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.

Comments

Ashcroft

[dattaway]

If they are out of control of the US Government, will be they labled as terrorists and bombed?

Re:SOURCEFORGE, et. al., ARE SPAM KINGS

[packeteer]

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...

well this sounds fun

[edrugtrader]

consider me a semen! uh... i mean a seminite, or uh...

No sanctuary - a waste of a gunnery platform

[Embedded Geek]

A story about Sealand's data haven gimmick a while ago interviewed an international law attorney about it. He pointed out that the concept of a data haven is basically bunk. Even if the soverignity of the site is recognized (hardly guarenteed) and out of the juristiction of a government, the officers of a corporation or group are not.

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.