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Reminds me of Sealand off the UK coast. You can now become a Baron of Sealand for £29.99. https://www.sealandgov.org/

Here is the reference:

http://www.sealandgov.org/

Sealand!

You must not have read much. Were you the one who deleted the relevant section from the Wikipedia page? You forgot to delete the picture.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Sealand-sky.jpg

That pointy thing near the crane is a deck gun.

You can read an abbreviated version of the story here http://www.sealandgov.org/history under the heading "Initial Challenge to Sealand's Sovereignty."

Any other 100% fabricated stories you want to make up about what the British did?

http://www.sealandgov.org/announcements/get-a-sealand-email-address

Let's make Sealand a financially stable nation. :-)

That's easy: Sealand!

Sealand has been successfully defended from the British Navy. Additionally the United Kingdom has upheld the sovereignty of Sealand in multiple court verdicts. Germany later recognized the sovereignty of Sealand by sending a diplomat to negotiate the release of some of its citizens who attempted to take the base by force.

There is also no reason that multiple links couldn't be run through international waters the same as any other nation.

From http://www.sealandgov.org/history.html

"Initial Challenge to Sealand's Sovereignty

By late 1968, the British navy had become aware of the new situation off the coast of England. They were interested in terminating the state of affairs brought about by an error committed by the most senior military authorities without causing too much uproar.

Units of the navy entered the territorial waters claimed by Roy of Sealand. As he was aware of his sovereignty, Roy of Sealand threatened the navy by undertaking defensive activity. Shots were fired from Sealand in warning.

Since Roy of Sealand was still an English citizen, he was thus accused of extensive crimes in Britain and was summoned to an English court. The result of this lawsuit in Chelmsford, Essex was a spectacular success for Sealand's claim to sovereignty. In its judgment of 25 November 1968, the court declared that it was not competent in Roy of Sealand's case as it could not exert any jurisdiction outside of British national territory. This is the first de facto recognition of the Principality of Sealand. English law had ruled that Sealand was not part of the United Kingdom, nor did any other nation claim it, hence Prince Roy's declaration of a new Sovereign State was de facto upheld. "

This data center is as real as any mirror site. It has an advantage in that if the government simply pulls the plug, it pulls down every website hosted there. That would be a very unpopular move. People who wouldn't ordinarily rally around Wikileaks will get interested if their email, voip, or web are threatened. If, instead, the government uses legal processes, it could take days or weeks of injunctions and stays of injunctions and good old fashioned foot dragging by the ISP that operates the facility. The Swedish news would be full of "what happens when the internet goes down" scare stories, even if they only wind up shutting down the Wikileaks server. So either way makes the government into a bad guy to the general public.

So, it's all theater. The best protection for Wikileaks is to have mirror sites in several countries, and don't publish the locations of any but this one that's particularly interesting. Then, if this one comes under attack, Wikileaks can just announce "never fear, Sealand is here"

Given half a chance, Liechtenstein would kill you, and everyone you care about.

Given that this is Slashdot, I should never have to point this out... but the Principality of Liechtenstein ain't got nuthin' on the Principality of Sealand. The entire place is one huge military installation!

:P

Or just set it up at http://www.sealandgov.org/

IIRC Sealand has a fairly significant business in housing computer servers.

Ok, i know this is officially way off topic, but i can't resist. you need to check out http://www.sealandgov.org/ and its relation to the internet via HavenCo. It's pretty much what you are suggesting, except that it failed. but the history of Sealand is a good read.

Well, I heard sealand http://www.sealandgov.org/ was up for grabs, and Ceres http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet) ought to be large enough for the asteroid purpose. AFAIK nobody else has laid claim to it.

There is.

Maybe AL can clear this up. I don't think prior art would apply because Sealand never actually became a datacenter per se.

The Principality of Sealand is the micro country that houses HavenCo.. I think Google's idea is different, starting with the energy system. Besides, I hardly think this quallifies as a data center. Even if nowadays is completely restored and operational I just can't find that much similarities among them.

It's like the Principality of Sealand
It's situated on an old abandoned British island fortress from WWII

Sealand: http://www.sealandgov.org/

If one of these were built, and if i had my own billions, there'd be wrath upon ANYone trying to declare my abode non-sovereign. There has come the time when nations need to be reigned in to SOME point, and where a passport acts ONLY as proof of citizenship, not as a means to deny re-entry to one's place of birth, and not as a means to prevent one from exiting (provided no real or tangible crimes have been committed. Of course, there's nothing to stop nations from fabricating crimes or committing outright character assassination or incarceration or murder against people who decry onerous expectations of citizens. I was born here, at The Presidio, served 4 years in the USN and I damned well shall retain my right to call a spade a spade and fools fools and not have my citizenship stripped just because of that.

I'm a citizen of Earth and a legal resident of where ever I work and pay my taxes. So long as I'm not killing, maiming, stealing, or destroying physical property no nation should deny me (or others) free (but crime-free) travel. After all, consider that in 200 years or so or when/if we achieve space travel (as in Trek), what value will fiefdom-like "state" borders have?

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/05/seasteading?currentPage=all

Some real/some tongue-in-cheek micronations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations

------
Another interesting case:
http://www.sealandgov.org/history.html

----

• use Hosted-App-Services from US Based Company ==> Get Spied Upon via Patriot Act
• use Hosted-App-Services from Al-Qaeda ==> Get Spied Upon via Patriot Act

tm

So, if there is a myth that a lot of people believe is true, then it will stay up there as it is not challenged. So, it still gets reputation, and therefore more credibility, making it more likely that the myth will be perpetrated.

Yep. There are lots of these. Snopes is full of these - "everybody knows it's true" but yet it's false.

Also, if someone hasn't noticed something that is wrong on an esoteric entry, it will also be given credibility, and once again be more likely to be considered to be fact.

Oh, you were talking about Wikipedia - but there to, in real life, we have the same dynamic at work. Such as, for example, the "sovereign" status of Sealand. If you look at the legal history of this claim, it's simply a case of "no court has bothered to rule against them". So it stands as a claim.

While you could add voting to the algorithm to have people vote on whether it is true, that still gets destroyed by someone who just votes because they think it's true, not because they have verified it.

Either way, it potentially gives additional credibility to something that may be very wrong.

If a bunch of people vote on it for whatever reason they prefer, then that vote stands. (at least in theory, the last two US elections are good example of how this can go wrong) There will ALWAYS be a fight to preserve truth over opinion. And one of the best examples of this is Slashdot!

How many posts modded funny do you see about the "Blue Screen of Death"? I think I've actually seen a BSOD maybe once in the last three years - XP is a far cry from Win98. How many highly ranked posters here haven't the foggiest clue how copyrights, patents, and trademarks work, or even are aware that there's a difference between them?

How many people here actually believe that if any GPL code here is found in the Windows Source code, then all of Windows must then be open-sourced, and that they would then have a legal right to demand this? (I'm probably going to get modded to -1 troll for this last question)

See what I mean?

Should use the money to buy Sealand , where there is no copyright, trademark or patent law.

So, no country has no hungry people. No country has no homeless people.

Sealand

Its actually not for sale. They want "inward investment". See http://www.sealandgov.org/notices/pn03307.html

If you go to http://www.sealandgov.org/, you'll find that you can buy a title for about 30 euros. You can be a Lord/Lady or Baron/Baroness of Sealand! I'm thinking my D&D fascinated neices and nephews will be getting a title for the next gift giving event. Much better than being an honorary citizen if you ask me.

According to Sealand's official website, the platform sustained heavy damage by fire last summer. From the desperate tone of the account, I gather that Sealand might be very close to uninhabitable by now. That might explain the decision to sell it off, more than the old age of the founder.

Now how long until allofmp3.com starts getting hosted out of the principality of sealand

Basically, the British government is corrupt to the core and bordering on fascist. But.. what government isn't these days?

Is there any room left at Sealand?

How about Sealand?

How about Sealand?

Good luck getting a work visa for Sealand, or even an entry-visa for that matter, they tend not to like to let lots of people in.

See: Principality Notice 017/02: Visits to the Principality for details.

It's not actually an oil platform as described. It's an abandoned offshore military base dating back to WWII. And yes, HavenCo's computers really are kept there, though they call it a "showcase datacenter" these days.

The bussiness side of SEALAND is the Royal Bank(which is a front for a swiss bank) and data haven called "HavenCO" . Some photos of the principlality of SEALAND. More photos I wonder where they keep the actual data servers and if data resident outside of a country is protected by the countries laws???

I mean, can't you just read the source of the patch

I had this thought after the first time, and am seriously thinking that this thoug of mine may not be such a joke or bad idea after all:

One word: SELAND!

Move the master kernel repository over there. It may not account for everyone's DL's, but at least the master tree will always exist in an untained form.

Check out the message from Sealand offering its services to the US in the fight against terrorism. Laugh ? I nearly fell off my chair.

Actually there already is a mini-island-country outside of england. It is called sealand and they host internetservices without much restriction. Perhaps we should put up a p2p network homepage on one of their servers?

If we had a server there it would even work with a cetralized server system!

/S

Nice Fake, isn't it?

Look at the picture: http://www.sealandgov.org/images/sealand_sm.jpg

While I feel incredibly sorry for Dmitry and his family, there's absolutely nothing about this incident which couldn't be fully predicted from the DMCA itself, and the general legal trend in the US for the past 50+ years. Corporations are in the business of maximizing profit and minimizing risk, and governments are in the business of maximizing order, increasing control, and growing their headcount, prestige, and budgets. This is the logical result of evolution through time.

Without strong protections, enshrined in contracts like the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, and in the everyday behavior and norms expected by a well-educated, informed, and active citizenry, things will naturally become more and more authoritarian. We've seen it in the US with DMCA, CALEA, and other new laws, as well as administrative actions taken by government agencies. We've seen it in the UK, with abominations like the RIP Act. We've seen it in the EU, which passes laws which ostensibly protect individual privacy but in fact create new bureaucracy. And Asia and Australia are even worse in a lot of ways.

Absent a major change in public perception (which I think is highly unlikely), the only path to individual liberty is technical. Perhaps it is now the case that security researchers, mathematicians, and pro-liberty activists must go underground, communicating using anonymous remailers, pseudonyms, and strong cryptography. Certainly groups have been forced underground in the past, but given certain conditions, it is impossible for them to be totally silenced. There are plenty of places in the world where people can live in freedom, due to a policy (intentional or unintentional) of tolerance -- Holland, Costa Rica, islands in the Caribbean, the Pacific -- for those who can't live underground in their own lands. Hopefully, HavenCo and Sealand can play some role in safeguarding liberty for those who live in other nations, by hosting servers for sensitive projects, remailers, and other infrastructure, as well as serving as an example of rational security policy for other nations. However, systems like Mojonation, Gnutella, Napster, ZKS Freedom, Mixmaster remailers, OpenPGP, and BitTorrent are perhaps more important for enabling this kind of research to be conducted, if not openly, at least securely.

If you're going to campaign for political change, don't just campaign for Dmitry to be released, or the DMCA to be overturned -- the core issue here is the continued erosion of individual liberty, at the hands of government, "well-intentioned do-gooders", and corporations.

I look forward to seeing people at HAL 2001, which thankfully is being held in a fairly free country.

Ryan Lackey
http://www.venona.com/rdl/
http://www.havenco.com/

Wrong, Sealand was in international waters, before britan extended its claim of the ocean. Now it surrounded by british waters. The story is here, scroll down to the part that says: Extension of Territorial Waters

Take a look at this map of undersea cables. There looks to be plenty of telecom cables near Sealand. In fact, I'd be surprised if Sealand itself wasn't used as a waypoint for the cables laid prior to Sealand's habitation.

Take a look at this map of Sealand. I'd be surprised if any of those cables came within 50 miles of Sealand. The cables on your map head off from Dover Peninsula to the south and near Yarmouth to the north. Sealand, meanwhile, is tucked in there within spitting distance of delightful downtown Harwich.