Slashdot Mirror
HavenCo In Trouble?
Evil Al writes "News.com is reporting on the talk given by Ryan Lackey, former CTO of HavenCo, at DefCon. Lackey claims that the company is teetering on the edge due to internal upheaval and lack of customers. Oh, and 9/11, of course."
...it's the more the fact the company only had a whopping six customers.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
These guys never had a workable business plan to begin with. They were selling bandwidth at a huge premium over what it costs just a few miles away in the UK. If you are able to pay that much, you are probably doing something illegal to begin with, and HavenCo won't host you.
This was a solution looking for a problem that never materialized. The idea certainly captured the imagination of slashdotters though.
-josh
ha, that is true
but if you meant "bombers" as in "port spamming" or such, it is very conceivable. if people can distrubute music and RIAAs requests recieve no action by HavenCo since RIAA has no jurisdiction (this was exactlly HavenCo's stategy), then RIAA would be inclined to use every security hole-IP DOS attack-anything that they could come up with because again, who would stop them? Itd be cool to watch tho, it would be the wild wild west cyber.
given by Ryan Lackey, former CTO of HavenCo, at DefCon
Even their ex-CTO was a Lackey!
"The key lesson on this is if you're going to put a 'co-lo' facility somewhere, political and contract stability in that jurisdiction is very important" er, yes, and i thought the political aspect was meant to be one of the main selling points, ie, it wasn't governed by the UK. perhaps they should have sorted that one out before they tried to make their billions. surely they are just a very late casualty of the dot.com bubble?
All I Want For Christmas Is My Constitutional Rights
Their acceptable use policy defeats the purpose of the haven?!
HavenCo said on Monday that its acceptable use policy "stands as originally written. However it is the case that principality law forbids any act...which is against international law, linked with terrorism, or contrary to international custom and practice. These restrictions are in keeping with those found in any country."
That bold bit pretty much covers everything.
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
From the article:
Tan was prepared to pay HavenCo millions of dollars to host a Web site that would let customers stream movies from legally purchased DVDs, something that was not clearly illegal because only one customer at a time could view each stream, Lackey said. The Sealand royal family balked over the possibility of bad publicity, Lackey said. "I decided as soon as I got out of the meeting that I was going to quit," Lackey said.
No wonder they're going under. They're HavenCo, they should be hosting these types of sites. They turn down hosting sites like this that seem almost custom fitted to their business model! The king of sealand must be a quirky fellow indeed.
StickMan
www.rageagainst.net
The "gimmick" for this business was that they could host sites outside of one's own country, thus protecting one from legal liability for the content. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it demonstrated that the legal responsibility for content on a web site lies with the site's owner, not the hosting provider, and thus the owner would be held responsible under the laws of the country where he lived?
Who in the hell is going to do business with some lunatic who fancies himself as the "Prince" of a gun platform?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
They really need to offer lower rates to fill those racks up a bit more, save the novelty premiums for those last slots.
But what about SARS? Blaming 9/11 is old-school.
It's legal status was determined a long time ago. here is a good place to start.
"On October 1st, 1987, Britain extended its territorial waters from 3 to 12 nautical miles. At nearly the same time, Prince Roy declared the extension of Sealand's territorial waters to be a like 12 nautical miles, so that right of way from the open sea to Sealand would not be blocked by British claimed waters. No treaty has been signed between Britain and Sealand to divide up the overlapping areas, but a general policy of dividing the area between the two countries down the middle can be assumed. International law does not allow the claim of new land during the extension of sea rights, so Sealand's sovereignty was safely "grandfathered" in. Britain has no more right to Sealand's territory than Sealand has to the territory of the British coastline that falls within its claimed 12 nautical mile arc."
Since sealand was outside the initial 3 mile border when it was first claimed, England cannot claim sealand for itself. It would be similar to the United States attempting to annex Cuba by extending the border a further 90 miles south.
"Some nations might have tried to use this as an excuse to try to claim all of the territory of the weaker and not well recognized nation regardless of international law, however, this has not been the case. Britain has made no attempt to take Sealand, and the British government still treats it as an independent State. Prince Roy continues to pay no British National Insurance during the time he resides on Sealand subsequent to a ruling by the British Department of Health and Social Security's solicitors branch. Also, there was another fire arms incident in 1990 when a ship strayed too near Sealand and warning shots were again fired. The ship's crew made complaints to British authorities and a newspaper article ran detailing the incident. Yet despite Britain's severe prohibition of firearms, British authorities have never pursued the matter. This is a clear indication that Britain's Home Office still considers Sealand to be outside their zone of control."
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
They're short on money, but I'm sure someone would be willing to send them a few million to keep afloat.
They're just another victim of the dot-com fallout, really. Yet another company that completely missed the boat.
I mean, their business directors must really be lost at sea as to how to resolve these problems.
Perhaps they'd succeed with a new software strategy? Say, pier-to-pier filesharing?
Oh, I kill me....
The real truth is, you could find a colocation facility in China or other far-eastern country that would host you a hell of a lot cheaper. They are simply not competitive.
Furthermore, if I was hosting seriously illegal content on a huge scale, I would question the militarial resiliance of Sealand too. They are just a small fort, probably with no real defences to speak of anymore. Would a certain country or two we know go as far as invading it because the rampant piracy was hurting their economy? These countries have already ignored the UN's opinion on a certain military campaign very recently. At least only a very stupid country would dare invade China!
My old office used to have an "inert gas" fire suppresion system that meant you could only enter the server room with special dongles. If any of the dongles were in use then the system would not flood the room until they were all back in the slots outside the room. Can't remember what the gas was though, but there were certainly emergency gas masks in the room for use in case the system failed. This was in a fairly old server room in a fairly old fashioned office so don't know how commonplace these things are. Sorry if this is slightly off-topic but thought it meritted a reply.
How much do you like toast?
this is total BS according to Lackey.
havenco did not have a "sealed oxegen free room" it had 5 lan racks with about 15 servers on there.... thats it.
apparently they spent more money on getting a flakey wireless link up then they did on servers.
also in the talks he said that sealand has like 2 people residing there now.... and he said that a armed takeover would take about 10 minutes..... so anyone have a chopper I can borrow?
Different YEAR.
:)
My Defcon 11 talk describes the problems and why I've gone public (I have more responsibility to the public than to HavenCo, once management begins to engage in fraud)
I'll be at Linuxworld Expo today, if anyone wants to talk about this...should be easy to spot. (I'm on BART right now)
I'm posting an in-depth story for slashdot in a day or so, using objective proof of my claims, so there won't be any more "it is this way" "no it isn't" "yes it is" press release communication
Sending royal marines into a "sovereign" nation would be a violation international law, oh wait never mind.
http://www.metacolo.com/papers/dc11-havenco/
There is fraudulent business activity to the extent of criminality, which is why it is made public.
The information I have made public is entirely from public sources, so please read the defcon talk before making assumptions.
I've certainly had no shortage of work since leaving HavenCo, and am well respected in the security and networking communities.