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Data Haven To Open For Business - Today
pq writes: "The real world catches up with Neal Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon' on Monday, June 5th, when a data haven opens on a WWII military fortress six miles off England's coast. Read the (nologin) NYT article here about the strange case of
HavenCo and the independent principality of Sealand: yes, they'll host DeCSS, Metallica songs, even pictures of Natalie, all for a price." (More below.)
And reader JazFresh writes: " ... I went to Monkeybagel.com to find out what was new, and the site owner said he's stopped work on Monkeybagel to work on this new site instead. From the Web page:
'HavenCo will soon be offering the world's most secure managed colocation facility based in the world's smallest sovereign territory, the Principality of Sealand. As the security of sensitive data over public networks grows in importance, businesses, governments and organizations worldwide are realizing the need for a suitable facility from which to host their financial transaction, B2B and e-mail servers as well as sensitive data backups. A large part of a server's physical security is dependent upon the political system of the country in which the server is located. We will be providing the business structure in the world's first free-market location.'"
These were just some of the many submissions about this company. The story of Sealand is almost too bizarre for comprehension; read this April 3rd Sunday Telegraph piece for an eyebrow-wrinkling summary. All I know is, I'd like one of these passports, too, please.
Update: 06/05 13:53 by michael : Thought I'd update this with some pictures and diagrams. Nifty.
Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea, haven-wise. Other TLDs are administered by governments or private companies, so sites could still be vulnerable. If there was a TLD for Sealand, that would be one less way to deny access.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Well, I don't know too much about commodity prices, but even if the US dollar were pretty stable, it's still under the control of the US government (mostly), meaning it's really stupid for another country to tie themselves to it. In fact, currencies don't really need to be tied to commodities anymore. The US dollar isn't. It's just backed by the US government's word that it's legal tender for all debts public and private. No gold, no banannas, nothing. Of course, the US does have some gold on hand, which justifies the currency. The problem is when other countries try to tie their currency to the dollar, they have to keep reserves of US dollars. Then when there currency starts to fail, they have to "sell" the US dollars to keep their currency fixed, and then they run out and have to let the currency float a lot all at once, causing great problems. They don't need to do that and should just base it on their word but allow it to float, with some US dollars or gold to back themselves up a little bit. Oh, and global currencies aren't a good idea (even the Euro is sort of pushing it, though I can see how it may be more useful than not), but that's another story.
If other judges around the world reach the same conclusion, or are backed up by laws passed, then it may not matter how independant the servers are at Sealand - the lawyers would simply go after the site maintainers, whatever country they happen to be in, since they'd have to upload information to the Sealand servers from their own respective countries.
This about this, a small island with none of the "anti-hacker" laws. I could crack thier system, get the personal data and even reruite a few billion dollers into my bank account.
You couldn't "reruite" shit. As far as I know, they aren't running a bank.
Why the hell not, who's going to stop me, I doubt sealand going to track me and then send a sealand police force. No other goverment really has jerisdiction here either. This rocks for the crackers.
I think you can be fairly certain that the companies buying space from HavenCo will pursue you if you try to harm them. I'm not sure of the relevant laws, but I don't think that simply because the server is located out of the jurisdiction of major countries you would be safe from prosecution.
Also, this seems like kind of a good idea not taken far enough. If this island is profitable they'll just get invaded. Heck you don't need a nation to take one over. Their are plenty of billionares the could hire mercs, aritillery and missiles to take them over. This however is too good an idea not to be done.
I don't think I even need to explain how stupid this idea is.
P.S. $10 bucks says that when this happens NAPSTER will have thier own space nation.
Yep. Hell, with Napster's enormous revenue stream, they'll probably have two or three "space nations".
No, their domain would be siezed since the .com's are controlled by US Courts/Government.
Linux O Muerte!
Perhaps why the UK isn't interested in taking sealand out, is that the datahaven is really going to be a MI6 secret operation??? hmmmm - now that would be an interesting twist.
Spain and their "invincible armada" got their asses kicked by British ships that were smaller and more agile. They lost. Looking at territorial acquisitions in history the people with the biggest guns and the most troops usually win hands down until someone bigger and tougher comes along or until the natives get restless.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
With a large percentage of the world's chip production in TW, do you seriously think the US would let something like that happen?
The perception that the US is trying to give is that of neutrality. Behind the scenes, you can bet your ass that there are unseen forces at work.
The communist regime is that of fear. Just because they say they can invade Taiwan, doesn't mean that they want to do it. They know full well that if they did do it, no-one would be on their side.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
>Okay, so we can't SUE you to get you to take
>down that site, but lets say we park all of our
>warships around your island. Any of your planes
>try to take off or land, we'll consider that
>hostile. What? Okay, so when will you have the
>site offline? In an hour? Great, pleasure doing
>business with you."
That would not look very good to the United Nations....and I don't think Britain would be very happy about all those warships right off the coast just to force one website to close. It would basically be a diplomatic nightmare.
--Sam L-L
I for one, am glad to see at least someone is trying to do something about this. It's about time the market started working for the good of the public and not the good of corrupt thieves such as the MPAA and Christian Coalition.
Of course we would filter out spam. or forward it to the RTBH.
I was thinking more about the laws concerning spam. For example, It is illegal to instigate spam in many US states. (PA just passed a law making it illegal to spread virii, read outlook) If someone gets a legit account in _international waters_ and uses it to spam (or violate some copyright) then is that covered by the import/export laws? or is it covered by the laws of the country concerned? What happens if it is not a recognized country? Does that give them I-can-do-anything-I-want power?
I was hoping for a more intellegent response than Simply put, your point is irrelevant. I guess I should have made more of an argument in my first post.
* "Uncle this droid is malfunctioning" -- Luke Skywalker
So the work will be avaible to the rest of the world via the GPLed liscence and that dosn't change. Who in their right mind will go and try and sell a product for a cost when anyone can just go ahead and do it for free anywhere else. Also what happens if I decide to pirate someone's code that they stole from me and host in in Sealand? I guess you could do this ad infinitum and it might work. Also considering the reputaton this place will get who is going to buy software that automatically conjures up images of some scraggly pirate with a three cornered hat an eye patch a peg leg a hook and perhaps a bottle of rum and a couple of pirate wenches under each arm; that kind of picture will almost certainly get associated with this place.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
No big company worth their salt would host at a sketchy place like this. Storing data there would be like waving a giant flag that says "I'm guilty of something... come investigate!" And even if they did, they'd certainly never admit to it if push came to shove. They'd pull their data, run like hell, and hope Prince Roy keeps his mouth shut.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
principality-sealand.net is owned by the German company that was responsible for the short-lived invasion of Sealand (and also, as it happens, the kidnapping of the Prince of Sealand's son). Don't trust them; their business until now has mainly consisted of flogging fake Sealand passports to desparate Hong Kong families before the return of HK to China.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
John Susek
12 l3-consh-t3-l.netaxs.net (207.106.3.193) 105.847 ms 79.604 ms 52.046 ms
13 ns1.havenco.com (207.106.32.14) 47.845 ms 40.472 ms 90.635 ms
netaxs.net is the ISP ostensibly founded by Havenco "advisor" Avi Freedman. Looks like they don't have that high-speed cable out to the ol' bunker yet. Netaxs's web site seems a little outdated, however: The latest system announcements are from November 1998.
I think something smells fishy, too.
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
They are not a fraud. They really do have a
claim to independence, however flimsy it may be.
Still, they are only a bit more real than the
Kingdom of Talossa whose official ethnic food
is Taco Bell.
ITBWTCL has been available online for awhile. Great read, but I was surprised to see it being hawked for 10 bucks a pop at $BOOKSTORE.
. html
Here is a little more Stephenson that applies to the topic at hand: Laying underwater cable. You need fat fiber going to that data haven don't you?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass
Its 56 pages long but well worth the read.
-BW
If only out of respect for the people whose works are going to be ripped off by this venture, they must be stopped.
> Okay, so we can't SUE you to get you to take
:)
> down that site, but lets say we park all of our > warships around your island.
Damn. Didn't know the RIAA & MPAA even had warships yet!
Best new white rapper since Pimp Daddy Welfare... Pimp-T!
http://www.principality-sealand.net/en 00.htm
http://www.fruitsofthes ea.demon.co.uk/sealand/factfile.html
Sealand exists because it was "captured" in 1967, before the UK extended the range of its offshore authority. As a result, a British judge ruled that the UK govt. had no authority on the "island". The previous business deals which have involved the prinicipality (it's a principality due to an odd regulation stating that no one may be convicted of treason for aiding a prince in gaining his land, much like the Hutt River Province in Australia) have been a little shady, and the platform was once attacked by helicoptors sent by a business associate of "Prince" Roy.
Sealand exists in a bizarre position: I don't think the UK considers it independent, but they cannot legally do a damn thing about it.
It's already happening. Telecommunications networks are becomming more and more oriented towards the public like the phone networks are now. There comes a time where things are equal for all to use. Take the example of public sidewalks in cities. I can walk almost anywhere I want if there is a sidewalk I can walk while in posession of a big neon sign that says Fuck Bill Clinton, fuck America, and fuck religion if I prefer. Also if you have enough cash you could get a satellite launched and have it work via a wireless or shortwave network to prevent the evil government from doing bad things to you. Have it launched into geostationary orbit directly above Sealand and have an embedded webserver with maybe flashable rom or something to give updates to the comm protocol. That would make it almost bulletproof. As far as I know there isn't really any technology to demolish a satellite in orbit of the earth or we would have used it by now against other countries of the world.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
And I don't think that blowing up a helpless island would be good for the image of any country.
On the other hand, look at the Kosovo mess. Interfering in internal affairs, and blowing up large parts of a near-helpless country seems to be perfectly justifiable. The media circus surrounding it was almost exclusively positive.
Nix absolutably seriousness.
I wonder how long it takes for the spammers to bounch spam off sealand.
But, will they be liable if the last bounce is sealand?
* "Uncle this droid is malfunctioning" -- Luke Skywalker
The British Navy created them as floating islands and then sunk the pontoons causing them to sink 25ft to the bottom of the channel in that area.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
Based on that NYT article, it seems to me that a single conventional warhead will put an end to this so-called data haven.
That doesn't seem to be secure to me.
However, now that Havenco is setting
up a lucrative business, the UK might be more interested in taking
back the territory.
Dosn't the fact that Havenco is currently beyond the realm of legal jurisprudence of all countries keep it interesting and profitable?
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
>The army is disorganized and poorly
>trained and not worth a dime. <br>
<br>
What sort of crap is this, and how does it invalidate what the parent post said? Iraq's <i>army</i> drawfs the entire population of severla countries, irrespective of the incorrect description of the army size given above. Iraq is not in any way a small country.<br>
<br>
That the Swiss could beat them is extremely contenious. In what terrain? The Swiss are defensive. Their defence system is set up to utilise the landscape, etc, etc, etc. I'm not sure they'd last long in the deserts of Arabia. Iraq stood up to Iran, who were pretty damn well equippped for years.<br>
<br>
As for you question about ranson being used on the data haven, I think it's unlikely. The people at the forefront of that sort of industry would be crazy to blow their opportunities for cheap political gain - it's worth too much. but even if they did the market would provide a solution. Alternatives would pop up, etc, etc, etc<br>
Believe with me, my saplings.
.se appears to be already taken by the Swedes. .sw ? ;)
Can we now accuse them of TLD scamming? After all they should have
Karma: Good! Napster: Baad!
What's the quote, something like "The internet routes around censorship"? You might think that routing around the whole of the US is a little unlikely, but the other day there was a period of 15 minutes or so when I could not contact any US sites (from Australia). A little investigation showed that I could however contact sites all over Europe and Asia. Traffic to Europe was going through South Africa.
Americans don't have the stomach to defend taiwan. Sure we can provide naval or air support in theory but trust me nobody want's to risk world war III or a nuclear devestation in order to defend taiwan. It's all bark and no bite.
War is necrophilia.
But can someone explain to me why so? Why should the mainland regime be able to claim an offshore island nation with millions of people that has been de-facto independent for at least 45-50 years? (And prior to that was also separated from the mainland Chinese gov't for the majority of its history.) The simple fact is, the people living on the island don't seem to want to live under CCP brutality, and they have said as much. Now remove the intimidation factor and even more Taiwanese people would affirm independence. And why not, they've done well with it! That alone is reason enough that the mainland doesn't have a "right" to "unify" this island nation with force.
SEAL team my @$$. SBS would get first dibs. Look where they're located, for crissakes. Who do you suppose gets to play in the North Sea more -- NAVSPECWARDEVGRU or SBS and SAS?
Once upon a time, Team Six used to play with oil rigs out there, but the Brits are a lot handier when it comes to actual response time.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
First off, I have to say that the idea of Iraq going to the trouble of bombing a tiny island, and perhaps throwing in a little nerve gas, to boot, is rather amusing. Somehow, I don't think that military pressure is likely to be much of a problem. Even from Iraq. But, the good point is that they need network access. It seems that this might hold up for a little while...but if songs and movies start appearing there (as the blurb suggests), you can bet that all sorts of corporations will scream bloody murder. You think that won't be enough to get a quick law passed, forming a commitee to take some hedge clippers and cut their lines (which I would assume would be on that "other island.")?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Sealand is vulnerable because of its weak physical presence and dubious sovereign status. It wouldn't take much for a small private group to knock them out, much less a real government. I actually know a guy who used to do underwater demolitions in the North Sea, who could probably be talked into it just for the BANG it would make, but then I have some very weird acquaintances. And if the US got mad at them, a passing AEGIS destroyer on its way to visit some friendly Brits could just point its radar array at them and zorch most of the network uplinks. Oops, sorry. What we need instead for a datahaven is a group which is recognized as sovereign, but doesn't actually have any sovereign territory: the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
You might be more familiar with them as the Knights Hospitaler. Since Napoleon kicked them off of Malta in 1798 they haven't had any territory of their own, but they are still acknowledged as a sovereign entity, and have full diplomatic relations with several countries (putting them in the unique position of having only their embassies as native soil).
From the webpages of the US organization, at http://www.smom.org
"The Order is still recognized under international law as a "sovereign entity"; and exchanges ambassadors and diplomatic representatives with over 80 countries. On August 24, 1994, the Order was admitted to the United Nations by being granted "Permanent Observer" status. This status, similar to the status granted to the international Red Cross and other relief organization, allows the Order to participate in the discussions of the General Assembly of the United Nations."
Being a monastic order of the Catholic Church, they would undoubtedly have problems with most if not all porn, but they might be amenable to handling nice clean money and data for a cut of the profits. After all, their 900 year history includes a generous helping of literal piracy, of the fast-galleys-and-angry-men variety. Well, they prefer 'corsair' to pirate, but you get the idea. And membership in the higher ranks still requires actual noble blood, so they are likely to be very sympathetic to tax and inheritance issues.
So, if we could get the SMOM to provide the service, we could put servers in nice clean treaty-protected embassies throughout the world. Intercepting the traffic would be a violation of international law. Fun, eh?
-reemul
who has always thought that the legal precedent of the SMOM being sovereign without having any territory would be the basis for some global corps getting extranational status. Just a matter of time.
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
Hi. I'm Ryan Lackey, CTO of HavenCo.
We're all very busy dealing with actually running
our business, as well as interacting with the
press, but I figured I'd respond to some of the
questions raised here, as I'm a frequent reader
of slashdot (check out my profile)
1) How do we know it's not a hoax?
Well, look at the people involved. Within the
cypherpunks, data networking, and security industries, we're all very well known.
2) Can't you just be destroyed by an Iraqi chemical attack, wayward 747, etc, or have your
links cut?
Defense against denial of service can never be
fully accomplished, but we try very hard. HavenCo
intends to have multiple sites (do you have a
small country which wants free high-speed networking for all your citizens, in trade for
autonomy over a few acres of remote land? Contact
us!) We have up to 5 locations lined up now.
Plus, we can always set up our secure facilities
inside other people's colo sites.
We promise to not allow machines to be *compromised*, as far as confidentiality or
integrity -- if someone tries to tamper with
a service, be it a paid-off staff member, a raiding Church of Scientology commando group, or
whatever, the server's contents will be destroyed.
More info on how this will be done shall be presented at a conference this summer, and in
a white paper, by myself. How to do it is relatively well known in the crypto/tamper-resistance community, but no one
has deployed it yet.
3) Your AUP bans obscenity/etc.?
There has been a bit of internal confusion over
that.
Basically, we are planning to have sites in many
countries. Content illegal in the country in
which we have the server cannot be hosted at
the site.
For instance: Sealand. Kiddie porn is explicitly
banned, but other than that, I don't know if anything is banned. In the UK, all UK-illegal
content will be banned. In the US, same thing.
Which is why we'll be putting facilities in
*many* countries, with diverse laws.
The only things which *we* as HavenCo specifically
ban from our facilities globally are spam, network
attacks, and the like. Many of our founders have
participated in spammer hunts in the past, and
it would be hypocritical for us to offer a safe
haven for spammers.
4) These fake sites...
Principality-sealand.net and telebase.es/sealand
are run by criminals who attempted to take Sealand
by force
5) Aren't you just being paranoid?
Um, we're not *just* being paranoid, but by being
overly paranoid ourselves, our customers can
relax. Seems like a fair trade.
As a separate nation, Sealand is in a good position to qualify for its own top level domain in the same way that many other nations, both small and large, have. The owner of Sealand should contact Network Solutions and then he would have no more problems about forged sites, since his government could control a '.se' national domain or something similar if that has already gone.
The fact that the US does not recognise Sealand shouldn't be a problem, after all I believe Cuba and Taiwan have their own domains...
For all those doubters out there, Sealand does exist - stories about it have been in the UK press for ages. I personally would not trust my data, website or anything else to anything out there though, since it seems a lot of shady and dubious dealings go around in its name, not to mention your data may not be very secure with the threat of coup d'etat, kidnappings, invasion etc.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Get a bunch heavily armed "terrorists" (agents from a military unit) and have them attack or perhaps place a nice little explosive charge on the base of the pillar. The resulting explosion would take out most of the area and then sink anythink that wasn't destroyed would sink in 25 feet of water.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
The things that are most interesting to me are the military facets of this story. It mentions, for instance, that Prince Roy fired a warning shot at a British warship; with what, I ask? Does Prince Roy have a 5" cannon? Did he restore the AAA that was left since the war, then manage to get ahold of 20mm shells? I can't imagine him standing there with his Webley, making some inane "show of force".
Likewise, the HavenCo site mentions that only people connected with the project can get physical access to the island. Does that mean they'll back it up with firepower? Where are they obtaining weapons? Are they going to the local Wal-Mart, buying AR-15's, and then trying to defend the island with 30-rnd, pre-ban mags they bought off Ebay? Do they actually have a security force? How much force are they willing to exert to keep their island physically secure? Willl anyone actually sell them real guns? You'll need Stingers to keep helis from landing, or a mess of AAA, not to mention at the very least a cannon (or several) and some Harpoons for dealing with surface ships. All the well-preserved WWII AAA is, shall we say, useless.
Its immaterial, of course, since a real nation-state has real firepower, even if its only conventional. A good shelling, maybe a reasonably skilled UDT team, could render their little project moot.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Speaking of Neal Stephenson, there's a bit about his book "In The Beginning, Was The Command Line" at The MacJunkie.
- - I'm Johnny Badnote, arch-fiend, villain, slime. The public didn't like my songs and so I turned to crime. - -
Hey yeah! After all, there is that big hole down there left over from the UFO that took off in The X-Files...
Any other country would have to violate UK territorial waters to get to Sealand. So the only people who could possibly invade would be the UK. And their courts (so far) aren't touching them.
Read the nyt article and you will find this there:
To forestall some government alarm, Havenco has established an
"acceptable use" policy banning its customers from using the
service for sending the unsolicited bulk e-mail known as spam,
mounting attacks on other computer systems or trafficking in child
pornography.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
Well if this means this much to the world I assume that Sealand could get their own hired goombas to combat the ones that any country could get without it attracting attention.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
I noticed in the Guardian article (referenced above) that Prince Roy's wife... Princess Joan... is the "former Joan Collins of Essex".
Is this the same Joan Collins that used to play on Dynasty?
If so, then... sheeessh...
--
--
A PC without windows is like chocolate cake with no mustard.
Let's face it: while Sealand remained a monument to English eccentricity, the UK government has been content to leave "Prince Roy" to grow old on his little platform. (Even though he doesn't live there any more.) Pirate radio and the occasional bit of tabloid reporting isn't likely to cause any problems.
But once the colocation people move in, expect the authorities to move them out pronto. Unlike trademark law, rights of sovereignty don't go away just because they're not regularly policed.
What, me worry?
"1. You can't just go to CompUSA, buy a PC and put it in space. Space has lots of environmental problems, extremes in temperature, radiation and other forces. How do you tell your boss "the server went down because a small piece of space debris hit it, it will be approximately 3-12 months before we can bring it back up."? "
Why not? It'll be just like a server running Windows.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
At least you'll be assured your data is gaurded, I suppose
---
---
You are not what you own -- Fugazi, "Merchandise"
"Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' "
The physical location is going to exist at the sufferance of the British government. Anybody who says differently doesn't know how the Brits practice realpolitik. They're like the Israelis that way -- if something really troublesome is in that data haven, the place might just disappear.
The only way to forestall any possibility of hassles with governments is to make manifestly clear that there are copious off-site backups in undisclosed locations -- but doesn't that violates the sanctity of a data haven in the first place?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
But the FruitsOfTheSea site and the Sealandgov.com sites, which both claim to be official, don't link to each other at all.
:=))
Wrong ; you might want to read more than three sentences from websites you review before you post. The FruitsOfTheSea site is linked in sealandgov.com in the front page. It was the first official Sealand website and they say they keep it for "historical purposes".
I don't find it surprising that their servers aren't located in Sealand since they're supposed to have just brought three generators powerfull enough to handle the load of some(?) computers. As for the pictures being fake or legit and the island being big enough to host a server farm, I really don't know. It seems to be hard to get to Sealand these days. Former terrorist attacks and the high controversy of their current project obviously didn't make the royal family feel like developping the local economy with mass tourism
That your only in trouble if you get caught. That's what encryption is for. Guess what anything that is even remotely questionable is encrypted via gpg with a 4096 bit ELG key with a very long passphrase protecting the secret key.
Hence the current bill going through the UK parliment to make it a crime to refuse to hand over all of your encryption keys on the demand of a magistrate, under penalty of imprisonment.
What makes this bill really fun is that that you can be imprisoned without the police, etc proving that you ever had possesion of the keys, and them being able to demand, say all the secure keys used by an e-commerce site, not just the specific ones they need.
Let's just suppose Havenco would succeed due to two factors: the big players would not be that interested in smashing a free speech group, and enthusiastic small business would choose to use this service to fund it.
Backup on territory defined to protect your data would be a nice selling point. However you still need to move your data over encrypted channel. In a perfect world you would not even trust the hardware owners, so send it precrypted. What would be cooler way to send the data over than a channel crypted with one-time pads (or encryption derived therefrom)?
Too bad it would cost, er, way too much to send the cd-r's over there... would it? I assume they have to shop for food on the mainland, don't they?
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
I really don't completely understand the military protocols that are involved but I don't think an execution would be out of the question.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
Roy Bates, the self-styled "Prince of Sealand" is just repeating the same trick he pulled over 30 years ago when he stole the anti-aircraft rig that Sealand is to broadcast his pirate radio station from.
--
jambo
system.admin.without.a.clue
-- js.
There still needs to be some other endpoint though. For microwave this has to be more or less line of sight, which severly limits their choices (it would have to be in Great Britain, and nearby). Which means that GB could still exert a lot of pressure against the island.
As for the satellite link, this is more flexible. The other base station could be almost anywhere. However, who owns the satellite? Couldn't the country of the satellite owner exert some pressure there? Or do the Sealanders plan to launch their own satellite? Btw, as they are an independant country I wonder whether they got allocated their geosynchronous orbital positions?
Say no to software patents.
A lot of countries do that, even if it's generally not such a good idea (and it doesn't necessarily have to do with where your primary market is). In fact, that was one of the primary causes of the Asian economic crisis around 1997/98. The US dollar has at least for now replaced gold as the international currency standard.
anyone have any pictures of Sealand?
Well yes the public would know about it
It's seven miles from the coast of Suffolk, and a good pair of binoculars should let you see it in pretty good detail.
Plus any explosion would probably be heard in Colchester which is a large town quite nearby.
It would be considerably more difficult to seize the data in Sealand, where you'd need to mount a full-scale military invasion, than to seize the data in the US or the UK, where all the government needs is a search warrant.
Cheers,
-j.
I was somewhat skeptical, but Avi Freedman is listed as an advisor, assuming that this is true, I think that this could be extremely interesting.
Raj Dutt
Network Administrator
Voxel Dot Net, Inc
Raj Dutt
Network Administrator
Voxel Dot Net, Inc
Didn't one of the pages say he was once the British's youngest major? Perhaps that is where.
There's already the British law requiring computer owners to turn over decryption passwords on request
I may be wrong, but I don't think that this law has been passed yet.
This idea is little more than a few people's idea to avoid having to follow laws or respect intellectual property rights.
Millions of people routinely "disrespect" intellectual property rights now, without the aid of data havens and with no negative consequences. Why would anyone want to drop a couple grand a month for this service just to host pirated music for the gratification of leeches, especially when they could connect to Napster instead and accomplish the same goal. You apparently have no knowledge or understanding of the background of data havens.
While many may not agree with the current laws, it is not right to abandon them simply for one's own personal gain.
Why not? If you disagree with a law, why should you follow it? And where does personal gain come into the equation of whether or not to follow laws? Let's say you live under a regime which declares the group to which you belong undesirable, and decides to kill you. Would you go along with that edict simply because it's "the law" and the government can't be wrong? Or would you "abandon" that law and try to save your life? And doesn't trying to save your own life lead to "personal gain"? I could go on forever about why your thinking is wrong, but I will restrain myself.
If only out of respect for the people whose works are going to be ripped off by this venture, they must be stopped.
While we're at it, let's shut down Napster, the internet, and all BBSs. Better shut down the phone system, too, or at least outlaw modems. Then we should collect all tape recorders, VCRs, camcorders, put 'em in a pile, and burn 'em. Then to be damn sure the property rights of artists are respected, let's outlaw the ability to transcribe music. Wouldn't want anybody copying down a melody someone else wrote. And for that matter, let's rid the world of writing instruments, so pirates can't copy books. Once again, I could go on like this forever, but you should get the point. Your thinking, if I can call it that, is enormously flawed.
Hey, it's the Swiss bank of data...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
First off, its an island, not an island nation
By looking at the current gov't and level of corruption, i'd say that its been 45-50 years too long for some change.
the people living on the island don't seem to want to live under CCP brutality
I know numerous people from Taiwan, and they all agree (with some reservation) that Taiwan going back to China is a GOOD thing.
And why not, they've done well with it!
Again, looking at the level of corruption, do the people really have a vote?
That alone is reason enough that the mainland doesn't have a "right" to "unify" this island nation with force.
The bottom line is, that Taiwan is NOT an independent nation. And yes, China does have every right to unify its "province". Of course, preferably without force. But, I honestly don't think it will come to that.
I understand some people have a very strong opinion on this issue, as do I. But, I don't feel that the US should intervene in this situation.
-Leader of the Free Peoples - http://mobgroup.net
(FWIW, I'm CTO of HavenCo, and responsible for the buildout of the datacenter on Sealand)
We actually have all the equipment needed to get
operational *onsite* right now.
Please remember that Sealand has been occupied
continuously since 24 December, 1966 by the
Royal Family, and they've done quite a bit of
work over the years to make sure the place is
quite suitable.
Operational IP to Sealand exists, but we're not
publishing until we get the second link up. We
will be using a network of caches to maximize
throughput.
We can always use more money, both in investment
and customer revenues, but that's primarily to
increase capacity to serve more customers.
You mentioned the oil industry -- sure, to do things the official way through the offshore oil
industry would cost >$50m if you were starting with an abandoned platform. However, if you're
using a facility almost purpose-built for
secure coloation, with a great deal of infrastructure already in place, which has been
maintained by dedicated professionals for years,
it's a lot cheaper. Plus, we're using commodity
equipment, open source software, and vendor
partnerships to lower the cost on the Internet/server side.
You don't need to trust us; you can just wait
a week or two and see for yourself.
"the law" is not an absolute. Laws are human constructs, subject to human imperfections. They are transient.
Do you really want to be drowned for witchcraft, just because you are in possession of a device which qualifies as sorcerous (like, say, a television...)?
Unjust laws deserve to be broken. Outdated laws should be repealed.
Some French spies blew up the Greenpeace flagship. Nowadays Greenpeace has something of a fleet and France took (IMHO) a publicity hit. I wonder whether they'd pull something like that again.
Any kind of accident is always possible with a single location. A distributed nation effort would have a better reliability, but it would be extremely difficult to form due to personal and ideological conflicts. A distributed alliance of micro-nations might be worth a thought, however.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
There are some restrictions on data storage that are a good thing, namely those that (ostensibly) prevent large corporations and governments from amassing excessive, over-intrusive or incorrect data. I do not think that pornographers and terrorists are the principal threat that HavenCo represents: I am much more afraid that big companies will use it to store information in ways that would be flagrantly illegal in their own countries. As big business accrues ever more power and autonomy, I see less and less comfort in HavenCo's bland ideal that "individuals and groups engaging in unsavory activities will be publicly admonished in a world where communications are free" [HavenCo FAQ].
There was a piece on a show that was on NPR this afternoon (the show was "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me") about Sealand. They just lost a case in which they had attempted to purchase some heavy military weaponry. The "country" is an abandoned oil-platform off the coast or something like that...
To think that they're serious is, well...intriguing.
P.
It could happen.
I HERE BY ANNOUNCE THE CREATION ON THE LAND OF "SLASHDOTONIA." All slashdot members will be issued passports and there will be free beer for everyone and all the nekkid chick, or guys(your prefrence), that you can handle. WOO HOOOOOOO, LONG LIVE SLASHDOTONIA!!
Beer.
okay, this just occured to me..... that LL Cool J movie, about the Shark's that were "intelligent". Can't remember the name. anyway, there was a concerte tower in the middle of the ocean used in that movie......could that be sealand?
It hasn't. And there's pressure from business on the government not to as it would damage Britain's internet trade.
You can read about that here
"Information wants to be paid"
I believe that their Internet connectivity was done through satellite or microwaves or something, which obviously means that there is no physical connection. So if the ISP in London (which they're currently planning on using, I believe) decides that they don't like them, they should be able to get an ISP elsewhere in London, or in Leeds, or in Paris, or in Moscow, or in Tokyo, or in Canberra, or anywhere else in the world that will agree to connect them.
Once they've got a connection somewhere (even if the US tried to pressure people not to deal with them, there will be at least *one* country who will do it, even if just for spite), then they should be able to connect to the Internet at large (unless the political wars start heating up, and the Internet splits in two). They might lose their precious 3 millisecond latency, though.
At that point, they become invincible.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
www.havenco.net, ns1.havenco.net, and www.sealandgov.com are all the same server at the same IP address which, according to a traceroute, appears to be in Pennsylvania, several thousand miles from the Principality of Sealand.
http://www.fruitsofthesea.demon.co.uk/sealand/ is cited as the "real" website for Sealand in this article which exposes the fake website which sells fake passports. But the FruitsOfTheSea site and the Sealandgov.com sites, which both claim to be official, don't link to each other at all.
sealandgov.com claims you can know it is the 'real' website because they are not selling anything. (See their FAQ, second to last question.) Umm.. what about all that colocate space you're pushing??
sealandgov.com and havenco.net were both registered on the same day, *less than a week ago*.
Although http://www.principality-sealand.net/540.htm is pretty clearly a fake, the pictures seem to be legit. Check out the pictures of the "island". Where exactly do you place a server farm? According to the Guardian article (link above) it is under 1000 square yards in size. That's smaller than a football field.
As someone else mentioned, the cast of characters is rather.. odd. Did The NY Times contact any of these people to verify this story?
Mostly because to get to it, they'd have to pass through British territorial waters, something I doubt our beloved government would tollerate. Actually, Sealand has relatively few potential military threats. The UK is one of the safest nations in the world. It has a disproprtionately well equipped military for the size of population, compared to just about any other country in the world. If we treat every nation as hostile to the UK, there are only two that actually pose a real threat -- the USA and Russia. Although others (e.g., China, Iraq, etc.) have armies more than large enough to overrun the UK, only the two I mentioned actually have to capability to get sufficient numbers physically to the UK to cause a problem. The UK would defend Sealand far more readily (as part of the defense of it's own territorial waters) than it would let a foreign nation attack Sealand.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
The native inhabitants of Sealand are the Seamen.
They have very peculiar demographics and an even stranger culture. Their population reproduces very quickly, but this is to balance out the devastating effects of their cultural tradition. You see, once every few weeks the many of the Seamen go swimming across the Fallopian Channel in a massive exodus, lured by native myths about making it to a "promised land." Only one of the Seamen ever makes it across the Fallopian Channel alive, and the rest all drown.
The Seamen reproduce quickly, and this cycle of death continues again.
>This fella is one of the Financial Cryptography folks in Anguilla,
:-)], and that happened mostly because he did something especially cool on cypherpunks, (can't remember what, maybe it was fully-indexed cypherpunks list archives?) and I comped him a conference badge and a room in Willies' Inn, (such as it was) for his trouble.
:-).
:-)]
:-), which, some people note, is the way it should be, anyway.
;-).
>along with Vince Cate. Some of the folks who sponsor the FC
> symposia include Zero Knowledge, E-Gold, and Hushmail.
Yes, well...
As the, um, actual founder of same, I should note Ryan actually "interned" at FC98 [the one with the solar eclipse over the volcano's ashcloud
Also, I should note that Ryan also did the "protocols" presentation at my Philodox Symposium on Internet Bearer Transaction Settlement the following year, and, as a result of that, got himself a job slinging code for Ian Grigg and the e-gold folks for most of the following year in Anguilla.
Unfortunately, his job for e-gold was to do an implementation of Wagner Blinding, which, sad to say, he didn't actually do, and which he followed by getting himself deliberately kicked off Anguilla as persona non grata so that he didn't have to come back and finish.
[BTW, Ben Laurie, of Apache SSL fame, actually *did* just finish Wagner blinding for Lucre, and, it appears, he's going to talk about it at the Edinburgh Financial Cryptography Engineering Conference (run code or go home, and all that), which will be held in, um, Edinburgh, on June 23rd and 24th.
Now, I like Ryan a lot, both personally, and in a prodigal, "infant terrible", kind of way, and, unlike a lot of people who probably have reason to say such things, I think he's going to make something happen this time with Havenco. I was, frankly, floored when I heard about it, and I laughed for hours afterward at the sheer audicity of the idea, so it's definitely a good one, on that score alone.
I also like Sameer, who has a proven track record in starting crypto- and privacy- companies, c2.net, for instance, and certainly has the credentials worthy of the above quoted praise.
Nonetheless, I do think that the idea of "privacy-" or "data-havens", per se, and "regulatory arbitrage", in particular, is, mostly, a waste of time. Okay. To be charitable, a stopgap measure at best.
Just like they did in Switzerland, and, even, Anguilla, FinCEN et. al. will legislate "privacy" away, and just because they *can*, to use the ribald expression, leaving us nothing but *cryptography* on the internet, preferrably financial cryptography
Still, Ryan and Sameer are out there, hanging it out, while lots of people just talk about it, and, Sameer, of course, is famous for *doing* things other people just talk about.
And, I should note, finally, that we have all *kinds* of money being raised spent on things of what some people consider to be technology of dubious efficacy. So-called "certification authorities", for instance, which, like all hierarchical schemes on a geodesic internetwork, "trust management" or otherwise, are simply a waste of time. Hell, we even have watermarking companies getting funded when the only thing you can tell from such a thing is who you "stole" the item *from* -- not who "stole" it. I even hear tell of so-called "bearer transaction" companies getting money these days
So, in it's own spirit of "because they can", go forth, Havenco, and, heh, replicate.
I still chuckle when I think about Ryan & Co, out there in a horizontal-rain force-blabla Beaufort-scale North Sea gale, making the world safe for the four horsemen of the infocalypse...
Cheers,
Robert Hettinga
Founder,
DCSB, The International Conference on Financial Cryptography (FCXX), IFCA (*I* say so), Philodox, IBUC, EFCE (kind of), yadda, yadda, yadda...
---------- Financial Crypto is the Only Crypto That Matters
SEALAND STATE CORPORATION was formed under a Charter that gives the Corporation total authority under its Board of elected Senators to administer and to govern the island.
This is the first example that I've seen (aside from maybe Cuervo Island) where a piece of land is ruled outright by a corporation. What wonderful checks and balances they must consider when deciding the bottom line, and therefore what they do to the environment, residents, other countries, even other companies.
If they truly are "beyond reach" who is to say that they won't start dilluting the Linux name (since they can't really be sued.)
- passion
What about Serbia? AFAIK, there are (or were) McDonalds restaurants in Belgrade. While it wasn't a "war", we have bombed Belgrade.
Yes, they determine their own morals. IP is questionable to many people, but murder seems to be somewhat different as it clearly interferes with someones right to live, etc. Natural IP rights are arguable for many people, but murder is not. Yes, they determine their own morals but the vast majority will abandon them quickly if they support murderers. As for good and bad, maybe anything that interferes with anothers right to life, liberty, etc. is naturally bad.
As were we all.
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Not AFAIK.
Battleships are kinda obsolete in modern warfare, as they're big, slow, and filled with guns that dont go as far as missiles.
I really dont think that even the US would consider a military assault on a tiny man made island 6 miles off the coast of a nuclear power and ally just because they've got some websites and newsgroups with Natalie Portman piccies and a few anti-China web sites.
--
--
Andy
Is Sealand recognized by the United States? If a nation is not recognized as independent by other nations, it can't do much good.
Additionally, how do we know other nations cannot interfere with Sealand? Even a tiny nation like Iraq could take over the island with a few gunboats and some chemical gases.
Furthermore, Sealand, although independent, is still at the mercy of external controls. The fiber lines can be cut, network traffic can be intercepted, etc...
And what about political pressure? Say the US government doesn't like it. It can pressure Sealand to enact controls by threatening to block US business access to the haven ( a significant portion of their market ) by passing a law (which would be quite constitutional, I think)
Yes, but international law prohibts nations using the expansion of their territorial waters to lay claim to land...
Also, I really dont think this is as big an issue as people seem to think it is...
--
--
Andy
"...an oil-rig type structure in the sea". Pretty much. It's a "Maunsell fort", which is one of these. I'd be surprised if a mighty fleet were required to take it. There's more about sea forts here, and about unrecognised little island states, if you're interested.
Why is there not mention of a sattelite link? What happened to those Iridium sattelites? If they cool link up with whatever company was buying the Iridium Sattelites, or at perhaps lauch some of their own (ie via one of the commercial companies that launches rockets) they could sell proprietary hardware to link with the sattelites...jamming is a possibility, but only locally. There are international regs controlling this. As long as they obey international law with regards to signal transmission, they should be alright
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
You still need to connect to the Internet right?
;).
It's trivial to blockade even if you have more than a handful of ISPs. They can censor you indefinitely that way.
Your site is already easy to blockade in 3 dimensions - ships, airplanes (I'd say submarines, but I hear the sea there is shallow).
You'd better have the media and public supporting you... Not sure if the toothless 5 nation dominated United Nations will do anything to help you.
No ISP is an island
Cheerio,
Link.
Or every small country with destroyers and Atlantic access is going to picnic on yer lawn.
Maintaining the physical security of the Sealand fortress and HavenCo facility is of utmost importance to our success. Our business, personal reputations and financial bottom line, and that of all our customers, could be compromised in the event that a careless or malicious entity were to ship equipment to us that was altered to include a bomb or eavesdropping device. We don't like these precautions any more than you do, but this is the reality that we face in an increasily hostile world.
Although I agree thay phsical security as well as systems integrity is paramount in todays electronic environment. Taking measures this stiff is along the lines of James Bond films. These folks won't even let you bring in your own hardware. So is it a true COLO? From perusing the related HavenCo pages it appears that along with secure services, they also have quite a lockdown on content provided as well as a strong hold on how the hosted sites are run. I could see needing a facility like this to house some business critical warehousing, but that would be about it. I think the leasing arrangements and the spylike security will also come with a huge pricetag. If you spend all thismoney and house your site there, you still can't see or visit the facilities. Seems a bit paranoid to me.
I've always thought pornography to be illegal in any country - but that the definition of what constituted pornography changed.
:)
Thus in England, we have strict rules that say an erect penis is phrongraphic and therefore banned wheras in Holland it's not pornographic and therefore not banned.
Maybe I'm just being pedantic
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
The Principality of Sealand was destroyed today in a tragic special effects accident. During the filming of Das Boobs, a German remake of the shortlived Operation Petticoat series, several torpedos intended for a fake cardboard convoy missed their target. The torpedos ran up on a beach and deconstructed all infrastructure in the tiny principality
A spokes person from the MPAA said oops!
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
o The Principality of Sealand's actual web site is www.sealandgov.com. Any other site which claims to be the web site for the government of Sealand is making a false claim. The web site at www.fruitsofthesea.demon.co.uk was the official site until the recent HavenCo launch, at which point we moved the official site for the government of Sealand to www.sealandgov.com
o Prince Roy is an upstanding individual and has not been involved in the shady schemes using the name of Sealand. A number of shady individuals have been forging Sealand passports and selling them. Recently a number of these shady individuals, who had been acting without the consent of the government of Sealand, have been arrested in Spain for falsifying documents. Sealand does not sell passports.
o Our AUP isn't very clear. =( The AUP states that content illegal in the jurisdiction of the "server" is prohibited. Our AUP was written with the future plan of building datacenters in multiple jurisdictions in mind. If you, as a HavenCo customer, host your content at the HavenCo sealand datacenter, the only content regulation which applies to your content as it relates to our AUP is the Sealand prohibition on child pornography. Sealand has no regulations prohibiting any content other than child pornography.
Thank you. I hope that clears up the questions raised here. We are all very busy dealing with the press barrage, so I apologize if there are questions that remain unanswered.
--
Sameer Parekh
Chairman
Havenco, Ltd.
I couldn't help but notice that tiny Sealand is on the east coast of England. To gain notoriety/respect I suggest that they do what we've all been wishing someone to do for a long time and invade France. They could sweep through the low countries with little difficulty and be in Paris by bastille day... Yeah, this is flamebait ;-)
--
Nothing to see here. Mooooove along...
We can also store data that is too dangerous to store anywhere else, like Barbara Streissand MP-3s. :)
There was a story a while back on the P of Sealand. It talked of a scam where some internet site was selling passports or somewhat for the PoS. Then some idiot who got caught robbing a bank or something tried to claim diplomatic immunity. It didn't work.
This would suggest to me that nobody recognises this PoS, and certainly the UK gov't will be pressured to take them down if any offensive (to the corps) material is hosted there.
---
I like the fact that unless you can prove you've forgotten the keys, or lost the keys or never had them, they can slap you in gaol for 2 years....
Maybe it'd be a suitable 'ask slashdot' question?
"How does one prove the forgetting of data?"
hohum
troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
I thought countries ended around 25km up in the air so that space is free for everyone (like antartica). I guess they could launch their own satellite without to much problem, unless the UN decides not to let them and uses that as a violation to kill them or something.
you stole my idea!! I'm gonna get my MPAA and RIAA lawyers and hunt you down like a fox!!! I want my free nation!! ;)
"I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that the United States does not recognize the Principality of Sealand,"
- Walter Deering, Miami special agent-in-charge of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
See also: Source of quote
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
Antarctica wouldn't be very good, not just because of the climate, but also the isolation. Getting anything there in the winter months is almost by definition more trouble than it's worth. A satelite link would probably be too unreliable, and laying down a ground cable, too expensive.
Basically, the only way someone would build such a dodgy idea would be if they were government funded. Only a goverment could waste so much money on a concept that might fail. Which, of course, defeats the whole purpose.
--Dead Lesbian Witches! Think about it!
P.S. IIRC parts of Antarctica are claimed by several nations with claims overlapping. But by treaty, they agree not to talk about it. And USA doesn't recognise any of the claims because they were too slow to make one of their own.
-Dead Lesbian Witches! Think about it!
>>>
:(
I like the fact that unless you can prove you've forgotten the keys, or lost the keys or never had them, they can slap you in gaol for 2 years....
>>>
Which is great is you *are* a criminal. "30 years for murder if these encrypted messages are opened? Or 2 years for failure to disclose my key? Hmm..."
On the other hand, Joe Public who encrypts his letters to his SO 'cause they're a bit raunchy, and genuinely *has* forgotten his passphrase (OK, so that's fairly stupid, but...) can get 2 years for forgetfulness and the police being interested in the wrong piece of 'evidence'.
Proving that you don't have something is impossible - you can only fail to prove that you do have it, which all goes to show that it's a very *silly* law, even before you start looking at how *wrong* it is.
That's without even considering what a fundamental attack on the 'innocent until proven guilty' premise it is
Regards,
Tim.
What comes next: Flying data haven? Potato powered server launched into space on amateur rocket?
Read the full story at http://www.nationalgeo.com /infocentral/answer/gya9903.html
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
Based on my reading (IANAL, but a friend of mine is and he specialises in this type of thing :) - while it is a part of Malaysia and (sorta) under Malaysian laws, it's also its own separate environment, duty free and so on. It's one of the best places to set up in.
:)
If you read in some detail, you may note that if you pay RM20,000 per year (about US$5,000) then you don't have to do anything more, no matter how much you might earn. Think about it
Anyhow, like I said, if you're wanting to set up a real off-shore operation, check out Labuan. It's a real place with real laws but enough extensions that you can operate "offshore" from practically everywhere. Sealand seems more suited for political content, risky kind of stuff - not businesses.
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
it's relatively simple to kill sealand. what can't be killed is a distributed federation of sealands. what is required for this stuff to work is for citizens of other countries to become citizens of sealand and operate mirror sites as 'embassies' of sealand. the more heads the hydra has...
on the other hand, i'm not particularly impressed by sealand's declaration of sovereignty. what if the u.s. decides to call it a rogue nation? it wouldn't take much, in terms of precedence, to turn u.s. sentiment against it and shut it down with a weekend military intervention.
fault-tolerant
the swiss have a data haven of their own: www.mount10.com the site info is in german though..
In the UK, all UK-illegal content will be banned.
Does this include all useful crypto (according to the RIP bill) ? I can already buy reliable non-pr0n hosting on the UK mainland, but I'd still like somewhere that didn't have the RIP problem. If you aren't going to help with that, then why don't I just host in Switzerland or Andorra ?
gui came from Xerox PARC
>kiddie porn or murder. Now both of these acts >are in and of themselves Not true, there is no such thing as an act that is inherently bad. It's all a matter of cultural perspective. Which is why this whole Sealand thing works. They can do whatever they want when they're in a place where they determine the law, values, and norms of that culture.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
This may be a great idea and all, but since it's not really a part of any other country, what's to stop someone from blowing the place up... no fear of retalliation... sure it may not be the 'right' thing to do, but since when do governments care about that?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Bit of a long way from Iraq! (check your world atlas...)
I think these folks have probably got away with their independent nation status game because at the end of the day not a lot of politicians or military people are that bothered by a bunch of eccentric individuals squatting a 50 year old gun platform a few miles out in the sea.Now if they get their data haven up and running and it starts making a bit of money, or possibly hosting material that UK law doesn't like, then it'll be interesting to see what happens. Maybe the UK will send a tug boat or a small frigate with half a dozen sailors or summink.
I guess while the place itself is apparently outside UK territorial waters, the UK could always say they want their scrap metal back : the gun platform, ie. the actual dry land of Sealand. That could be interesting.
I don't think any other country is really going to kick up a fuss as it's off the shores of the UK and I can't see Belgium or the Netherlands really being that bothered...
Hey, as long as they don't do anything dodgy, good on them! Squatting the platform and declaring nation status kind of shows up how stupid a lot of the concepts of nationality really are.
Sunday evening, the night before the NY Times HavenCo story, Fox ran a Simpsons rerun. Homer, while housesitting for Mr. Burns, takes his friends on Burns' yacht to international waters. Why? Because it is Sunday morning, and Springfield law prohibits beer sales before 2:00 PM. Homer convinces Moe that "there are no laws" in international waters (conveniently marked with floating signs), so Moe can sell beer without legal trouble. Moe does, and they party. They taunt the coast guard, lurking just inside the signs, bet on monkey knife fights, and enjoy their legal freedom--until pirates show up. The pirates gather Homer and his guests into a net, dump them overboard, and loot the yacht. The coast guard cannot help, of course--no legal authority. The next day, I read the NY Times article. Remember, this was a rerun. Is Matt Groening an undisclosed sponser of HavenCo?
But what about the things we are fighting for in the rest of the world, like privacy?
Doubleclick or others could just put their databases out there and we couldn't touch them.
(If the theory about Sealand being a sovereign nation holds through of course)
-- Andreas
I would love to live there...
Sure, and didn't you hear... Microsoft has The Bomb
Did anybody else think of Wyndham's "The Chrysalids" when they read this?
The best thing that Sealand offers is a proof point against the current corp perspective that things can go their way--the MPAA's reach can in fact extend to lyrics.ch, the FBI to germany and the philippines, DVDCCA to germany, and so forth. But will there always be some country unwilling to cooperate with most other govs and corps? Yes, seen here.
;)
As to whether the Royal Family of sealand is smoking crack and selling passports is another story, but fortunately not relevant to the point
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
...that the NYT article may have it right that the "paper trail", and interaction with the world's finacial markets would make it difficult for criminals to get away with crime more easily by using this service.
However, it's the ultimate protection against lawsuits against the ISP for hosting supposedly offensive materials. Individuals will not suddenly be free of liability for their actions. They'll still be subject to the laws where they reside. BUT, they won't have to worry about some spineless ISP dropping their content without notice simply because they got a threatening letter from a corporate lawyer.
This seems to be particularly appropriate just off the coast of Great Britain...
- StaticLimit
No offence, but most of this "free speech" people seems to be advocating is just plain old "breaking the law".
The same Taiwan with the 2nd largest Marine Corps in the WORLD? (USA has the largest). Not that they're better than Army Rangers, but I do respect Marines 'cause they're some BAD doodz!!
Rangers Lead the Way!
The mafia in terms of a Sicilian crime family may no longer be so influential in the underworld- rather than being dismantled, they have for the most part merged made themselves "legitmate" (real estate, police, etc.) and now simply use the law as a method of harrsement. This also applies to the Triad, CIA, etc.
Its class warfare, just as its always been dude. Its just not so obvious to the masses since theyve mostly been brainwashed.
Have you tried to change the laws recently? As an activist, I can assure you, there are forces at work that most definately not working in your interest, and are making sure it stays that way.
Yes, the only things that they explicitly state that you can't do are a) spam and b) "Attempts to subvert, disrupt, damage, or misuse data, data traffic, network users, or equipment."
Then, in the very next paragraph;
Sounds like they'll kick you out if you're serving porn and your server came from Saudi Arabia, or if you're posting warez and come from the USA. Though, even if they don't observe the laws of the server-originating country, there's always the might-makes-right argument...
"Okay, so we can't SUE you to get you to take down that site, but lets say we park all of our warships around your island. Any of your planes try to take off or land, we'll consider that hostile. What? Okay, so when will you have the site offline? In an hour? Great, pleasure doing business with you."
--- http://foo.ca
So, if you do anything to threaten their network connectivity, like make data available there that the upstream (or someone paying the upstream) finds objectionable, *POOF*, you are gone.
Good idea, poor implementation until they can "hide" their network connectivity.
And if you don't agree,
You can all just kizmiaz!
> just some sod Major who happened to stumble upon it
/accept that.
>Hardly royalty.
Excuse me, but that's how it works. And at least he didn't do anything violent to anyone (AFAIK).
Old way:
"But who made you King?"
WHAMWHAMWHAM!
"I did, and everyone else agrees, right?"
(everyone doesn't dare say a thing, esp if there are hulking family/clan/gang members around)
And so far, they seem to have fought off other claimants to the throne, which does bestow some respectability - it shows that at least someone else _really_ wants that throne.
They didn't just want to steal stuff, they wanted his throne.
You can say you're King over Navelfluffland for all anyone cares. You'll move from crazy wacko to King only when there are enough people who believe
Cheerio,
Link.
The way to free information is not run beyond the reaches of law, but to distribute it so that for each site that closes, another two spring up
A quick question, the law may not be able to touch them, but they can cut the connection to the rest of the world can they not?
Plus, Prince Roy says he expanded Sealand's territorial waters to 18 miles right before the U.K. extended theirs to 12 :)
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
Sealand really is a joke by all accounts. Someone enlighten me if there are any reasons they should be taken even a little bit seriously....thanks.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
Thought makes me shudder...
_____________
He who fights and runs away,
I think you're confusing 'pornographic' and 'obscene'. A great deal of pornography is legally produced and consumed in the UK every day (much like Tunnock's Caramel Wafers).
The only thing explicitly banned from posession in the UK is child pornography (or, I believe, anything which *looks* to be, but I could be wrong on that).
There are restrictions (a total ban?) on the publication and distribution of *obscene* material. Thankfully, the law doesn't explicitly state what is and isn't obscene (we'd need to re-write the law with every generation (at least!)), but defines it in terms of what a representative jury would regard as obscene (I think the actual definition mentions "likely to corrupt and deprave"). Therefore *each case* needs to be brought to court for it to be decided whether or not the material in question is actually obscene or not.
(Clubs and Vice (I think it's them) allegedly tend to use this fact to confiscate anything *they* think is objectionable. Your typical small sex shop or specialist importer can't afford to go to court over a single item, or even a case of items, so they just take the hit of the confiscation and don't bother getting charged.)
The 'erect penis' myth was based on the fact that no case had ever passed an image of an erect penis as *not* being "likely to corrupt and deprave" (go figure!), so standard legal advice was to *assume* that such image would always be ruled 'obscene'. I understand that fairly recently a case was brought in which a contrary ruling was made, but it's always on a case-by-case basis - there's no legal precedent set by a decision either way, AIUI.
Regards,
Tim.
pronoblem
The island bunker
with hundreds of servers
is sick-bay not bay
I see three major flaws in this plan:
1. Governments could ban access to certian subnets pretty easily - just treatening major backbone providers (and anyone else with lines running out of the country) to block the IPs would bring about a ban quite quickly. The upstream providers of HavenCo could also be attacked or otherwise forced to discontinue service.
2. There is also the little issue of security. I've got no doubts that HavenCo is confident in their own security (and it sounds like they've got quite the gun towers), but honestly, it isn't hard to surround and seige an island. Not only are they out of government juristiction, but they are out of government protection. Anyone with a boat and a strong will could take the place over and they'd be out in the cold because there are no police or airforce or anybody except themselves when it comes to protection!
3. Finally, there is the little detail of the people responsible for the content on HavenCos servers. A sniffer could easily log the IPs of incoming IPs then, they could be hunted down. In fact, the systems wouldn't really need to be cracked in a hostile manner. The government could hire a free agent to get an account, then put up a sniffer after cracking a few accounts.
There is always DDoS too!
I guess there is also the minor risk of nuclear bombing, but I doubt they'd really need to worry about it.
First you say that we are trying to avoid laws--but Sealand doesn't have these laws, so I won't be avoiding them.
Oh wait, you mean, I'm trying to avoid the laws of MY country by hosting in a DIFFERENT country. Kind of like when artists move to Ireland to avoid US taxes. Or Jews moving to the US to avoid Nazis. Yeah, you're right, that kind of thing should be stopped.
If only out of respect for the government's right to steal our money. If only out of respect for the government's right to perform medical experiments on human beings.
Let's just forget about people who think these "rights" a little less than self-evident.
(To those of you who don't know what the word "analogy" means, no, I am not "equating" genocide with liberated music.)
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Now we just need hundreds of tons of Nazi gold and some World War II flashbacks, and we'll be in business.
I'll be interested to see what they mean by that. If they're going to be hosting sites fro free-speach reasons, that's one thing. To traffic in stolen property makes them pirates. We'll see how long that holds up... The Napster/metallica stuff might put them on a poor footing, foreign-relations wise. Imagine if they are declared to be a "rogue state."
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The people doing the buying may or may not have been the same people that have beens selling fake passports, but in any case none of them have any connection to Sealand. - Avi
I want to start a country, and claim my waters extend 10,000 km. Assuming I remember right, that should be almost the entire world. Does anyone find it extremely stupid a country can just claim waters? Shouldn't they have to either occupy the waters, like they do with land, or else get allocated, say, 5 miles, period, for each country?
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Um...send troups by train? That's really, really clever, except the fact they'd have problems getting though customs. Plus, one well placed bomb could render the French very wet.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
According to How to start your own country, he spent over $ 1.5 million in legal fees to clarify the legal position of his country vis-a-vis the UK. Hardly a "pathetic wanker", then, at least in the financial realm.
He apparently made that money in pirate radio stations operated on ships, so he had a lot of solid background in this before starting.
Personally, I feel real admiration for the guy - he had the guts to do what many people dream of.
D
----
According to How to start your own country, the main reference I know of on Sealand, the UK government felt strongly enough about the dangers inherent in Sealand clones to blow up the remaining platforms.
D
----
It's all well and good to have your data safe and sound on some island fortress, but what happens if their link to the rest of the world goes down? The have to use Satelites or microwave towers or fiber cables or something to link to the rest of the world. All of those links are owned by someone outside. What happens when they are forced to shut down? Your data may still be safe, but you aren't going to be able to get at it...
-- Your Servant,
Your Servant, B. Baggins
I was largely skeptical of the Sealand datahaven until I read that Ryan Lackey was the CTO.
This fella is one of the Financial Cryptography folks in Anguilla, along with Vince Cate. Some of the folks who sponsor the FC symposia include Zero Knowledge, E-Gold, and Hushmail.
I don't know about you guys, but when one of that trust-web is involved in something to do with liberty/cypherpunk/finance, I lend it more credence.
Yes, large numbers of people set their own moral standards for their society. There is an arguement for inalienable human rights though. The problem with those rights is that not everyone respects them so one must continually defend them. Socially, you are probably right; morals are set by the majority (or louder minority), but it pleases me to think there are innate rights (from which morals like dont kill others come from) that every human has.
There once was a place known as Sealand
A haven indeed was to be planned
Get bandwidth allotted
Soon they'll be slashdotted
Love that country, 'cause Napster won't be banned!
Of course the onshore receivers for the microwave transmitters would have to comply (assuming that they'll be in the UK: ISTR microwave transmitters work on the line of sight).
HavenCo is donating free colocation space to Non-Governmental Organizations of our choosing. In general, the types of organizations that we will want to provide hosting for are those that promote
Among other groups, Freenet have expressed interest in getting a large Freenet node hosted there (of course, that's very preliminary, and was just posted to freenet-chat a couple hours ago). Between Freenet and HavenCo, this is an exciting time for free speech and the Internet.
That really is annoying as hell, I was sure I was the first one to have the idea of a tech-haven... If only I were 4 years older, had a couple million dollars, had some land from a European country, found my motivation, and had a lot of technolog-minded friends, people would be hearing about my new country instead. ninjawhoreior "We got in a fight and she fell off a building."
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
If we treat every nation as hostile to the UK, there are only two that actually pose a real threat -- the USA and Russia.
What about France? It has nuclear weapons and they can send troops even by train. Of course, it's Mutual Assured Destruction, but under your conditions, it would be a threat.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Only authorized persons directly involved in the HavenCo project are permitted to land on the island.
I'm sure a team of Navy SEALS could take care of that :)
------
Not a typewriter
http://www.cyperspace.org
contains some technical details/designs that give some more insight into how, from a technical standpoint, this concept could have been implemented. quite a fascinating read, especially with the whole havenco story.
...sie sind nicht grün
Never in history have two countries been at war with eachother that at that time had McDonalds establishments. Which means that if you open a McDonalds in the Principality of Sealand, the US couldn't possibly go to war against them.
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
The article suggests that a secure data haven could be used to keep goods outside the jurisdiction of one's country, thus preventing e-mails or other information from being subpoenaed. I have to wonder how much security this really offers. Others have brought up the prospect of nations declaring war on Sealand (or simply cutting them off, telecom-wise), but wouldn't it be simpler for them to declare war on the owner of the data? There's already the British law requiring computer owners to turn over decryption passwords on request; how far is this from making it a crime not to turn over all one's data, regardless of physical location?
A properly secured data haven could obscure how much and what one had there, but it seems it would be almost impossible to completely hide the list of clients and at least the extent of their holdings -- especially if they charge by the Mb.
- Michael Cohn
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Data havens will happen, but not at Sealand. There is far too much shady history tainting Sealand, and, other than a few amateur porn sites and "l33t d00dz" warez sites, no real investor will even think of storing secure data there.
Further, would terrorists locate their sites there? And outfits like Cult of the Dead Cow, who might benefit from migrating to a data haven? Would you trust your sensitive data to a location that the government (in this case, the UK government) might seize at any moment?
When real money builds a data haven in waters that are truly outside the jurisdiction of any nation (or in space, one day?), then we will look back at this Sealand escapade and laugh, and admire (yet again) the vision of Neal Stephenson.
As a last aside, what types of organizations _would_ legitimately benefit from the resources of a data haven? Do we _want_ thugs, punks, and criminals to be protected?
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Well, there you have it. They are going to host web sites that intentionaly piss off France, and only France.:-) The Brits will conveniently find some excuse to extend their defenses to the Sealanders who have ancestral links back to the old homeland. But there is still the Germans to consider as one of Zeldman's Failed Ads attests to.
This about this, a small island with none of the "anti-hacker" laws. I could crack thier system, get the personal data and even reruite a few billion dollers into my bank account.
Why the hell not, who's going to stop me, I doubt sealand going to track me and then send a sealand police force. No other goverment really has jerisdiction here either. This rocks for the crackers.
Also, this seems like kind of a good idea not taken far enough. If this island is profitable they'll just get invaded. Heck you don't need a nation to take one over. Their are plenty of billionares the could hire mercs, aritillery and missiles to take them over. This however is too good an idea not to be done.
If I had the money or brains to do it I'd make my nation completely virtual. What about servers you say? Space!!!!! Sent up satilites and make them servers. I know we can't do this yet, but NASA did just make a satilite that we could ping. In five years well see nations with servers in space. No other nation can claim they own them. And envations a little tricky. Seeing as how you can't physicaly steal a statilite. Only wrestel control.
P.S. $10 bucks says that when this happens NAPSTER will have thier own space nation.
Do not wright in this space.
I'm torn...
Normally, I'd think this is just an unethical way of getting around laws, and for that reason should be squashed somehow. Normally, that is...
I can't count the number of times I've told people who complain about various freedoms allowed here, "If you don't like the freedoms and laws afforded by our Constitution, feel free to go to another country or hell, make your own damn country." Well, they've done just that. More power to them if it works, and I wonder which aggressive nation will be the first to attempt to take them over.
-Jer
Sealand is a Maunsell Naval fort, formerly known as Roughs Tower, off Harwich on the Essex coast. Information about these should be more prevalent elsewhere.
You should pay particular importance to the facts that they were built in WWII, are entirely free-standing, and were not intended to be permanent.
I would judge them to be a most inhospitable location for a server farm; and suppose the weather was bad, there were big sea states, and it was not possible to make the dieso delivery for fuelling the generators that would be needed to power both the servers and the satellite transceivers?
There is also the matter of Tongue Sands Tower, an identical structure off the North Kent coast which broke up and sank about ten years ago. I really wouldn't want to even put my foot on one to lay cat5.
Look on the bright side: this data-haven would be over 20 miles from the UK's most dangerous wreck, the Liberty ship SS Richard Montgomery, which sank in 1944 with a cargo of 4000 tons of explosives, only half of which were salved.
ironduke-particle is an Essex nationalist
Unfortunately, the domains that would make mnemonic sense are already assigned to Sweden (.se), Saudi Arabia (.sa), Sierra Leone (.sl), Senegal (.sn), and Sudan (.sd). But .sf, .sp, .sq, .ss, .su, .sw, and .sx all seem to be available.
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_778000/ 778267.stm
"But his plans were dealt a blow in 1987 when the UK extended its territorial waters from 3 to 12 miles" (from that page)"
First and second, the military invasions of Grenada and Panama. In both cases, the U.S. sent military troops into the country and killed people because of dissatisfaction with the target country's government. Various spin (the attack on Grenada was misleading called a "Pre-dawn Insertion" by the Reagan administration) and justifications (American students in danger in Grenada, or Noriega trading in drugs) were used, but were legally, completely irrelevant. The U.S. had explicitly agreed, in writing, never to use armed force against either of these countries. This agreement was completed in 1951 when the U.S. Senate ratified the Charter of the OAS (Organization of American States), which includes this text as Article 19 of Chapter IV:
According to U.S. Constitution, treaties agreed to by the executive branch and ratified by the Senate are the "supreme Law of the Land." Despite the OAS's explicit prohibition against the use of any armed force for any reason whatsoever, there was not even a murmur of impeachment proceedings against Presidents Reagan or Bush, nor was there a significant international brouhaha.
Third, France bombed Greenpeace's vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, in an Auckland, New Zealand harbor ostensibly because it was going to be in international waters monitoring and protesting French atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons. France initially (vehemently) denied involvement, but eventually admitted to the crime and paid about US$6.5 to the New Zealand government. Two of the French agents involved spent less than two years in a French military base. (Despite the fact that the French government had agreed they would spend three years in detention.) The rest were never punished, despite the fact that one crewman on the Rainbow Warrior drowned when the ship sank.
Powerful and established governments do not need any real justification to get away with attacking lesser countries or organizations, and they will violate international as well as their own laws to do so, when they believe it will expeditiously suit their needs. All they require is a pretext.
In the case of Sealand, the several countries already have that. Sealand is now within the International waters of the U.K. Additionally, Sealand is not a democratic state (it's an aristocracy), and it's government or its representatives have been accused of trafficing in black-market arms and drugs.
It doesn't really matter if the charges are true or not, if Prince Roy rules more fairly and effectively than every government on the planet, or even how many countries recognize Sealand as a legitimate country. What matters is that the U.K., France, Germany, Spain or the U.S. can easily claim that Sealand is trafficing in drugs and arms, lob a cruise missile or a few bombs at them, and Sealand will cease to exist, except as a government-in-exile.
Personally, i'd hate to see that happen, and it would be unjust and unfair. But people need to wake up and realize that the "big" countries have never played fair and they won't hesitate to do something horribly unfair and vile to Sealand, if it becomes a thorn in their side.
Unacceptable publications include, but are not limited to:
Material that is ruled unlawful in the jurisdiction of the originating server (Such as child pornography or other obscene material.
wouldnt this mean that you couldnt host mp3s, decss etc..?
No matter what activity you come up with there was/is most likely some culture who did not believe that the activity was wrong.
It just that we ,as a culture, in our arrogance, like to think that we are the only morally correct people who ever lived and that what we believe is what everyone should believe.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
First, some clarification of my standpoints. I'm not trying to speak for the Chinese Government. I'm from Hong Kong and I don't really care whether Taiwan go independent or not. But it's nice to list some facts for the basis of some *offtopic* discussion.
Taiwan independency is a nice thought (or bad, depending on your position). But sorry, it's neither a fact nor de facto reality.
1) Politically: you can actually count the number of nations recognizing Taiwan as an independent nation with two hands. Yes, Taiwan is a famous and economically important place but so do Silicon Valley, Los Angelos and North Ireland, etc.
2) Legally: in both of the Constitution of Taiwan (Republic of China) and Mainland China, the status of Taiwan is still a province of "China". Recently, a Taiwanese merchant broke *Taiwan* law in Mainland China. The Taiwanese Highest Court rules that his behavior in the mainland was still under the jurisdiction of Taiwan court since the mainland is legally considered a part of Republic of China (i.e. Taiwan Government).
3) Diplomatically: up until last negotiation between the Mainland and Taiwan Governments, they both agreed on the principle of "One China". The newly elected President is still ambiguous on this point. He has never rejected the "One China" principle due to domestic (yes, some Taiwanese reject outright independency, at least for security reason) and international pressure, even though he was extremely pro-independency ten to twenty years ago.
You can regard (1) to (3) as outdated historical remnant or political compromise on the side of Taiwan Government but well, reality is reality. Taiwan is not legally and politically independent (yet).
4) Historically: if my memory is right, Taiwan was first occupied by Dutch. And it was taken over by a Ming general, using the island as a base as their rebellion against the Qing (babbarian) Government about two hundred years ago. Next, it was occupied by the Japanese. And later (1950) retaken by the KMT (the ruling party of the Republic of China at that time) as the base against the Communist government. So, is Taiwan historically a part of China? Similar to most region of China, it's not a question with a clear cut answer.
5) Culturally: With a country as large and culturally diversify as China. Taiwan is as culturally similar to other part of China as places like Shanghai, Hong Kong. Yes, what you read in the States is inaccurate, Chinese culture is NOT a homegenous culture; for example, we don't all do TaiChi. Regional difference can be very pronounced.
6) Morally: Freedom and self-determination are nice ideas. Nevertheless, I don't really think that the freedom to have your own country is commonly listed as high as other rights speech, religion...
Here is an idea I just pulled outta my ass... Please don't moderate me down until you hear it...
The concept and requirement of a datahaven is the ability to store information, free from the tampering of others (including government), in a secure (both physically and virtually, as well as politically) environment.
The problem always arises that there is some way to either cut off or destroy access (by either destroying the links, or the location of the servers) to the haven.
So why not make the haven "alive"?
Imagine a virus, which replicates itself - and detects attempts to "find" it - so that it can relocate to another "server" (I use the term loosely, as it could be a desktop - I am looking at it from the virus' POV). It would also carry a payload "packet", which would be encrpyted, but relatively small. Many of these packets would make up the information - kinda like a distributed filesystem, but one that is always on the move, autonomously - think of it as gnutella meets melissa, but without the dumb user needed (you get the idea - I am not advocating the use of 'doze - but such a "virus" would do good to have various strains for each OS - and the virus should be packetized amongst itself, so that it can be "reborn"/repaired, as it needed).
The virus would do nothing malicious (except consume a bit of each system's resources) - however, I can't see that stopping someone making a rogue version, but maybe there is a way around this, too.
Such a data haven could not be stopped - not without bringing down the entire internet, and wiping every "infected" system - which isn't practical in the slightest. Maybe data redunancy and CRC could be used as a form of compression - providing the packet size is small enough (maybe only a few hundred bytes)? I am thinking the virus acts like a mini disk drive, only holding a small amount of info. Like ants building the hive (or whatever it's called when relating to ants), each ant may only carry a single pebble, but if you could pass a query back through the ant line (via the scent trail), you could collect back all of those specks to form a pile of dirt.
Does this idea seem as crazy as it sounds - or is it feasible?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
As a libertarian, I feel encouraged to see something like this happen. Unfortunately, in the end, we *will* have a one world government, and Sealand will only exist in our dreams. People are prone to change, but not changing their selfish ways. With each new law, more restrictions are set in place. Sealand might exist for quite a while. They need to move quietly though, and not quickly. Hopefully they won't do anything that will get any major country pissed. A truly libertarian society *can* and *will* outdo any other, including the U.S. or Hong Kong (Not really a country) even in the free-state they are in. The U.S. (of which I belong) should follow example and see the benefit of implementing ideals similar to the ones that Sealand has. It'd work out better in the end.
Running a data center in an abandoned fortress in the North Sea is going to be a difficult, expensive proposition. It's worse than a shipboard operation; you can bring a ship into port for overhaul. Just getting high reliability marine-grade power and air conditioning equipment onto their island will be a job. And the WWII-era concrete probably needs major work by now. Loading and unloading big stuff from small boats is a bitch. Keeping good people onsite for repairs will be very tough, so they'll probably need a helipad and some helicopters to get workers on and off. That's another construction job and a big operating cost.
It's not impossible. If you're in a position to write a check with eight figures to Bechtel or Fluor, who build oil platforms, no problem. They're trying to raise $3 million, and that's nowhere near enough.
I'm not an Irish artist, but I don't think you have to physically live there to reap the benefits.
In any case, many corporations register in foreign countries for the same reason--but don't move operations to that location. Ships do the same thing.
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Some History:In the late sixties Roy Bates and his family occupied one of the forts and declared himself a soverign nation. This was upheld in British Court and the long bizarre history began. The tiny nation was attacked and captured by a German businessman and friends for several weeks until Roy could put a crew together to retake it by rappeling from helicopters. (There were no known fatalities from these actions.) Here are some fun links to learn more:
Although it is not under British rule, it is still concidered to be in British waters.
After it declared itself its own state Britian declared claim to the ocean 12 miles from its coast (Sealand is 7 miles from Britian coast - it was grandfathered in).
I would assume that Britian would not particularly like Iraqi (or any other nation, for that matter) military action in what is techinically its own waters.
Sealand should not be worried by any nation other then Britian; and possibly US influence over Britian's government into taking military action on the island.
I don't think that Sealand is in the best of positions, but I doubt Britian would really care about it until it becomes forced to (ie; so it doesn't hafta look like the bad guy, or the only bad guy vs a seemingly small & insignifigant country)
The only true data havens will be effected through onion routing and/or a cryptographically (and traffic-analysis-proof, ie. mixmaster based) FreeNet type system.
> I wanted to spend 8 years defending the US
> constitution.
> I spent 8 years defending American corporate
> interests. FTN
Well, of course.
The only place where the US consititution is under attack is right here IN the US...mostly by congress and the courts.
I always think its funny when congressmen complain about "Flag Burning" when they have desicrated everything that the US Flag is suposed to stand for, and done much it much worst disgrace.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I remember looking into HAM radio operation and reading about amateur satellites put up by the various HAM organizations. Since such organizations may not be limited to dealing only with NASA anymore, wouldn't it be possible to put up a decent number of amateur satellites with store-and-forward abilities?
While this certainly wouldn't allow for information the size of MP3's, I did see large amounts of e-mail like messages being sent this way.
The equipment was small enough that the Naval officer using it had enough room to transport it around with him in the limited confines of his shared submarine stateroom.
Hmmm... landing large storage devices on the moon for storing information and transmitting it at predetermined periods to mobile transceiving stations across the face of the Earth...
Digital Wokan
I wanted to spend 8 years defending the US constitution.
How about packet radio? That could be harder to stop. And they won't be able to jam it without jamming legitimate transmissions a well.
Both sealandgov.com and principality-sealand.net claim to be the official website of the Principality of Sealand. sealandgov.com claims to be the *only* official site. principality-sealand.net makes no such claims to exclusivity, but still says it's an official site.
sealandgov.com is registered to a UK address, and DNS is provided by HavenCo. I trust that sealandgov.com is legit.
But what about principality-sealand.net? It's registered to a German company. Can we trust the information presented on this site?
>Seeing as how you can't physicaly steal a statilite. Only wrestel control.
Sure you can. If it's cheap enough for companies (such as the company that wrote napster) to launch servers into space via a "statilite", it will be cheap enough to knock one down. There are just as many problems with "server farms in space" as there are with them on an island. In fact, it may be easier and cheaper to use an island..
1. You can't just go to CompUSA, buy a PC and put it in space. Space has lots of environmental problems, extremes in temperature, radiation and other forces. How do you tell your boss "the server went down because a small piece of space debris hit it, it will be approximately 3-12 months before we can bring it back up."?
2. Although solutions are being developed, TCP/IP still has problems with the lag in space. "Ping server.inspace.net: 64 bytes from server.inspace.net time=30000ms"...
3. Its a real bitch to reset a server that BSOD'd in space.
Not that I dont think your idea is a really cool one, I just dont think were ready yet and I dont personally see much benefit in either space or an island. I think colocation of a server at a good hosting company is much more secure..
Now here's food for thought. What if, seriously now, the Spanish Inquisition decides to take over Sealand with a sizable group of grunts and some petty firearms or random blunt objects?
r -worn-out-insoles would have the data mirrored elsewhere, there will always be some boy scout dropout that isn't prepared.
;)
(sarcastic) Huzzah! Some poor perverts Natalie Portman JPEG's are being held at ransom at $10,000 per megabyte! Oh whatever shall we do to recover the precious pixels?
I don't know about you, but if this place opens up shop, its going to be an enticing hit indeed. Granted that most megacorporations-who-own-everything-including-you
On the bright side it'd prolly make for an amusing Sunday color UF strip.
--
For one of those great IBM Linux on System/390 setups. You have a situation where you want a combination of:
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I like.. Reminds me of _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_.
Regarding the severance of their link.. what if they have multiple links via different media to different providers.. Then any would-be censors would have to:
I suppose I could think of more, but they'd get progressively sillier. Of course, I suppose they could solve them all at once with a tac-nuke, but I think a few of the friendly boys with big sticks would take umbrage at that.
I think I read a Routers story about Sealand trying to acquire some military strength weapons and getting denied because of their unacknowledged status as a country. Wonder what their aim is... Here it is: http://news.excite.com/news/r/000529/08/odd-sealan d
The net is a cooperative anarchy. All sites enjoy connectivity on the good graces of other sites elsewhere. There's no tolerance for rogue sites that won't play nice.
Kinakuta was internationally recognized "de jure"
Kinakuta had its own domain "kk"
Kinakuta was rather wealthy to begin with, and did not need to raise capital.
Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net is a more pertinent "data haven" reference.
The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
I mean, despite the obvious climatic troubles, why not Antarctica (on the plus side, you can overclock to your heart's content)?
It's supposedly shared by all nations, isn't it? If you could get the funds, you might be able to set up a bunch of servers there. I guess it might be possible to work with some of the scientific teams.
...must not make penguin reference...
===
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Cool.
I wonder if they'll sell those cigarettes with the dollar sign on the label?
Combine this with the Moon radio repeater reported here and we could have Villa Straylight from Count Zero by William Gibson. But who would be the Tessiers and Ashpools? Gates and Ballmer?
perl -le 's;;uoli;;$a=length;y;g-w;e-u;;$a--;s;j;$a;;print'
There has not been a nuclear bomb used for combat purposes since the end of WW2, and yet you think they should be used because of a possible copyright dispute?
Mr. Sam, I feel ashamed to be a part of the human race if there are people such as yourself running amok.
I was once a part of the Navy, charged with guarding the security of American corporate interests overseas (could hardly have been guarding our actual nation's security from over there). I think no man on board would be willing to push the launch button for a nuclear missile aimed at an island for the sake of copyright law.
(FYI, most people I met during my service did not want combat in any way, shape, or form. It was a job that gave us experience and a shot at a better education.)
Digital Wokan
I wanted to spend 8 years defending the US constitution.
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000529/08/odd-sealan d
Question: At what point does it become economic feasible to bribe an employee of HavenCo in order to set off a bomb inside the server facilities?
I suspect the cross-over point is low enough so the world won't be changing too much.
http://www.havenco.com/legal/aup.html
Unacceptable publications include, but are not limited to:
1. Material that is ruled unlawful in the jurisdiction of the originating server (Such as child pornography or other obscene material.
Once again, free speech with strings attached. Sure, nobody (I hope) has a problem with not allowing child porn, but how long is it until the powers that be put pressure on the "jurisdiction of the originating server" (the royal family of Sealand, I suppose) to make illegal whatever they don't like? It seems to have worked for them in the US and Europe. I'm skeptical.
Please, I am not trying to start a flame war with you, and I still do not want to begin one. I took a quick look at you user info and i just think you need to calm down and accept the opinions of others a bit more. Everyone (including you) have your right to voice what you think. Please do not flame me for being "another uninformed piece of shit stupid enough to believe his opinion matters". Everyone's opinion matters, whether it be Signal 11, me, you, or anyone. You are free to challenge my arguments, but please refrain from attacking my person simply because you disagree with me. Simply offer constructive criticism, and I am more likely to change my ways in the future than if you just swear at me. I hope this does not result in permanent hard feelings between us. Cya
All you have to do to silence any 'offensive' content is get their upstream providers or peers to block traffic.
Simple censorship.
Gosh, you're prolific. I enjoy your work immensely. Could you contact me so I can praise you further?
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
POWER....mainframes suck power....I doubt that Roy's 3 old generators plus the three new generators could handle the load of an S/390, plus other computers, plus UPS's, plus redundant storage, plus simple things like keeping the platform running the usual ammenities... On the other hand, what sounds fun would be to find a place with about 1000' of water, set up a group of oil-rig-style platforms, and build a partially-submerged structure.....you could have quarters below with giant acquarium-style windows, the servers upstairs, the generators near the top, a helipad and dock off the side, and run a length of fiber-optic cable to shore.....and as long as you're far enough off shore, you don't even have to worry about someone extending their water boundaries :)
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
What is your Slash Rating?
Jesus! How many of them are there?
Don't mod up comments like the above. The above post could have been written by a severely retarted 8 year old.
...unless the principality of sealand has found itself quite close to conshohocken, pennsylvania, usa.
/root]# traceroute www.havenco.com
[root@hydra
<snip>
10 pennsauken.netaxs.com (192.157.69.47) 52.800 ms 62.689 ms 69.065 ms
11 l3-psk-t3-l.netaxs.net (207.106.3.201) 64.130 ms 51.568 ms 43.537 ms
12 l3-consh-t3-l.netaxs.net (207.106.3.193) 105.847 ms 79.604 ms 52.046 ms
13 ns1.havenco.com (207.106.32.14) 47.845 ms 40.472 ms 90.635 ms
The point is that no one besides the UK would bring battleships anywhere near Sealand, since however you wrangle it, it is still uncomfortably close to the UK.
Check out Labuan - it's a duty-free, offshore banking haven with great Internet connections (Fibre, Satellite, etc). Many companies around the world are planning to set up their data havens/off shore tax-free e-commerce systems/etc here.
:)
Not a place to store p0rn/warez/etc but if you want that, stick to loony land like Sealand. Labuan is for serious operations
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
... theBarbies.com get their page hosted there??
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
that would be the SBS (Special Boat Squadron) counterparts of the SAS.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
I think that people are really not looking at the big picture. That your only in trouble if you get caught. That's what encryption is for. Guess what anything that is even remotely questionable is encrypted via gpg with a 4096 bit ELG key with a very long passphrase protecting the secret key. Now suppose that someone tried to seize the machine and try to take is as evidence well they are just screwed because the encryption is very good and so is the password. By the time they actually are able to bruteforce the password I will be long dead. What does this mean to anyone. Well this. You aren't going to be in as much trouble as you think. Suppose that given the most heanous example I can think of kiddie porn or murder. Now both of these acts are in and of themselves bad however if no one can prove that you did either it eliminates any ability to make the act punishable. Also consider this. How many people are actually in the business of independent software development and retail? I would fathom not many at all. Considering all the work that authors do to get even a simple novel or technical reference out under contract it would be almost impossible to actually get a liveable income off that. So what how is this place any different than Hong Kong or any other place that really dosn't give a shit. How about Russia and Eastern Europe ( a place I am at least familar with). In general almost no one cares about piracy. If you have something and you want to give it to another illegally the authority dosn't really care. Nothing has changed except it's now in a better and more observable light.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
Well since Sealand's soverign waters are supposed to extend 18 miles and were claimed the day before England extend theirs to 12, that's kind of a moot point.
Are you trying to say that there are not enough businesses in the entire world outside of the U.S. to keep a 'nation' about the size of a sports stadium in business?
Something like 90% of the world's Internet traffic goes though USA backbone sites. To get from Poland to France (on the net), you go though a USA site. The percentage of SSL traffic (the "important" stuff) is even higher. Even offshore business accounts often host on USA soil, because that's where the network is.
So, while the USA certainly doesn't have any magic control over the world economy, you cannot dispute the fact that most of the network traffic this thread is interested in goes through sites owned and operated by USA companies.
Now, consider that Sealand is a data haven. Without network connectivity, they are about as useful as a jet fighter without fuel. If the entire USA collectively decides to cut off Sealand, then they've lost most of the market they care about.
Is that going to happen any time soon? No. Too many laws against it, and too much popular opinion behind the laws. It would take a radical change in our culture and political climate. By the time the needed changes could be put into effect, the backbone situation will likely have changed.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.