Well I'm not a lawyer, but a prosecutor in the US would have to file charges, then serve papers to the country of residence of the accused. Given the fact many countries with treaties won't extradite without stipulations (see Julian Assange), even if a prosecutor were to go to such great lengths as to identity who owned the servers and was operating the site, I think it would take more resources than the government thinks it is worth to get the accused in a US courtroom. Now if you are someone like El Chapo Guzman, then yeah they will do it. But for the owner / operator of a site like Tryst or P411 they probably aren't going to go to that much trouble.
Also, depending on which country those off shore servers are located, they may never even be able to identify who is renting them or running the site. If it's in a country hostile to the US they are just going to flip them the bird and laugh at the request. Look how much effort it took them to crack the Silk Road case, and Ross Ulbricht wasn't even hosting that site from a country like North Korea or something.
I can't say for certain that the owners and operators of these types of sites cannot be legally exposed at least in theory, but I think the likelihood of any serious action being taken by the US gov is very low if both the owners and servers are located outside of the US.
A full fledged discussion if extraterritorial application if criminal law is way too complicated to engage in. But a person can commit an act that exposes him toUS criminal law without ever setting foot in the US. Having everything outside the US may very well not change any criminal liability with these laws.
Then the on,y issue is finding the defendant in the US or bilateral extradition rights.
Originally Posted by TexTushHog