Slashdot Mirror

the prinicipality of SEALAND wants to be your data haven.

Anyone remember Sealand? They bought an oil rig or somesuch in international waters and started advertising as a place to store data outside the reach of governments.

... just like Kazaa, VOIP could put their NOC's in countries that do not support these laws.

VOIP data can go encrypted from the US to the NOC's and from thereon routed to wherever it should go (again, encrypted).
The only place where it is unencrypted is either at the endusers or maybe at the endusers and at the NOC.
But even in the latter case, the NOC being in a country with no FBI jurisdiction, there should be no problem - privacy is thus protected.

Or maybe, thinking out loud here, a Bittorrent like network of unassociated nodes can be laid out to secure communication. Most likely there are already some realworld examples of these.

There is nowhere to go. Some places are better than others - but immigration laws are getting more and more strict all over the world these days. And they'll eventually become as bad as the others.

I've dreamt often of making an artificial island in International waters (bigger version of Sealand off the coast of Britain :) and starting a new country afresh, with people who want to work together for a good society free of the world's corruption :)

Unfortunately, the cost would be prohibitive, the corruption would seep in anyway, and the whole thing would end up as bad as the outside world. There's just no escape from humanity - good or bad :)

It is not large, but it is well connected.

Sealand

Sealand? Has only one law; child porn is banned, punishable by exile (one law on their entire statute; this isn't just their only porn law, it is their one and only law at all, the entirely of their legal system). CF. HavenCo AUP - Unacceptable publications.

How about Sealand?

Anybody remember that independant island/country/state named havenco, which is situated off the coast of the United Kingdom? That is setup specifically for this type of subversion, butit costs $$$$$, and is well worth it. There is no chance of them taking the site down unless Apple were to hire a gun ship to go in and force the situation, and I hardly doubt that will happen because havenco has guns too!

There's always Sealand.

I'm convinced that a promising business venture would be a non-US ISP which would sell IPSec tunnels to anyone. The termination point would be outside the US and would preserve privacy

You took the words right out of my mouth. However, I think that HavenCo on the Principality of Sealand may have beaten you to the punch. However, I think that there is some question as to their sovereignty as a nation.

Provided that they have the proper bandwidth to handle this, I'd love to proxy most of my communications through them (or anyone offshore). It's a wrothy business idea to set up a pay proxy. Insert your Cryptonomicon parallel here.

Whatever damage done to our society by this man's crime would have been no worse had his IP popped up on our soil in xtraceroute. If we have the clout to persuade a country to turn over anyone whose crime is of this techno-era location-ambiguous nature, and if we want to reserve the right to do the same to child pornographers and destructive hackers, we should exercise that clout now.

I know this is difficult, but pretend this isn't Slashdot where software must be free and open source and piracy is k-rad -- pretend this guy was cybersexing your prepubescent sister, and upon her viewing a goatse picture that he emailed her after a conversation in which he described his fantasies of using her face as a target for various liquids, she developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and was scarred for life. Would you want the prosecutor to throw in the towel because the guy was on the Principality of Sealand at the time? Of course not, right?

So shouldn't we keep that door open even if it means one of Us is gonna do some time for contributing some elite .torrents to suprnova.org? Because you can't really have one without the other.

Sealand is a small platform off the east coast of England. It claims to be an independant country, and hasn't signed the Berne Convention on copyright. Theoretically you could distribute copyrighted material from there. Handily, it is home to HavenCo, a hosting company.

Sealand would be a better choice methinks.

Since when has the US government had a problem breaking rules?

Since never. The US Government doesn't even have a problem breaking its own rules. Cointelpro ring any bells?

The UN did not find any weapons of mass destruction, and therefore voted against attacking Iraq... Bush did it anyway.

The UN is an impotent wast of time. They're average at providing humanitarian aid, but good for nothing else. Hell, Israel is in violation of 69 UNSC resolutions, I don't remember seeing a single blue helmet in Tel Aviv on the news.

The US helped work and develop the Kyoto Treaty (the agreement to lower pollution internationally), however once Bush got into power, he scrapped it. (Some good info on that here)

Even before Bush, the US was not going to sign on to the Kyoto Accord. Clinton knew the damage that it would have done to the US economy and even if he had REALLY wanted to get on board, there wasn't the support in congress for it.

For the last few years, there has been talk about building the "Missle Defense Shield" around the United States & Canada. This of course, would (and probably will) break the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

That treaty was between the USA and the USSR. One of those two countries no longer exists. The argument can be made that the treaty is null and void once one of the signing parties ceases to exist.

If the United States can break a treaty at will, can it be trusted to respect others?

Like what? We never signed on to Kyoto. The 1972 ABM treaty was voided when the USSR dissolved. And what UN treaty requires us to get their support before launching a military action?

For these reasons, I don't feel that the US government can be trusted to respect any kind of law/treaty that treats the moon, mars, and other celestial bodies as un-claimable. Any comments?

Problem is that those treaties only apply to the nations that signed on to them. Not their private citizens, lets say that a few billionaires got together and privately funded a trip to the moon, set up shop and claimed it as a new country. We'd have a situation not unlike Sealand.

They could conduct all of their "official" business, relocate their companies' HQs, and store all of their assets there. Talk about a tax loophole, this is the fucking grandmother of all tax loopholes.

LK

"...as the smallest independent state in the world,..."

Isn't the smallest nation is The Principality of Sealand, which has received coverage on /. quite a few times for the hosting company that runs on it?

Is Sealand still an option?

Yesterday, North Korea has switched all their 7 PCs to RedHat Linux. That makes them second MS-free economy in the world (first was, of course, The Principality of Sealand. Film at 11

I think I've got just the location for you.

"Can somone recomend a country I could move to which protects the civil liberties of its citizens; prefrebaly?? English speaking? Thanks in advance."

You're welcome:

http://www.sealandgov.com/

>Show me a government who acts with the good of even only their own population in mind.

Sealand.

Or to Sealand.

Like the article says, HavenCo on Sealand!

Excellent connections, no copyright laws.

t only overly pessimistic, but utterly defeatist.

If you are going to buy into the party line that there is no point in the EU fighting spam without North America and Asia follwing step-in-step, you must eventually decide that there is no point fighting spam at all. There will always be somewhere for spammers to run. Because when it comes down to it, even if North America, the EU and Asia all work together to pass anti-spam legislation, there is little chance of Antigua, Cyprus and Sealand following suit.

Really though, every little strike against spam makes real headway. If we can eventually drive all spammers to little off-shore havens, it will that much easier to block them. To be honest however, as a libertarian of sorts I can't help but think that filtering may actually be the better front on which to fight this war.

The more I read these stories about the abuse of the American (and now international) patent system(s), the more I believe things like HavenCo and Sealand have a good idea behind them. Until it gets really bad, I suppose you could simply move your site hosting from country to country, but for the love of god when will this end? As a little guy software developer with a site (shameless plug - NanoWeb, but it needs an update) I am beginning to fear that my after hours source of a little play money could get me into legal trouble for using techniques and technologies that have been used collectively on the net for years! We thought the "Microsoft Tax" was bad, how about making up for the 1.5% patent taxes?

the smallest [country[ in the world
Surely that would be Sealand?

Where do you find a large communication node in the middle of the ocean, smarty pants?

HavenCo, operating Six miles off the Eastern shore of Britain, smarty pants.

You are thinking of Sealand. Here's an interview with the owner of HavenCo which provides (provided?) offshore servers.

Cryptonomicron is historical fiction focusing around the age of Alan Turing (WorldWarII) and really centers around encryption. This is a read-several-times-and-still-see-something-neat book. Also, shortly after this book came out, SeaLand, the country, started making news again. No accident I think as this book kind of gave a "business plan" to the island.

Diamond Age is another read-several-times book that focuses around where nano-tech can go. It remembers that not all technologies are controlled. Stephenson also amplifies where electronic paper/organic LEDs can go - finally we have an author telling us something beneficial from technology instead of always calling new technology evil.

You're thinking of Sealand, which is actually an old gun turret built during WW2. The hosting company based in Sealand is HavenCo. They will host anything except for child porn.

Oh right, and the war on drugs has been such a success?

Besides the parent has a good point. The answer is not through legislation. What is to stop people from hosting their spam sites off shores where they are protected from the laws. Kind of like the 809 Phone Call Scam.

You may -still- have trouble finding the press release describing their proposed business model. It's at http://www.thehonestthief.com/pressroomarticle-003 .asp, and the software is ironically named "ThankYou". As far as I can tell the mechanism they outline (sketchy indeed) says that your processor power goes to research facilities who pay (perhaps with micropayments? they call it "electronic bill presentment and payment") for the processor time they use; money goes to the artists, but THT skims a graft off the top.

A whole lot of the rest of the website is amusing banter about how the Netherlands is the only place to be if you want to be free from evil courts because of the recent Kazaa ruling (cough cough Sealand cough cough), and they make the hokey assertion that "The Netherlands is viewed as the gateway to Europe. For Internet file sharing services, the Netherlands might very well prove to be the gateway to the world. ". Wow--it's like a drug dealer resort, only it's actually for music trade. These people only want to license their software (like FastTrack), to be a sort of meta-Kazaa ("We have no direct ties with any particular file sharing service and it is not our goal to participate in ventures of this kind. What we can do is help you set up operations in the Netherlands fast.") Lovely.

Sealand is actually based on an old anti-aircraft platform a few miles off the south-east coast of the UK. It's story is fascinating, and you can learn more at Sealandgov.com. They don't issue passports as far as I know, though there is the entirely virtual Republic of Lomar that does. A company called HavenCo is currently investing in Sealand, hoping to tap into a market for government jurisdiction-free hosting, co-location, etc.

Why is it they can even try things like this without massive public backlash? They would be far better off accepting the "new" information, and promising to work hard to always keep their systems secure.

I'm sure certian companies would love to see legal actions like this get upheld by a court.... Oh well, I guess we can always move to Norway... I wonder if they'd let me live on sealand once all my rights are gone here...

http://www.havenco.com
http://www.sealandgov.com

As a dutch resident I can remember a recent story where a dutch family was extradited to the US for shoplifting... although this is not civil law it still raised some eyebrows over here. Perhaps we should all become residents of the principality of sealand, I guess Bush has no idea where that is ;-)

someone has already posted the Sealand site, there are many projects which are doing things like this such as new utopia it is feasible if you have the money and legal.

OK, then I'll register my ship with the principality of sealand, or maybe I'll launch a satellite, and form a moon base to make my copies.

Why not a real Country?

Say, perhaps, the "Country" of Sealand?

Now, here you might have something! You get the 3 guys (or whatever) to agree to register with the International Registry, and ... voila!

Heck, they practically are a ship to begin with!

But this raises more questions... What if you have a permanently anchored "dock" at sea? Something that floats, with pools, solar water purifiers, etc, and market it as a "vacation resort"?

Make it big, and kinda sprawling, and make it float. What then? Cruise ships today routinely take passengers numbering thousands, already many more people than something like Sealand.

At what point can a manmade structure become a nation?

Slashdot did a story on them before. I know there has been talk of doing this before, so who is actually to stop them if the, er... offer is large enough?

Theseguys on Sealand should be able to tell you.

Everyone who has a problem with Sealand comes to the UK government first

And the UK government promptly directs them to the Sealand government.History of Sealand

"The courts of England." Please. You make it sound like a concerted nationwide legal consensus. Some random piddling backwater judge decided he'd rather take the long weekend and dismissed the case as not being appropriate for the specific jurisdiction it was brought under.

It was not "some random backwater piddling judge". Read the history.
The first time it was ruled that Sealand wasn't part of England the "King" of Sealand was accused of firing on British ships when they tried to take back Sealand. In case you didn't know, attacking Navy ships isn't exactly a small crime. Random backwater judges don't get cases like those.

Ten years later, the King's son was kidnapped and Sealand was invaded. When he took back Sealand he also held several prisoners of war. When the governments of the Netherlands and Germany (where the POWs were from) asked Britain to intervene, Britain cited the previous court case stating that Sealand was a seperate nation and not under British jurisdiction. Germany ended up sending a diplomat directly to Sealand.

That aside, you don't even need to be a government to take this place out -- a well-placed shaped charge on one of the supports would send this SOB to the bottom of the ocean, and *anyone* with sufficiant knowledge and motivation could do it.

I wouldn't be so sure. If you check the history of Sealand then you see that the residents have been extremely zealous about this place, firing warning shots at anyone getting close to the tower. This included some guys who had come to repair some buoy that was floating in the vicinity (called "units of British Navy" in the official Sealand history ;-) ).
A pair of machine guns would keep anything less than a real warship in safe distance, so "well-placing a charge" would be quite tricky.
Also remember that this platform was actively use in World War II and military considerations were taken into account when building it, so it's not that easy to take them out for a random guy.

I wonder what will happen if the British Government decides to collect taxes there?

It's not very likely, since Britain's own courts have recognized the sovereignty of Sealand.

Or have they been collecting taxes all along, and just don't care about the rest?

No, Britain hasn't been collecting taxes, and the royal family of Sealand (and presumably whatever citizens live there) haven't been paying any taxes to the UK.

Sealand has even fought a "war," and won, after which Germany ended up sending a diplomat to Sealand to negotiate the release of one of their citizens who was being held on charges of treason (the German also carried a Sealand passport). This amounted to a defacto recognition of Sealand's sovereignty (Germany first went to the British and were told that Britain made no claim to the territory of Sealand).

All of this information (and more) is available on the Sealand website, which is the first link that appears when you do a google search on the keyword "Sealand" (see the History section).

In the 80s territorial waters were extended to 12 miles. Sealand's nation status is this unclear, but this hasn't stopped HavenCo setting up their data haven.

On 1 October, 1987, Britain extended its territorial waters from 3 to 12 nautical miles. The previous day, Prince Roy declared the extension of Sealand's territorial waters to be a like 12 nautical miles, so that right of way from the open sea to Sealand would not be blocked by British claimed waters. No treaty has been signed between Britain and Sealand to divide up the overlapping areas, but a general policy of dividing the area between the two countries down the middle can be assumed. International law does not allow the claim of new land during the extension of sea rights, so Sealand's sovereignty was safely "grandfathered" in. Britain has no more right to Sealand's territory than Sealand has to the territory of the British coastline that falls within its claimed 12 nautical mile arc.

Just move to sealand and stop being silly.

why companies like Napster didn't move to someplace like Sealand where nobody could really touch them and they wouldn't have to go under. Maybe some day company will get the idea to move out there, at least their server(s)anyways.

Good lord - look at the map!

Sealand, mother fscker!

Where be the freedom of speech up in this piece son?

It be up in Sealand, homeboyz.

W3rd