As promised I will outline one way website operators and hobbyists can (or will) circumvent the new SESTA/FOSTA laws.

First some background info and technical setup discussion.

What is Protonmail?
Protonmail is a secure email platform which is based in Switzerland. There is no US jurisdiction. The data is entirely encrypted as long as you communicated Proton to Proton account (not to a Google or Yahoo account, for example). ProtonMail cannot give out any details anyway b/c they do not have them. All email is encrypted. Not even ProtonMail can read it (even if they wanted to).

Ok, so what does that have to do with anything? Well, ProtonMail is just the start. There are other secure email services too. Proton is just a good one. But more importantly ProtonMail also offers a solution called ProtonVPN. This is the key element.
There is a totally free version and one that gives you better access to multiple countries (30+) for a very small fee.
You can also use many other VPN services (Hide.Me is a great one).

What is ProtonVPN (or any VPN service such as Hide.Me or Windscribe)?
VPN's secure a virtual private network using your existing connection. Basically it creates an encrypted private network with it's own IP, encrypted data, and so on. Most importantly though by using these VPN services you can choose a country to "originate" from.

How does this help?
A website operator will be able to establish an offshore website allowing anyone who has an IP originating from a particular "country" that is not in the US to connect to the site and use it without having broken a law.

At the very least it won't be harmful to website operators. If *anything* (a big if) it would be the person who chose to use a VPN and claim they came from a different country that broke the rules. However, that's no different than a prostitute today breaking the law by engaging in "commercial sex for sale".

The point is it takes the pressure away from the website operator. The hassle is that it means the community has to become technically capable of this and aware (it's not hard, but it's a small process).

Is it a huge hassle?
Not really. It's a hassle in that the hobby community has to learn to do this; though it's pretty easy from the users end. However, yes, they have to become aware of being able to use these VPN services along with encrypted email systems. So it's a small hassle in that regard.

Additional Notes (with a simpler explanation for those who are still confused):

This might be difficult for some of you to understand so let me try to explain it very simply.

1. When you connect to a VPN service, you are creating a special encrypted channel through your router, to the VPN service.
2. The VPN service is allowing you to connect to any of a variety of different VPN country providers (such as Asia, Russia, Netherlands, South America, Swiss, Germany, etc, etc, etc).
3. What happens once connected is that your IP and ALL traffic from your computer will now come from that country you selected a connection to.
4. Your computer will no longer have the IP, or even appear or be traceable to, the IP that your internet provider (TimeWarner, Spectrum, Cox, Verizon, Grande, AT&T, etc) has provided to your router.

You will for all intents and purposes now be a person who is browsing the internet from "Germany" (just as an example - or whatever country you chose).

Your real IP (the one your router gets from your internet provider) will be unknown and untraceable. You will essentially be a person "coming from that country" over the internet.
You will even be able to check this by looking at a site like www.whatismyip.com before connecting to the VPN which will show your routers public IP.
After you connect to the VPN if you visit www.whatismyip.com again you will see a completely different public IP for your router (depending on which country you selected).
It will have nothing to do with your routers IP. You are now, once connected to another country via VPN service, "no longer on your local network". You don't exist there. You exist in the country you are connected to and on that network.

This is just one of various methods to get around the new laws. Like I've said before I don't believe the new laws are even going to affect the "hobby" community in so much as that is not who they are going to go after. They are going to go after really bad trafficking organizations and large criminal enterprises, particularly with ties to human trafficking or minors or child pornography.

-MG