offshore hosting bakacaksin. Panama falan.
Any country with legal online gambling should be fine, UK could be one place.
This is completely false.Seems there's a lot of misinformation and basic misunderstandings here. Whenever I see this topic come up in the non-BTC gambling world, I see the same vague and incorrect suggestions over and over.
Just because online gambling is legal in a country does not mean you can host an unlicensed site there. The UK has a very strict licensing regiment with master licenses costing around £500,000 per year. Hosting unlicensed games on a server there is a quick way to get booted by your hosting company who is required to comply with UK law.
It is, however, legal to serve games from offshore
into the UK, if they are legal in the country where they're hosted. The key here under UK law is "where the bet is struck". The bet is considered to be struck where the server is. Since the UK abides by international trade laws (which the US refuses to sign onto), they have to allow their citizens to strike bets in another country so long as those bets are legal under that country's law.
Now here's where it gets interesting. There is no jurisdiction on earth where it's legal to host an online gambling site without a government-issued license, except for Costa Rica. Costa Rica requires something called a "data-processing license" but it is not strictly a license (more a way of incorporating) and is not subject to gambling regulation as such. The reason for this is that, for historical reasons and thanks to a byzantine Napoleonic legal structure, Costa Rica contradicts the rest of the world (except, interestingly, the United States) and considers the bet to be struck on the user's computer, not where the servers are. So they see nothing wrong with hosting a casino there. What you're
not allowed to do in Costa Rica, if you host there, is take Costa Rican players. Because then you'd be breaking their law by running an on-shore casino. Funky, right?
It is certainly illegal to host a gaming site in Ireland without an Irish gaming license (this came into force several years ago; before that Ireland had no specific legislation on it and it wasn't prosecuted).
However, the vagaries of where a bet is "struck" leave open a number of interesting loopholes for the clever site operator. For example, some countries which require a license to host gambling have various amnesties in their laws to attract business, which allow back-office operations to be run there, even downloads to be served there, so long as the bet isn't struck there. Some will consider the location of the RNG to be where the bet is struck, and others consider it to be where the player connects to the game server (assuming those are two different machines). Hosting in Costa Rica is enormously expensive, the bandwidth is terrible and the service is nonexistent. So many companies host their primary website there and serve the games elsewhere.
The ONLY way you can be sure that what you're doing in a particular country is legal is to hire a gambling attorney in that country to advise you and, if possible, put an opinion on it in writing. The safest route for a casino not willing to pay for a governmental license is to get incorporated in Costa Rica for $1000 or so and serve the games and RNG from there; and then put your non-gambling stuff like videos, graphics, sounds, etc. on faster servers wherever you want. I like
http://nohostsland.com for finding servers in odd parts of the world. But DO NOT consider sticking gambling services on one of these VPS's, or on a server anywhere in the EU without a proper license from the country you're serving from.
If you have the money, some countries which offer packaged license/hosting/banking arrangements are: Malta, Curacao, the Isle of Man, Kahnawake (First Nations, Canada), Belize, Antigua; and on the top shelf, the UK, Australia, France and Italy (primarily for domestic markets).
Also be aware that the UK classifies two types of offshore casinos: Those licensed in the EU or with a country whose gaming regime is recognized by the EU (e.g. Curacao), and those not recognized (e.g. Costa Rica). While it is not illegal for a Costa Rica casino to take UK players, it
is illegal in the UK for Costa Rica based casinos to advertise in print, on radio or television. Again, lots of rules, so the best advice?
Lawyer up and don't take advice that could land you in jail from anonymous people on the internet.
