I believe this is a tactic. You don't want to admit that this is happening, so you wish to deny anyone the possibility of pointing it out, by insisting that the most appropriate term is "irrational".

The irony, of course, is that this attitude on a mass scale is what allowed the Nazis in germany to obtain so much power. Germans are not genetically fascist, they're just like everyone else. However, like everyone else, they had a very hard time believing that their government could be doing evil, and so they lived in denial. Even after the war, many germans found it difficult to accept that the holocaust had happened.

The idea that fascism, which has happened historically on more than one occasion, is impossible, is perpetuated for ideological reasons. A cynical person might say that those perpetuating the ideology do so because they know their ideology is at its root fascist. (In that case, you would be the victim, not the person I'm accusing.)

If you've got a better term for a society where the economy is privately owned but under absolute control of the government, and the necessary authoritarianism that goes with it, please feel free to propose it.

But your attempt to banish the word created to describe such societies simply because you don't like the implications makes rational conversation impossible.

For instance, rather than discuss the trends we see in the USA, we're dealing with your insistence that we shouldn't use the correct word!

"Fascist" is not the correct word for what's happening. It's a loaded and extreme word. Sure, you can quote an one-sentence online dictionary and use the vagueness of that definition to convince yourself that it is correct. Or you can use an equally simplistic definition like "privately owned but under absolute control of the gov't" and again, claim accuracy. No scholar of political science would ever use a one-line definition for something as culturally and politically significt as fascism.

Even Wikipedia, hardly a controversial source, wouldn't: "Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology.[1][2] Fascists seek rejuvenation of their nation based on commitment to an organic national community where its individuals are united together as one people in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood through a totalitarian single-party state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation through discipline, indoctrination, physical education, and eugenics."

The discussion is about an important issue: the increasing control of the US gov't and regulatory agencies over the free agency of US citizens. Jumping in and saying "fascist regime" is not furthering rational conversation.

Also, calling somebody on injecting the emotional baggage of that hyperbole is not making "rational conversation impossible".

In another paragraph I was asked if use of euphemism by media was a big part of the problem at hand. I'd say no, it's the opposite: use of extreme polarizing language is a big part of the problem at hand.

Calling the US fascist as hyperbole for emotional impact is fine. But it sounds like a lot of people believe the US is actually fascist. My grandparents fled across the Austro-Swiss border from a fascist regime. The US isn't fascist.

I think articles like this really need to be read by Americans more often:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/04/20114261271...

That's not to say that things are wonderful in the US, but it's just not the same thing, and to make that kind of claim puts you in the same intellectual bucket in my mind as the folks who call Obama a communist.

For instance, the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, also known as the Nazis, were a pro-union, pro-socialism, pro-farmer, party. It seems that the accusation of "right wing" comes from using the term as a synonym for "authoritarian".

The dictionary.com definition is better:

fas·cism   [fash-iz-uhm] noun 1.( sometimes initial capital letter ) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism. 2.( sometimes initial capital letter ) the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism. 3.( initial capital letter ) a fascist movement, especially the one established by Mussolini in Italy 1922–43.

Note the elements: A. regimenting all industry, commerce, etc. B. complete power C. forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism.

(I think the inclusion of "nationalism and often racism" is an editorial lapse here. Mussolini wasn't racist the way the Nazis were, and the role the jews played for the Nazis was an emotional one used to manipulate the country, not one intrinsic to the economic system of fascism.)

A. We have this to a great degree. For every industry there's some government agency that regulates it, and those regulations seem to be unlimited in their potential scope. They may not be completely regimented at this point, but I'm not aware of the supreme court striking down the theoretical power to do so, even when this "Regulation" includes completely shutting down the industry (say marijuana).

B. We've seen a sharp move towards complete power in the US in the past 20 years, accelerating under Bush and Obama. Many laws are passed giving the president more and more dictatorial power, and both presidents have exercised powers they don't have under the law and gotten away with it.

C. I argue that we've seen this with the regulation of the media, preventing anti-government views from getting into the mainstream media, with the "free speech zones" eliminating the idea of free speech by default, and with the censorship of websites.

This shutting down of websites being the initial action that brought us to this discussion, its worth noting that it is a key element of fascism.

While its true the websites being shut down now are not anti-government ones, this is always how they do it. They find some reviled group like "terrorists" or "drug kingpins" (the same role the "jews" played in germany) and then go after them. Nobody's going to defend pedophiles, right? How much internet regulation has been passed with the excuse that its to protect children from pedophiles.

And eventually it becomes fully regulated such that the perspectives are completely censored like they are on the nightly news.

Writing this from Weimar, Germany: Oh no, certainly not. First thing the Nazis did was shut down the unions, also the communist party.

It is not, Mussolini was member of the Italian communist party but decided he wanted to create their own party, also socialist but nationalist.

This way it was totally independent from the socialist International(soviet Russia controlled) because he did not wanted to become a satellite state.

Racism was applied as Mussolini wanted to recover the glory days of the Roman Empire, the Italians as a superior race that "dominates the world".

http://www.google.ca/search?q=define+fascism&ie=utf-8...

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.

> 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.

Someone needs to start 'Occupy Reality'.

You effectively claim that the US does not need the EU and that you could afford to drive the EU 'into a ditch' out of spite, when in fact the economies are now so interlinked that if the one suffers the other suffers right along with it. The current crisis is a nice example of that.

Effectively it is a single giant economy with lots of subtle and not well understood dependencies, wrecking one on purpose will likely wreck the other one as well.

Besides that, you are painting all Europeans with the same brush and that is just as stupid as those that like to paint all of the US with one brush.

America is not 'the evil empire' (and neither is Europe), but on both sides of the Atlantic there is plenty of stuff going on that does not have the interests of the general public at heart. I don't mind those that expose those things, and I don't mind people trying to avoid making past mistakes again. They're braver than me in many respects.

We're moving into uncharted territory with respect to the amount of impact surveillance technology and anti-terrorism measures have on the lives of ordinary citizens. It remains to be seen if the net result of that is beneficial or not (I'm skeptical and I think that it will be a net negative). The United States seems to me to be the party pushing most aggressively to achieve this with the EU following along and sometimes trying to outdo its counterparts.

What bugs me is that there is no - or very little - accountability on this front and the extent to which commercial interests and political interests are entwined. It may take a lot of work to undo the damage that we're doing to ourselves and our societies. To polarize that into a US vs Europe debate is silly at best and 'batshit crazy' at worst. Please don't add fuel to that particular fire.

>you are painting all Europeans with the same brush and that is just as stupid as those that like to paint all of the US with one brush.

Well I did qualify it with 'whining'. Particularly the ones whose sense of entitlement has become so bloated.

My 'E.U. in a ditch' was too much, I have no beef with Europe, just calling out bullshit.

  But these fascist claims go unanswered here too often and
  I shouldn't have to dispute it point by point.

And nothing seems to make that happen faster than nationalism/patriotism.

Also do you have a link to the pg article?

If it were we wouldn't be having this conversation. But likewise, I don't think it's the greatest country on earth either (nor can I think of any way such a concept would be meaningful really). To me, it is simply a first world county; it has its good points and its bad points. There are a lot of scary things happening in the western world right now and many of them are spearheaded by the US.

>Also do you have a link to the pg article?

Sure. http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

1) For admitting, if reluctantly, that America is not fascist.

2) The link

I did not claim we were the greatest country, whatever that means, but I can't fathom the 'America is the worst thing since AIDS' attitude on HN. In the next breath they complain its hard to get here.

Or a better way to come to think about it is to ask yourself how many civil liberties have been gained compared to how many have been lost over the past 10 years. And do you see this trend continuing?

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)

Australia has the sanest political climate of any developed country I've lived in, in large part thanks to compulsory and preferential (ranked) voting. Sure there's things like the manufactured boogeyman of "boat people", the lingering spectre of racism, and increasingly vocal tea-party-like factions, but not nearly to the same extent as in the US, UK, or even Canada.

Both parties have been known to support the ability to declare war without parliament (USA/UK need to ask). It's controversial to be in the parties and support parliamentary requirement to go to war.

There's many secret copyright enforcement meetings and rumours are abound that they are discussing ways to use the piracy phenomenon as a form of economic bogeyman to spy on small businesses for the big businesses. Not only that, but there's implications that the government likes the ability to spy and restrict opposition groups. Even The Pirate Bay colourfully said that copyright lobby is so powerful that ISPs are forced to attend 'optional meetings to discuss ways of reducing copyright infringement'.

Did you know that police can now issue $1320 on-the-spot fines and confiscate all electronic equipment deemed involved in piracy? It's per infringement, so 100 pictures can easily become a $132k fine.

This is simply not true. There are two ISPs: Telstra and Optus, who voluntarily block websites from a list provided by the government. However, I don't know anyone who actually uses those ISPs, and they're more expensive to boot. The other major ISPs, such as iiNet and Internode, have no intention of implementing the filter, and in fact actively and successfully fight government interference in court. They're also cheaper, and in my experience provide superior customer service.

If the government decides to impose restrictions on NBN access, the latter group of ISPs are highly likely to fight it in court, and are quite likely to win.

And furthermore, given the fragile position the Labor party is currently in, it has shelved its plans for mandatory filtering, and is unlikely to reintroduce them, as it alienates their voter base, who are increasingly driven toward the Green Party, which is now in a position of significant influence and vocally opposes Internet censorship.

> Both parties have been known to support the ability to declare war without parliament

While Australia doesn't require parliamentary approval to go to war, the countries that do, the US in particular, don't seem to pay that rule much heed, so I'm not sure how much would change if such a rule was on the books.

> There's many secret copyright enforcement meetings and rumours

They can meet in secret as much as they want, but fortunately, they cannot pass laws in secret. Until a bill is introduced, such meetings are of no concern, nor are they in any way unique to Australia.

> Did you know that police can now issue $1320 on-the-spot fines and confiscate all electronic equipment deemed involved in piracy?

No I did not, and could not find any sources to corroborate that, nor examples of such fines actually being issued. Can you provide some links to that effect?

They may be expensive in some aspects, but they have a duopoly over cable among other competitive advantages. Even gamers/buyers like it due to lower ping in some cases.

iiNet and Internode are becoming one ISP, so they're two brands soon. iiNet seems to offer policing users with copyright infringement notices as a compromise due to relentless lobbyists. Again, I believe these compromises are a result of political tactics of Door in Face technique [1] and Overton window technique [2].

Labor party does not care if there's many surveys, polls, rallies against it. They're still considering the mandatory filter. I have similar concerns about the Liberal party wanting an Internet filter since they publicly stated that Labor's Internet Filter is not effective enough. Fortunately, they are not accepting an Internet Filter for now.

> While Australia doesn't require parliamentary approval to go to war, the countries that do, the US in particular, don't seem to pay that rule much heed, so I'm not sure how much would change if such a rule was on the books.

Democrats and Republicans jointly voted for the Iraq War. I'm not sure why you say they're avoiding that. Labor party was vocal in their opposition to Iraq war. If they were actually trying to gain votes, then well done. Seems like a cheap tactic that would be absolved with the parliamentary requirement.

> They can meet in secret as much as they want, but fortunately, they cannot pass laws in secret. Until a bill is introduced, such meetings are of no concern, nor are they in any way unique to Australia.

There are secret international collaborative exercises such as ACTA that erode Internet Freedom that were only initially exposed due to Wikileaks. That said, the results of such secret meetings, the government comes out adamant that copyright is a fundamental right over Internet Freedom and other rights.

For copyright infringement notices:

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_reg/cr1969242/...

http://www.mipi.com.au/About-Piracy/Penalties-for-piracy/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

I think its about time to realise that the ruling classes see it as us and them. We the people are the enemy of governments. It does not matter which party we are talking about.

They farm us like animals. We allow them to.