Slashdot Mirror
Napster Going Offshore?
BananaBoht writes: "According to this article, a Canadian named Matt Goyer plans to set up a Napster clone server off the shores of the UK on a sovreign island. Mr. Goyer is eyeing HavenCo Ltd. as a possible site for his cloned Napster computer server. The company rents computing power and Internet data storage space to those seeking to avoid government laws. It operates from an ocean platform called Sealand, which has operated for 30 years as a sovereign territory off the coast of England."
It's tolerable. The main problem was that it's rather cold in the winter; -2 to 5 degrees. Only some parts of the structure are heated; some rooms, like the kitchen, are pretty much the same temperature as outside, just without wind -- you can see your breath, the room is about as cold as the fridge, etc.
We have water and toilet and such; even a shower. The shower was rationed initially, but now we have a 10 ton capacity watermaker and a few large storage tanks, so it's ok. We're upgrading a lot of the residential features constantly; we don't have satellite TV or anything, although I do have a server with about 130 GB of mp3s, dvds, etc.
for local use. Due to generator and computer noise, I mainly just use headphones.
Everyone has a private room, although when we expand datacenter into a second tower, we might need to construct more accomodations up on deck. Initially we were thinking of housing servers in 20' containers on deck, vs. in the concrete towers, but having 12-24" reinforced concrete around machine rooms is much cooler.
We have onsite food preparation, although since the cooks are British, it's mainly meat-and-potatoes every day. If anyone else tries to copy the HavenCo/Sealand idea elsewhere, I suggest they have a sushi chef as member of the team.
Sealand isn't really much of an island. It's an old WW2 concrete artilery platform - completely man-made. It was abandoned for many years, before being settled on by Paddy Roy Bates, who has since been proclaimed 'king'
Their main claim to sovereignty is that the UK ignored them for many years, writing them off as a bunch of loonies. However, in the last few years they've been allowing HavenCo to situate their servers on the island, and the UK government have started laying claim to the island.
Note however, they get all their power and internet connection from nearby countries, who would be entirely within their rights to switch off the connection if Havenco start doing something they disagree with.
Useful Links:
-Ciaran
Sealand has multiple connectivity into the UK and into Amsterdam.
Now, maybe all of those ISPs will capitulate. But supposing they don't? Supposing, say, one of the well-connected Amsterdam ISPs stands firm, and is backed up by the Amsterdam court? I don't think the RIAA are going to try and cut off Amsterdam, which is a major Internet hub for Europe, but maybe they'll demand that US ISPs fake the routing tables so you can't route to Sealand? Then another offshore alternative opens up, more routing frob...
Eventually the RIAA and MPAA will demand that the Internet as we know it be dismantled in favour of a networking protocol that is better at supporting censorship. Eventually they'll demand an Internet that has "providers", who are big companies that can afford legal fees and scrupulously provide only legal content, and "users" who can send email and read content provided by "providers" but who can't afford the legal fees needed to publish anything, and whose communication with each other is heavily mediated by the "providers" taking legal responsibility. They'll want changes to the law, backed by new international conventions, that make even Slashdot illegal, because Slashdot can't guarantee someone won't put DeCSS here.
They won't necessarily get what they demand, but they will eventually be forced to demand it if their position is to make any sense at all. And they're not the kind of people to say "OK, that would be too nasty, we'll concede defeat."
--
Xenu loves you!
Napster should appeal to Saddam for asylum (i think that's the word). I'm pretty sure he'd do anything to piss the west off and what better way than destroying a billion dollar industry and rewriting international copyright laws in the process... he could also download some cool songs inbetween signing execution orders.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
Second, he's actually in the clear from the moral point of view. As evidenced by him spending about $10,000 to set up Fairtunes, a site which allows fans to donate directly to artists, he cares about seeing that artists don't get ripped off. I've personally donated $25 through Fairtunes. To get the same amount of cash into artists' hands, I'd have to spend over $300 on CDs.
Third, Sealand's independence has, to some extent, recognized by British courts. Sealand fired a warning shot at a boat that approached too closely, and Roy Bates was taken to court for some weapons violation. The court ruled something to the effect that the weapons laws didn't apply to Sealand since it is sovergn. Also, Sealand established its independence before Britain extended its teritorial waters, so Sealand is in the clear on that front, too.
Fourth, the Sealand guys seem to know what they're doing. They have generators and redundant internet connections. Their server room is filled with pure nitrogen for security and fire prevention. Cool shit. I'm sure they could handle Napster II.
Fifth, Sealand might take this on just for the publicity. With Napster in the news nearly every day, this could get Sealand some much-needed press.
For example, let's say you set up a gambling operation there. You're running along happily, until one day the British Gov't comes calling because you've violated the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000, which was enacted so that MI5 can listen for bad guys by reading your email. Then some bigwig public official in Norwich happens to be gambling on a game of canasta with the Crown's money, and the Brits get all upset because they can't find out who he is, what he bet, when he plays, etc. So they sue, he sues, everyone sues everyone else. It becomes a big mess, and the anonymous email operation you set up six months prior is caught in the middle of it. How do you repel a DoS attack from the Home Office?
Later on, the providers of HavenCo's bandwidth get pressured from all sorts of people. See, Sealand might be independant, but the companies that give HavanCo their pipe are based in countries which most certainly are not. They can (and will) be pressured. They get leaned on, and then HavenCo gets leaned on. Shit runs downhill. (And don't give me that satellite rap; you know that's only an expensive worst-case backup of dubious technical merit.) The upshot here is that everyone who gave money to HavenCo is now officially S.O.L.
Which is why we need something "friviolous" like a Napster server to take up residence on Sealand. If it goes down because of the Strong Arm of the Law(TM), then it really isn't that big of a deal. It gets sorted out in court and we all wait to see what happens. In the meantime, we run our gambling and pr0n operations off some island like everyone else has been doing. We're listenign to stuff off FreeNet, and grabbign MP3s from OpenNap servers.
But the court will have to decide one way or the other. The RIAA -- for one -- will surely force the issue (like through the U.N., maybe?). And the decision will likely be binding; what's good for Mr. Napster Server Clone is good for you and me (please note: IANAL and I don't want to be one, either). If the verdict is for the Napsterites, then we can all put our servers on Sealand. If the verdict favors whatever government happened to bitch, then we lost no money setting precedent ourselves.
It's a good thing. I want to see it happen.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I woke up this morning to find about 500 messages in our trouble ticketing system about this. Heh.
/29, so if any government decides they must protect their citizens from human-rights information, music trading services, etc., they would need to block the customer's /29, affecting only that customer. I personally think the chances of IP blocking at the borders of a country are pretty slim in any marginally free country -- it's difficult from a technical perspective, would be widely opposed by users, and is generally not worthwhile.
:)
(I'm one of the cofounders of HavenCo, and the CTO, if you didn't already know; I'm also an active slashdot reader (what else do you think we do for fun out in the middle of the north sea?))
First of all, www.fairtunes.com is hosted in Canada, is slashdotted, and isn't our fault!
Second, I can't comment on confidential discussions with customers w/o their permission, but yes, from looking at the fairtunes site, it looks like they're trying to raise money to pay for a year of service on one of our boxes with the goal being to host an offshore OpenNap server. I'm personally a user of napster (although I mainly use Mojonation now. We definitely would like to have them as a customer -- what they're doing doesn't violate our AUP, and we're happy to offer service to anyone who will pay. Of course, what they are doing is NOT being done by us; if they choose to host with us, it's still their responsibility.
We have network connectivity through multiple providers around the world, and can easily add more. We assign customers a
As for HavenCo's service, we've been up since May 2000, and now that we have high-speed low-latency network, fully debugged power systems, etc. we're offering commercial service to anyone who is interested and obeys our AUP. Our pricing is standardized, and is USD 1500/month for a 2U box with redundant power, cooling, 24x7 network monitoring, armed security, etc., and 256kbps of Internet bandwidth (local 100baseTX is free, so people can offer services to other HavenCo customers without paying for bandwidth). We charge a USD 1500 one-time setup fee, and USD 3500 for hardware (we can use any high-quality 1U or 2U box, and pricing is US cost; we don't try to make a profit off hardware, but we can't accept non-rackmount, low quality, etc. stuff). We have about 3-5 days lead time, from receipt of payment, before we can have a server up and running, and as long as you're not doing spam/spam support, child pornography, or hacking from our machines, we'd love to have you as a customer; contact sales@havenco.com for more info.
We're in the middle of a web redesign, and have been trying to focus on getting services fully up, rather than getting more press, but we're about to begin a big sales and press push. This is a bit earlier than was planned, but now that people are getting slashdotted, might as well post.