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HavenCo Doing Well
davecl writes: "The off-shore datahaven, HavenCo, is doing well, according to the BBC.
HavenCo is based on a WW2 gunnery platform several miles of the English coast. In the 60s it was outside the 3 mile territorial waters, and a retired Army officer moved there and proclaimed it the independent state of Sealand. In the 80s territorial waters were extended to 12 miles. Sealand's nation status is this unclear, but this hasn't stopped HavenCo setting up their data haven. Customers are largely gambling sites, but an increasing number of political groups, such as the Tibetan Government in Exile, are based there in an effort to escape government censorship. More regulation of the web means more customers, and business is booming. Wonder if others will see this as a way of making money out of beating censorship?" We've mentioned Sealand several times before -- it's great to hear they're defying the skeptics.
Just incase anyone is interested in Sealand
http://www.sealandgov.com/
If they are out of control of the US Government, will be they labled as terrorists and bombed?
So how does one become a citizen there again?
they will get shut down.
The reality of the situation is that Sealand exists because they just are not worth going after.
If they cause too much trouble they'll get shut down. (not 'right' but that is the reality of it)
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
How does the taxing compare to Switzerland or Monaco?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
I took interest in the story of Sealand about 2 years ago. There's plenty of reading material available on the web..
try www.sealandgov.com... excellent historical information, including Sealand's first naval battle.
Also,www.fruitsofthesea.demon.co.uk/sealand/ has a decent picture gallery so you can visualize just how small this platform is.
I had an email conversation with somebody at sealand back when I first heard of the place. I kept the email... funny thing, it usually took them a few months to reply. Being that havenco is very security oriented, I'm sure they use latency to their advantage for communications. Interesting rule of Havenco... customers aren't allowed to supply their own machines in the sake of security.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Or have they been collecting taxes all along, and just don't care about the rest?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Really, there are no real protections to be had here other than those provided by British law -- everything else is a mere SAS raid away from extinction. You could set this place up anywhere in the semi-free world and provide the same level of protection -- it's all just a publicity stunt.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is the perfect place for a centralized server for filesharing programs. Any thoughts on why this has not happened yet?
For example, why does Audiogalaxy cower at the RIAA instead of just moving to Sealand?
I think someone mentioned KaZZa (or however you spell it) was based overseas, is this true?
.....
not ALL spam is bad... personally i like the low fat lite stuff... jsut as in this case its not so bad... spam is only bad when its heavy and all over the place... when spam fills up your mailbox its a bad thing... when you only get a few unsolicited mailings then its not so bad... in a project like this contacting the maximum amount of people is critical and this is one of the few emails i would notmind getting...
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
i am reciting this from memory so some info might be corrupted -- but i believe the principality of sealand declared an extension of 12-mile boundary either on the day on one day before G.B did it -- so the "channel" between the two erm... countries is split half half -- and sealand's independence is grandfathered in.
which is good.
anyway you can read all about sealand at the heavenCo site; i can't "deep link" anymore, so go find it yourself :-)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Image the amount of equipment that might show up if customers could send boxes? How many gambling sites do you think are super sensitive when it comes to server density.
Also, and you imagine how hard it would be to get hundreds of pounds shipped to this platform? Here's a hint: I don't think UPS or FedEX deliver here.
If I ran this joint, I'd buy up some HP blades and start handing out accounts to them.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
consider me a semen! uh... i mean a seminite, or uh...
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
So far many of the sites are online gambling ventures. But a growing number of political groups banned in their own countries have turned to HavenCo, such as the website of the Tibetan Government in exile.
Can't help notice the website of the Government of Tibet in Exile is hosted by Arkansas-based ISP aristotle.net.
Why do I get the feeling HavenCo clients are actually entirely gambling sites?
-- Have you ever noticed that at trade shows, Microsoft is always the company that is handing out stress balls?
...except that the Sealand site doesn't have it as good. The datahaven in Cryptonomicon was under the wing of a nation that was neutral and basically beholden to no one. If the British decide that they don't like what's going on out there, they'll bloody well shut it down.
I'm sorry sandwich! --Brak
...such as the Tibetan Government in Exile...
(Funny, but probably in poor taste)
At the mere mention of Tibet and Sealand all I could see was those annoying shock the monkey banners with the monk(ey) dressed in the bright orange robes.
First I chuckled, then said boo-hiss.
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Despite the claim of HavenCo, you have to really wonder how secure is the data center. I'm not talking about trying to crack in remotely, it would probably have the same issues as any other data center.
I'm talking about physical security. Now, if I'm running a really important site that requires extreme security, Sealand certainly will not fit my criteria. Gee, a group of 5 people can land a choper on that platform and basically take over the darn thing by force. And then, what do I do? I would have totally lost everything in there.
This is especially true as the platform is so close to other countries, and it has absolute no protection.
I bet everyone here has read the book Cryptonomicon. There's a project of setting up a data haven in Philipines in that book, and they were digging really deep in the ground, and set up all kinds of physical security measures to protect it. That seems more plausible to me than this Sealand thingy.
doesn't work on IE 5.2 for OS X or Mozilla 1.x for OS X. Please fix.
... was published in Wired two years ago.
bash$
This entire thing smacks of children playing pirates on the open seas, it's kind of funny.
As for the logistics of it, where does their pipe come ashore? Somewhere in the world that line has to meet another line goverened by a country with stricter laws, which seems to me would end everything right there.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
IIRC, most of the naysayers when HavenCo first proposed this business weren't saying anything about whether or not an independent, non-government controllable web service provider would be able to make money. Online gambling sites will take care of that for the forseeable future.
Rather, most of the questions about the viability of this project had to do with whether or not Sealand really was an independent republic (as they contend) or just a hunk of concrete in British territorial waters (as the British gov't contends). While it's great to see that they're hosting more than just farm animal pr0n and are actually making money, it remains to be seen how much longer the UK gov't will allow this to continue unchallenged and whether or not Sealand and HavenCo will be able to withstand a legal/police challenge when it comes.
E
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
From what I have heard, they have quite a lot of guns on Sealand, and are clearly willing to defend themselves from foreign invasion. Now, one might argue that they wouldn't last long against the SAS - but putting SAS soldiers lives at risk (given that the British courts have recognised Sealand's right to defend itself) should serve as a significant disincentive for any invasion (as would the risk that the British government could be taken to court for mounting such an invasion afterwards).
Wonder if others will see this as a way of making money out of beating censorship?
Here's a list of some companies making money out of beating censorship.
Screw all of this decentralized indexing nonsense: just put the napster server on there, but still let the files live where they will.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Principality Notice PN 011/01: Sealand offers assistance to US 20 September 2001 The Principality condemns the recent global terrorist activities and announces that any such related activity whether real or intended undertaken within its Territorial limits shall be considered an act against Sealand Criminal Code which provides for placing any persons suspected of such activities under immediate arrest and detention at the Sovereign's pleasure. The Principality has communicated directly with the United States of America offering its resources and making them available not only to the USA but to any State for the purpose of suppressing terrorist acts of any kind. Its sympathy and concern for all effected was expressed. The Principality is on a state of alert, and all activities are currently subject to scrutiny by Sealand authorities who are co-operating as appropriate with the International community to combat terrorism of whatever kind.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
"I'd post it online if I wasn't afraid of someone totally ripping it off."
;-)
..."
Yeah, especially someone hosted by Sealand.
"Sealand currently has no regulations regarding copyright, patents,
So what if Sealand claims it will only hand over data if the client orders it? A court merely needs to toss those clients into jail for contempt, sieze their assets, and make life difficult for a while. Eventually they'll give the order to the data haven to make good.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Starting your own nation is a good way to lose sensorship, but it's also a good way to lose protection.
What's to stop some country (or some whacko, if there's a difference) who dislikes one of your customer's opinions from destroying Sealand?
Can I get a visa? I would like to visit.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
How safe do you thing their off-site backups are?
Are the off shore? If so, do the backups need to comply to the laws of the country they reside in?
cl
Reply . . . let's get it over with.
Without a payment source, you're going to see a lot of online gambling (both legit, and the scam artists) disappear. That's going to cut into HavenCo's bottom line, since I doubt they get much money from the exiled Tibetan Government.
Was the Tibetan Govt in Exile really worried that they couldn't get hosted in - oh, I dunno - the USA?
While it sounds like they think of themselves as a bunch of white knights, I doubt it's primarily a lofty speech issue - these guys will end up hosting the lunatic fringe that no one else would touch largely for legal reasons that are grey at best in most countries where they answer the phones.
If all they do is host annoying clients - gambling and the like, then it's a real non-story and these guys are just amusing themselves.
And if someone really wants to drop the hammer on one of their clients, they can always go upstream - this is satellite linked after all, and Sealand doesn't have any control over that.
Plus, anyone can sue the companies doing the business with Sealand - it doesn't seem to offer incorporation for these businesses - so there's still a base of business and people obviously in charge that can get the law sic'd on them, no matter where the servers are.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
At the H2k2 convention in New York City this weekend, two guys from HavenCo will be presenting. You can check out info for their panel discussion here
The listing:
The Ultimate Co-location Site
Sunday, 3 pm
Area "A"
Sealand was founded as a sovereign principality in 1967 in
international waters, six miles off the eastern shores of Britain. The
island fortress is conveniently situated from 65 to 100 miles from the
coasts of France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany. HavenCo has been
providing services since May 2000 and is fully operational, offering
the world's most secure managed servers in the world's only true free
market environment - the Principality of Sealand. Avi Freedman and
Ryan Lackey of HavenCo will talk about the challenges and potential
of this unique working environment and what it could mean to the
future of the net.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
OK let's assume they are an sovereign nation. BigBadCorp gets pissed off at them. Can't BigBadCorp shut down their internet connection? They must have a deal with an outside company to provide the internet link right? And that outside company can be compelled by legal or other means to shut down havenCo... so all this sovereinty stuff is moot isn't it?
Mount10 has its own subterranean Data Fortressâ in the Swiss Alps, which are protected by the military defense resources of the Swiss Army. Broadband technology is used to be connected to the European telecommunications network.
Mount10 protects strategic data against manipulation, loss, unauthorised access, and damage from penetration into the data store by external groups and persons. The company operates its own computer center in an underground, high-security tract that is subject to extremely restrictive access regulations.
These folks seem to maintain a decent level of security. And this time an army is involved. And a pretty sovereign nation seems to back up the facility. The advertising movie on the page is hilarious however ...
I take it you've missed the videos in which they take credit for 9/11?
How do you get a fast Internet connection to a boat like this which isn't dependent on a country?
Does anyone know what kind of connection they have?
I guess no one would have anything bad to say about Sealand, if they had used the name of some religion.
All your favorite sites in one place!
The president of America has moved his troops into some wasteland adjoining Pakistan. In the 90s it was a developing but thriving economy and society, and the soviet union attempted to move there and proclaim it theirs. The soviet's were repelled with the help of arms gifts from America. The wasteland's nation status is unclear, but this hasn't stopped the president setting up their military bases, by pure coincidence along the ideal route for an oil pipeline.
Hey this could be really cool if some people got together and bought their own islands. Imagine the Island Of...
Ph33r m3!!!
You take over an abandoned military fortress and declare a soverign state.
......
You gain pseudo-recognition from the British govt.
You accept a business proposal to host *questionable* websites in your country.
You refuse access to your country, and as such your customers never visit their servers.
You host them in another location and use this hunk of junk in the middle of the Sea as a front.
Not a bad idea
In other news today, the internet gambling industry was crippled when the principality of sealand sunk, apparantly due to the fact that its crumbling concrete supports were from the 1930s...
I wonder how many small (and large) Internet radio shops could relocate to Sealand just to give the finger to the RIAA and the CARP rulings. Imagine if a site live Live365 had to buggger out of the States and move offshore...
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
...complete with anonymous WHOIS...now that *would* be the shiznit!
> Resorting to violence a PR blunder?
> Not if you belong to the Al-Quaeda.
Al-Quaeda has good PR?
Was it the donations to Charity? The Homeless Shelters? Their ground breaking research on Global Warming?
Their spin doctors must suck because most news sites portray them in a bad light.
> If this island ever became critical enough,
> it would become a major target of terrorism
Yeah, they could covertly plant a bomb while blending in as a tourist-... excuse me, *the* tourist, and not single one of the four residents of Sealand would find out until it was too late!
Otherwise, I guess they could sneak up on HavenCo just like they did on the USS Cole, and all four HavenCo employees would never see the rowboat coming, never mind the fact that the rowboat must have been launched from the nearest shore 12 miles away. ["Abdul, I can't set the charge - my arms are too tired!"]
However, the effort would be worth it: imagine the shock of horror in our hearts when we discover that the attack upon the second smallest country in the world has resulted in a whopping 4 casualties!
I really think you're on to something here.
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Automatic wepons rule!
Bless those Google guys (and gals).
Here is a list of photos I found on Google Images.
http://www.simson.net/photos/2000/sealand/
Start at the bottom and work your way up to get a chronology of what they were doing.
Looks like some British seafarers were invited to bring supplies or something and someone took photos of the process. It is a cruddy looking place. Even if the servers are IN the towers as their web site suggests, there just is not much room in there.
But then again, I spend most of MY time in a basement smaller than that...
Why don't they have a TLD?
Anyone know?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Is it just me, or is the fact that there is a country called sealand of the coast of britain thats fired warning shots on the navy, held prisoners of war, and has its own currency just a little stange? data havens are one thing, but this is one of the strangest things ive heard of :)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
They didn't have C4 in WWII nor did they have shape charges (well not l33t ones whe have now) C4 is powerfull
quantum physics: the dreams stuff is made of.
More nude girls all the time. XXX. Grannies peeing.
I'm seriously getting sick of SPAM. It's beginning to really warp my mind.
Some of the more legally borderline software, like decss, or programs which convert or edit from wmv/asf. Such as VirtualDub before microsoft threw a fit and made the developer remove support from his program.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Are drugs legal in Sealand, what is the drinking age, is prostitution legal? This could be profitable.
This is a floating Cayman Islands or Bermuda. Tax free, regulation free - a techno brass plate corporation.
Boeing airliners are turned over to their customers in mid air over international waters to avoid taxes with just this sort of thing in mind.
There are a few interesting connections to other dubious realms though
http://www.goldhaven.com/issue4/Two.htm
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
You make an excellent point, and this would be a great problem, but..
I think this slashdot article from earlier today neatly cancels out the problem you mention. Don't you think?
Microsoft is powerful today because they alone in the computer industry understand supply and demand are the only important things if all you want is to make a lot of money. There's demand here that Microsoft is capable of filling. I'm certain they will.
What are you eating with that SPAM tm? Perhaps you should switch the new Turkey SPAM. Unless you mean spam rather than the fine meat product from Hormel?
RFC 1591 .sa and .se are taken. They could go to .oc (ocean), but who'd want that?
The country codes are 2 letters. The codes come from IANA which refers to ISC country codes, so complain to ISO. Besides
Correct me if I am wrong but even if sealand does legally hold up as a state. The bulk if not all the root servers are in countries where the WTO can supersede the laws. So if sealand violates the global corperate government listing for all hosted domains can be yanked from the root servers. Yes I know you can use alternate roots, but that would essentially marginalize them if they were to become a popular bastion of free speech
Not to mention that being thier upsteam isp can be made illegal.
There were a few minor inaccuracies in the article; we don't actually host the Tibet Online site (we were going to, but it was just an organizational confusion, and it ended up not happening); we don't rely exclusively on satellite; etc.
:) I actually get to go to Burning Man this year, too, heh.
:) Would need to come up with precisely measurable conditions, specify a judge, etc. I suppose I already have a pretty large bet down in favor of "will survive 10+ years".
:) Total cost for that is probably about USD 1-2m, but we don't want to kill our short term cashflow to do it, so we might have to wait a while, unless we get extra funds from investment or customers for the service.
I'm going to be at H2K2 in NYC and at DEF CON X in Vegas. Avi Freedman and I are speaking about HavenCo at H2K2; I'm doing something else at DC X
Basically, we're now at the point where the company is entirely self-sustaining and growing financed by revenues, which is ideal; we had to put off some interesting stuff earlier due to lack of time and other resources, but we can finally move forward on these things. (Everything is basically automated, too, which is always good -- I'm considering releasing some of our colo management software under GPL later this year)
Our policy about what we'll host is unchanged; basically anything goes, as long as it doesn't endanger our network connectivity (it's unlikely anyone will invade/destroy Sealand, far more likely they'd get our addresses blocked at a bunch of routers in various countries). Spam and hacking would get us blocked by network admins themselves, so we prohibit those; child porn would too, so we prohibit that. If we were hosting alqaedaunlimited.com or something, we would probably be forced to shut down the server, but since this would destroy the contents, it's really no worse for a site operator than a permanent DoS attack. (we actually have no "shady" customers of any kind, since they would tend to just use a cheap server somewhere with a stolen credit card or something, or keep their servers on their own premises -- also, they tend to use consumer services, which we don't offer.)
As for a betting pool on HavenCo/Sealand's survival, this is a great idea. I'd suggest using a system like ideosphere if you're not interested in doing it for money; otherwise, I'd be happy to host such a service
We're mostly using Appro 1124i servers (good quality 1U), although we've got a fair amount of Sun and some other stuff. I am looking at blades, and it might be a way to offer a USD 300-500 low-end server, with fully metered bandwidth (such that if you max out the server, it costs you more than a 1U, but for a small site, it's cheaper).
One of the other 2002-2003 projects is bringing in a BIG pipe so our bandwidth cost drops to US carrier prices, + $50/Mbps or so. (Right now, we have 25-50% capacity utlization, selling 256Kbps to each customer, with very little oversell; however, our cost on the bandwidth we do have is pretty high per megabit, so bandwidth is actually a loss for us.) We could then host huge data archives, porn sites, streaming audio and video (non-multicast, a bunch of unicast streams), news servers, etc. The main thing I need to do for that is get 500-750 Mbps of customers signed up ahead of time for the link; it should be about 4 x 10 Gbps initial link capacity, so you guess what tech it is
HavenCo + infinite bandwidth would be really exciting -- the tax and physical security advantages alone would be enough to make moving servers out there worthwhile, if the price is the same as anywhere else.
Call this flame if you want, but we've been a customer of havenco for several months now and they are anything but well. Downtime, stories change after they get money, etc. I'm close to saying I would rather have no internet business than one hosted with them. And yes, we're leaving soon. Take this with a grain of salt as you always should, but caveat emptor like no other.
What IS relevant is who will give a shit if Sealand gets shut down by the British government (nobody of importance), what military might they have to back up their claim (none), what countries have formally recognized Sealand as a sovereign nation (none), and what the news media will say about it (PR will be favorable to Britain, I guarantee it).
Everyone who has a problem with Sealand comes to the UK government first
And the UK government promptly directs them to the Sealand government.History of Sealand
Under international law, a state must possess (at least) the following -
(1) a permanent population;
(2) a defined territory;
(3) a government; and
(4) the capacity to enter into relations with other states.
These are neccessary (but not sufficient - recognition by other states, for example, might equally be considered a requirement of statehood) conditions of statehood.
Sealand's claim to statehood is questionable - sound legal argument can be made which question Sealand's claim on all four grounds. The arguments are reasonably complex (well, certainly long-winded), so I'm not going to go into them here, but a good text book on international law will explain them in a couple chapters.
Trust me - IAAL.
Here are some more pictures of this place, including some shots of the inside and of the server racks.
I don't understand how Sealand can possibly be taken seriously. Here is why:
p gj pg. jpg1 .jpg
p g
1. Sealand is much smaller than people would like to image. Here are some excellent pictures from someone that visited
http://www.simson.net/photos/2000/sealand/c25.j
http://www.simson.net/photos/2000/sealand/a20.
http://www.simson.net/photos/2000/sealand/a21
http://www.simson.net/photos/2000/sealand/d2
2. Sealand is over 60 years old and in quite poor condition.
http://www.simson.net/photos/2000/sealand/b23.j
http://www.simson.net/photos/2000/sealand/
3. Sealand was legal position is unclear. If you would believe Sealands website, GB has given them full international status as a nation. Without even reading futher the sheer number of references on the offical website to how iron clad Sealands independence is a laughable. Also the formality of the website leads one to make conclutions about the "Prince's" sanity.
http://www.sealandgov.com/
4. In todays post Sept 11 climate, any hint of illegal activity would cause the full wrath of neighboring nations. Sealand could not possibly hold off for more than a few seconds militarily.
5. Sealand is completely reliant on neighboring nations for everything, food, power, connectivity.
We all would like to see a true datahaven removed from the influence of international powers, but my friend, Havenco is not it.
www.bleepyou.com
Somewhat familiar to the plot of Cryptonomicon
Righteousness postpones the inevitable
http://burningaureole.caveism.net
My understanding is that anyone foolish enough to "reside" on the platform is pretty much stuck with all the obligations of the nation where they have citizenship (e.g. US citizens can't renounce citizenship by moving there, and still owe taxes and can get hauled into court in the USA).
At the same time, the typical protections of a government are not available -- I don't think the British government accepts any duty to defend or rescue,
In addition, since Sealand is not recognized by any internation body as a "nation," the British or US or any other government seeking to put a "Sealand resident" on trial could probably decide to swoop in with a helicopter and assault team and remove that person. A recent US court case found that it was illegal for DEA agents to swoop into Mexico and kidnap a Mexican national for trial here, but the case rested on the sovereign rights of Mexico as a nation. (Mr. Noriega used the same argument but failed.)
This is one of those situations that doesn't even come close to being a "close case."
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
Sealand is not on the list (which can be viewed at http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma /02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html).
ISO 3166 is the "authority" because that's what IANA decided (thus shifting the burden of recognizing nations to another standards-organization). See http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld.htm (where you'll find a link to IANA's decision enabling the .ps ccTLD for the Palestinian Territory). See also http://www.caslon.com.au/domainsprofile.htm
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
Now if Sealand had a natural island, unclaimed by another country, things would be different.
See this history of offshore pirate radio from the 1960s. It didn't work last time.
snip...
Your choice of OS includes FreeBSD 4.x-STABLE, Debian GNU/Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and RedHat Linux. Windows 2000 and NT 4.0 can be accomodated, although we generally encourage UNIX for reliability, security, and remote management. We also encourage customers to use open source software whenever possible, as security patches, support, and overall quality are often the highest, although we also recognize that for most customers, the best choice is whatever system their staff is most familiar maintaining.
The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.
Since Sealand is within the territorial waters of the UK (while also claiming an overlaping area that would give them rights to the sea lanes) I imagine that the UK would not stand by and allow a foreign power to "invade", nor a private act of piracy. Therefore the only threat of "invasion" comes from the UK itself, which has already recognized that they have no legal jurisdiction there.
Since Sealand fairly immune to legal (and therefore military matters), the other point of attack would be political, by which I mean some kind of embargo or something that makes running their business difficult. As long as Sealand doesn't do anything really bad that would make the general public of the UK see them as the bad guy, then I don't think any politician or party is going to want to be the one going after the little guy, doing the bidding of big business. Its just not the kind of thing that gets you votes. Plus, although Sealand doesn't pay taxes to the UK, they presumabley buy bandwidth and supplies from the UK, therefore they pump foreign money into the UK economy, so the UK gains something from their existance. Sealand's bigger threat is to be a target for the Real Time Black List or some such, which is why they won't host anything they think will put their business in danger.
Sealand may not be able to flout all laws and conventions with impunity, but they are immune to subpoena, and have a tax advantage, which makes them something special.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
So let me get this straight:
-- Some idiot commandeers a chunk of abandoned concrete and rust in the North Sea and proclaims himself head of his own country.
-- This idiot lives there, apart from his ill wife for several years. The latter wisely retired to the mainland where little niceties like "medical care" are available. Idiot begins to think that life in his "country" may not be all it's cracked up to be.
-- Idiot's fuckpuppy, whom we'll call Idiot the Younger, meets some chowderhead last-semester college dropouts. Idiot the Younger, an admitted "computer philistine", gets a wild hair up his ass about making lotsa bucks on "that thar new Internet thang."
-- Idiot the Younger gets the idea that they can host servers in Idiot the Elder's "country" that is a run-down WWII fortress in the middle of the North Sea. These servers are allegedly censor-proof, subpoena-proof, earthquake-proof, act-of-God-proof, yada yada yada. HavenCo is born.
-- These clowns charge you $1,500 a month(yes, a month) plus their grossly-inflated hardware costs for a blazing 256Kbps of bandwidth (yes, ***K***bps)
Folks, this is a scam of the highest order. First off, by their own admission, they won't host anything that jeopardizes their Internet connectivity. In other words, no OpenNap servers, no warez, etc. And what if the choice is their connectivity or your data? Well, by their own admission, they'll tape your drives to a thermite canister, pull the pin, and chuck it over the side. So much for the claim of being able to host "anything."
Even assuming their very shaky national sovereignty claims true, (IANAL) data hosted in Sealand is by no means immune to subpoena as they claim. If I'm a plaintiff's attorney (IANAL) and I want data that's on Sealand, I subpoena it. Sure, the courts don't have jurisdiction over Sealand, but they certainly have jurisdiction over Mr. Defendant (IANAL). And when Mr. Defendant parrots the "it's in Sealand" line, the courts will not hesitate to issue a Writ of Bodily Possession. In other words, until Mr. Defendant decides to cough up his Sealand wares, he sits in the bucket. Getting cornholed by Bubba Noneck on a daily basis has a way of making previously unavailable data appear like magic. Bottom line, this line of argument didn't work for the Catholic Church and their "secret" archives and it won't work for anyone trying to stash stuff on Sealand.
Idiots Sr. and Jr. stand ready to defend Sealand "with rifle and shotgun." That doesn't do you much good when your opposition is armed with nuclear weapons. Make no mistake about it, if China, Iraq, or the RIAA decided they didn't like what was on Sealand, they would have no compunction about hiring some ex-UDTers to sink Roughs Tower in a New York second. Hell, if the US decided they didn't like Sealand, a single Tomahawk missile and it's history. Short of these measures, getting their upstream to firewall them off would be a simple task and have the same effect as a Tomahawk, hence their unwillingness to host anything that would jeopardize their Internet access.
I value privacy and freedom of expression as much as anyone. I just want to point out that paying $1,500 a month to have your website on a slow DSL line in the middle of the North Sea isn't quite the magic bullet that Idiots Sr. or Jr. would like you believe it to be. Of course, IANAL and YMMV.
If any of you are interested.
.za domain name system.
:)
The South African Country Code top level domain dns servers are hosted on Sea land. The government has basically tried what I would call a hostile take over of the
The current administrator has moved the DNS system off shore to sealand. I can't blame him, I mean there isn't a government in power atm who has total control over the top level domain names of their country. They refuse to be active participants in a committee; they want the whole thing in the name of providing underprivileged South Africans with cheap/free Internet access, shows how much they know
Another route to protection is financial... Take the Swiss. They have everyone's money, so if you attack them, they burn your money. Simple really!
what is happening with opendbs?
i'd like to see someone fulfill the promises of david chaum and double-blind digital bearer settlement.
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
Well, a sovereign satelite, anyway.
I've never dealt with them.
I've always had a keen interest in microstates, so the story caught my eye when it first came out a few years ago. The idea of a country that existed almost exclusively to host data, free from the rules of any other sovereign body, seemed amazing, something straight out of science fiction. Out of curiosity I started digging deeper. That's when I started learning how precarious Sealand's legal position actually is, and that outside of the IT press - whose only exposure to him has been this story - Bates and son are regarded as dangerous lunatics.
I think the concept is fascinating, and I'd be intrigued to see how it works out when it actually does happen one day. But I don't think this is it - it'll collapse like a house of cards the first time they come under any pressure.
Not only is their legal position fragile at best, but their physical position is too. As I've said before in other Slashdot threads, give me five or ten thousand dollars and I have absolutely no doubt I could permanently end their enterprise - they're sitting ducks, and tremendously dependent on vulnerable supply lines. And their only recourse would be to appeal to British naval assistance, in which case their pretensions of sovereignty are effectively ended and the outcome is the same.
I am not a commando and I have no interest in actually doing anything like this, but one day there may be someone who does.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS