$ xmrhost-cli describe --region=is
[$ ] Iceland
// NAME
is — Iceland (Reykjavik). RIPE NCC.
// SYNOPSIS
xmrhost-cli describe --region=is
xmrhost-cli list --region=is// REGISTRY
$ whois -h whois.ripe.net cc/IS
// JURISDICTION
$ man country(iceland)
Iceland operates copyright enforcement under Höfundalög nr. 73/1972, with the EEA-driven notice-and-action procedure. There is no DMCA equivalent, no §512 takedown machinery, no statutory provider obligation to remove on first notice. The IMMI codifies source protection: a hosting operator served with a foreign court order can plead the IMMI provisions and force the requester through the Icelandic courts. GDPR applies via the EEA agreement and is enforced by Persónuvernd. Police access to subscriber data requires a domestic court order in nearly every civil case.
// signal:summary
// statutes
- Höfundalög nr. 73/1972 (Icelandic Copyright Act)
- IMMI (Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, 2010)
- Lög um persónuvernd nr. 90/2018 (GDPR transposition)
// the operator processes copyright complaints under the local statute named above, not under the DMCA. Misformatted notices (e.g. §512(c) takedowns sent to a non-US host) are responded to with a polite pointer to the correct procedure.
// NETWORK
$ mtr --report --region=is
// rtt:from-common-origins
// estimates, not SLAs. measured from public looking-glasses, not the operator backbone. `~` prefix marks the imprecision.
// NODES AVAILABLE
$ xmrhost-cli list --region=is
// 17 plans deployable in this region. all xmr-billed.
// PROVISIONING
one-line invocation
$ xmrhost-cli provision --plan=vps-2 --region=is
[ok] reserving capacity in region=is (Iceland)
[ok] node allocated in Iceland datacenter
[ok] applying hardened-by-default profile (sshd, fail2ban, unattended-upgrades)
[ok] handoff key sealed → view via the console at /console
provisioned. invoice in xmr will land in your console queue. // swap --plan=
for any slug from the deployable list above. --region=is
is the only flag that pins this datacenter.
// OPERATOR CONTEXT
$ man country(iceland).operator
Iceland's hosting ecosystem clusters around three Reykjavík-area datacenters (Reykjanesbaer, Hafnarfjörður, Keflavík) that share a common geothermal-power baseline and three submarine-cable paths (FARICE-1, DANICE, IRIS) to the European mainland. The combination matters operationally: a single-region tenant gets independent power and independent transit redundancy without paying for multi-AZ infrastructure. Ping from Frankfurt is ~38 ms; from New York ~42 ms — Iceland is geographically a transatlantic-cable midpoint and the latency reflects that.
From the operator side, the practical experience of running infrastructure in Iceland is that abuse-mail volume is low compared to mainland-EU jurisdictions, and the abuse-mail that does arrive tends to be either substantive (Tor-exit-abuse mail from actual exit operators, not from this brand's posture; very occasional copyright correspondence) or automated and easily auto-responded. The civil-court timeline of 12-18 months at first instance means that a complainant taking a hosting matter to court for an injunction is making a multi-year commitment, which selects strongly for serious claims over reflex-takedown attempts.
Procurement reality: most Icelandic providers operate on RIPE-allocated /22 or /23 ranges with relatively stable AS membership; the country has fewer than ten providers running material-scale infrastructure and the IP-reputation footprint of each is well-known to anti-abuse services. New Iceland-allocated IP blocks are not auto-flagged by mainstream reputation services. Bandwidth pricing is competitive but not the cheapest in Europe — the value proposition is jurisdiction + power-mix + cable redundancy, not raw cost.
Iceland's Höfundalög nr. 73/1972 framework + the absence of any private-notice takedown obligation produces a posture where operator response to copyright correspondence is informational only until a court order materialises. The IMMI (Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, 2010) codified source-protection statutes that explicitly support hosting of journalistic intake; while IMMI is not directly invocable as a blanket immunity for all hosting, its existence shifts the political-cultural baseline. Tor relays and hidden services have operated continuously from Icelandic infrastructure since at least 2014 without policy-level intervention.
// SIGNALS
$ grep -ri signal /etc/xmrhost/region/iceland
| // signal | // value |
|---|---|
| primary datacenter cluster | Reykjanesbaer, Hafnarfjörður, Keflavík |
| submarine cables | FARICE-1, DANICE, IRIS (3 paths to EU mainland) |
| RTT to Frankfurt (DE-CIX) | ~38 ms |
| RTT to London (LINX) | ~32 ms |
| RTT to New York (NYIIX) | ~42 ms |
| RIPE region | RIPE NCC, IS |
| power baseline | geothermal (~80% national grid) |
| Eyes posture | outside Five Eyes / Fourteen Eyes |
// FREQUENTLY-ASKED — ICELAND
$ faq -r iceland
Q.Does Iceland honour DMCA takedown notices?
A.No. Iceland is not a US jurisdiction and 17 U.S.C. §512 has no effect there. Copyright complaints against Iceland-hosted content proceed under Höfundalög nr. 73/1972 via court process. A DMCA-formatted notice sent to a XMRHost Iceland host is responded to with a pointer to the correct national procedure; the operator does not maintain a §512-style notice-and-takedown machinery.
Q.Is GDPR Article 15 / right-of-access applicable to Iceland-hosted data?
A.Yes. Iceland is an EEA member state and applies GDPR directly via the EEA Joint Committee Decision. A data subject can submit an Article 15 access request via /contact (topic=privacy) on data hosted in Iceland under the same conditions as on data hosted in Romania.
Q.What's the practical latency from Iceland to mainland Europe and North America?
A.Approximately 38 ms to Frankfurt (DE-CIX), 32 ms to London (LINX), 42 ms to New York (NYIIX), 95 ms to San Francisco. The three submarine cables (FARICE-1, DANICE, IRIS) provide path-independent redundancy. Iceland is a viable primary region for transatlantic-audience workloads; for purely EU-internal audiences Romania has lower latency.
Q.Are Tor exit relays permitted from Icelandic infrastructure?
A.Most Icelandic providers permit Tor non-exit (middle / guard) relays without restriction. Exit relays are provider-specific — some upstreams permit them, others restrict them via AUP. XMRHost does not run Tor exit relays from its standard tier; that workload routes to /node/lokinet-exit. Hidden services and non-exit relays are unrestricted on every XMRHost Iceland plan.
Q.What is Iceland's data-retention regime?
A.Iceland has no general telecommunications data-retention mandate equivalent to the historical EU Data Retention Directive (which was struck down by the CJEU in 2014 and which Iceland never transposed in full). Specific investigations can request preservation under court order. The operator's logging baseline is minimal regardless of jurisdiction.
Q.Why host in Iceland instead of mainland EU?
A.Iceland is EEA-but-not-EU: GDPR applies but the European Court of Justice does not have direct jurisdiction (the EFTA Court does, with narrower competence). The country is outside Five Eyes / Fourteen Eyes intelligence-sharing. The geothermal power mix is a side benefit. The cost-vs-mainland-EU tradeoff goes either way depending on workload — see /vs/iceland-vs-romania-offshore-jurisdiction for the long-form comparison.
// SEE ALSO
- /location — full region list.
- /node — full catalog.
- /guide/best-offshore-vps-2026 — evaluation methodology.
- /guide/how-to-host-a-website-anonymously — three-tier deployment guide.
- /guide/offshore-hosting-for-journalists — newsroom topology.
- /vs/iceland-vs-romania-offshore-jurisdiction — region comparison.
- /why-monero — billing rationale.
- /threat-models — per-workload threat dossiers.
- /glossary — DMCA-equivalent, GDPR Article 15, Höfundalög, Legea 8/1996 definitions.
- /numbers — at-a-glance jurisdictional fact sheet.