Field instrument Jurisdictional
Jurisdictional comparison
Side-by-side comparison of hosting jurisdictions. The two OffshorePress operating columns (Iceland, Switzerland) sit next to two benchmark columns (United States, United Kingdom) for educational contrast.
The two OffshorePress operating columns sit on the left; the two benchmark columns sit on the right for educational contrast. The benchmarks are not jurisdictions the operator hosts in — they are points of reference for a reader trying to understand the operator's posture by comparison with the regimes that dominate English-language hosting discourse. Each attribute that has a defined glossary entry links to it.
| Attribute | Iceland OffshorePress operator | Switzerland OffshorePress operator | United States Benchmark only | United Kingdom Benchmark only |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capital and time zone | Reykjavík, UTC+0 | Bern, UTC+1 (CET) | Washington DC, UTC-5 (EST) | London, UTC+0 (GMT) |
| EU / EEA membership | EEA member, non-EU | Bilateral treaty, non-EEA | None | None (post-Brexit) |
| GDPR adequacy | Intra-EEA — full GDPR applies | Adequacy decision since 2000, renewed 2024 | Data Privacy Framework (under litigation) | Adequacy decision since 2021 (sunset 2025) |
| Principal data-protection statute | GDPR (EEA-transposed) | revFADP (in force 1 September 2023) | Patchwork: CCPA, HIPAA, GLBA — no federal statute | UK GDPR + Data Protection Act 2018 |
| DMCA-format takedown procedure | None — substantive court action required | None — substantive court action required | Section 512 notice-and-takedown machinery applies | No domestic DMCA; EU E-Commerce safe-harbour transposed |
| Intermediary-liability regime | EU E-Commerce Directive (via EEA) + DSA | Federal Act on the Liability for Mass Media (LMMP) | Section 230 (US) — near-absolute immunity | Online Safety Act 2023 + DSA-analogue rules |
| Source-protection regime | Strengthened post-IMMI (Resolution 23/138, 2010) | Federal Constitution Art. 17; ECtHR Goodwin standard | First Amendment + state shield laws; no federal shield statute | ECHR Art. 10 + journalist-privilege case-law; weakened by IPA |
| Surveillance-treaty membership | Outside Five/Nine/Fourteen-Eyes; NATO member | Outside Five/Nine/Fourteen-Eyes; neutral | Five Eyes (UKUSA founder) | Five Eyes (UKUSA founder) |
| Mandatory data retention (operators) | No standing retention duty on hosting operators | BÜPF on full telcos only; not on derived services (per ProtonMail v UVEK) | No federal mandate; voluntary cooperation widespread | Investigatory Powers Act — communications data retention by ISPs |
| Whistleblower protection | IMMI-derived statutory protection; public-sector code | Code of Obligations — thin; legislative proposals pending | Patchwork: SOX, Dodd-Frank, Whistleblower Protection Act | Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 |
| Foreign-state lawful access | MLAT only; dual-criminality filter | MLAT only; bank-secrecy-style filtering posture | MLATs + extra-territorial subpoena reach (CLOUD Act) | MLATs + CLOUD-Act executive agreement with US (2019) |
| OffshorePress hosting available | Yes — see /jurisdictions/iceland | Yes — see /jurisdictions/switzerland | No — benchmark column only | No — benchmark column only |
The two OffshorePress operating jurisdictions — Iceland and Switzerland — sit deliberately outside the Five-Eyes intelligence alliance and outside the United States legal regime that dominates the popular conversation about online-publication risk. The two benchmark columns are useful precisely because the contrasts they expose are the ones the publication's editorial register is built against. The detailed dossiers are at /jurisdictions/iceland and /jurisdictions/switzerland.