Two important notes: (1) This guide is focused on legal risks that flow from hosting other people’s content, under U.S. law. In general, the safe harbors and immunities discussed below will not protect you if you are directly infringing copyright or defaming someone. (2) Many of us at EFF are lawyers, but we are not YOUR lawyers. This guide is intended to offer a high-level overview of U.S. law and should not be taken as legal advice specific to your particular situation.
U.S. law doesn’t apply in most places, strange that they focused on that particular country for what is a global concern, but for those who are there, I imagine this is very helpful!
The EFF is an American non-profit, that’s their area of expertise.
However, most of this article is about the DMCA. The DMCA is the US’s implementation of the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty of 1996. A treaty which has been signed by 110 countries, all of which are required to pass their own version of the DMCA. Though some specifics may change, instances hosted in most countries will have to comply with the DMCA or very similar legislation.
U.S. Law applies in a lot more places than just inside U.S. borders. If you host your instance on AWS or Digital Ocean, or protect it with Cloudflare, then you’re dealing with U.S. companies, and thus U.S. law. Even if you host in a EU region of AWS for example.