Sealand Put Up For Sale

antic writes "The Principality of Sealand is up for sale. The 550 square meter steel platform boasts "uninterrupted sea views", complete privacy and has been mentioned on Slashdot in the past for its offers of hosting outside the jurisdiction of (some) traditional laws."

Comments

If only I could afford such a thing

[Vengeance]

Then I could hunt the most dangerous game of all...

Yeah, but...

[celardore]

You should know that the commute is a bitch.

How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

[skurk]

1. Buy Sealand on credit, you can get a loan anywhere these days.
2. Apply for your own TLD.
3. Open up for a new domain rush, demand ridicilous prices for certain domains
4. Release the loan using the income from domain sales.
5. You own Sealand, you are king.

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

[pedantic bore]

Well, I think that's not all that different from what they did... except step 2 is a little more iffy than you might think.

Last time there was a slashdot story on them, they had the business model of providing a place where folks could store sensitive data without fear of subpeona -- they wanted to be, for data storage, what Switzerland used to be for bank accounts. Guess it didn't work. They don't really have as much independence as they thought... it's tough to hold your ground when your entire country is one "accident" (or torpedo) from oblivion at worst, or a few weeks of blockade away from starvation at best.

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

[marcello_dl]

Or:

1) get together with other geeks
2) make a joint offer for sealand ownership, each one pays a little share.
3) get sealand
4) enact legislation which is impossible anywhere else because of WTO, like: no patent on software, only copyright. No stupid patents on anything. There is something that can be done for censorship, to free scientific research hampered by stupid lawsuits, lots of possibilities.
5) Open embassies wherever a geek need a safe place to develop his ideas without fears of lawsuits. An embassy is territory of sealand too. SSH provides no data sent to sealand and other embassies violates any international law as it's just encrypted blobs there.
6) Profit for all humanity.

What do you think?

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot "4a) Actually get recognised by at least one other country". Best of luck with that.

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

[drewzhrodague]

5. You own Sealand, you are king.

It is good to be the king!

I should also add

[celardore]

It's not actually for sale, the owners are just offering a tenancy. Which makes it not such a sweet deal.

Re:I should also add

[DavidTC]

Yeah, but if they're not living there, and you are, you can just declare a coup and that you are now president-for-life, then fight them off when they attempt to come back. I'm sure it would be pretty easy to smuggle weapons onto the platform, considering there's probably not even room for a port authority.

Considering the traditional way of determining the actual 'government' is 'who is in physical control of the country', you are now the ruler of Sealand. They are the 'government in exile'.

Re:I should also add

[bigpat]

Don't be too silly. International Law? No country has ever even officially recognized Sealand, it just puts up with it because it is kinda funny and they don't cause much trouble if they are left alone. To the UK it is just a bunch of local squatters in an abandoned sea platform, you have to believe that they would be thrown out if they discovered oil under it or needed to clear it to make way for a sea lane or something. The only reason you couldn't just show up and start fighting over it would be because the UK would finally move in with force and demolish it. Oh just try to open up a luxury casino or something and see if the UK doesn't step in to collect taxes.

Theories of international law are all well and good, but the only reason indefensible small island nations remain independent is because they usually aren't worth the trouble of taking them over or the cost of supporting them, and not because of any deeply held convictions over international law.

Territorial Waters

[TubeSteak]

Sealand exists because in 1967, Britian's territorial waters extended only 3 miles out from the shore.

Therefore, they could legitimately claim the fort as theirs. If they had tried to do that after 1987... it wouldn't have worked, because the 3-mile limit was changed to 12 miles.

Uninterrupted sea views?

[Myrrlin]

Sealand is a bit of a running joke for the people of Harwich. I would contest their "uninterrupted sea views" as I'm fairly sure that the very brightly coloured (luminous yellow!) Hotel Continental situated on the cliffs of Harwich can be seen from it, hell... they can probably see it from Holland! It's also probably quite fire damaged at the moment having suffered a fire http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/5110244.stm last year, and not having its own fire brigade or hospital services had to make use of the British ones.

I'm open to the idea, as long as ...

[nastro]

As long as the new owners don't change the current statutes on Monkey Knife-fighting, I don't see this as a problem.

I also hope they clear up the inconsistencies in the human-bovine marriage laws.

Headquarters

[mulhollandj]

Sounds like it would make a great superhero headquarters.

Sealand is all but destroyed

[javaDragon]

According to Sealand's official website, the platform sustained heavy damage by fire last summer. From the desperate tone of the account, I gather that Sealand might be very close to uninhabitable by now. That might explain the decision to sell it off, more than the old age of the founder.

Guns are the assembly code of politics.

[Peter Trepan]

Nations are sovereign only because they have enough firepower to keep other nations from claiming them. What does it matter what the laws of Sealand are, if you own it and you have no army? Is the army included, or do you have to put it together yourself?

Re:Guns are the assembly code of politics.

[Marcus Green]

Yes is it only the 450 strong Luxembourg army and their enormous firepower that stops Belgium, France or Germany from relieving them of their soverignty (pick other examples to suit).

Re:Guns are the assembly code of politics.

[pla]

Willful ignorance of international law and diplomacy is frighteningly abundant in the US these days.

You talk about "international law" as though it exists beyond fictional agreements between the big boys with the most guns.

As for the counterexample of neutral states, they just happen to benefit from those "let's not kill each other" agreements as a side effect; When wars spread across Europe, they have a long history of making relatively safe corridors through which to move troops to the real action.

As a simple example, tell Belgium how much better international treaties protected it than guns, when Germany invaded it in 1914 - Sure, the UK had an obligation to respond, but had the UK lost, see the GGP's argument about what actually defines "right" and "wrong" on the international scale.

Re:Guns are the assembly code of politics.

[dhaines]

"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing... After they have exhausted all other possibilities."
--Winston Churchill

Cheaper to invade.

[91degrees]

I believe It's empty right now. Sail up there with a paper knife. occupy the terriroty. Kill all zero people who resist. Declare yourself the revolutionary government.

Of course, the declaration of what makes for statehood is a little arbitrary. So rather than go to the effort, I declare myself King of Antarctica.

Re:Cheaper to invade.

[ezzewezza]

What the hell?

I look away for five seconds and someone steals Antarctica from me.

I'd watch your back if I were you, 91degrees!

Re:Cheaper to invade.

[haystor]

You'll have a tough time taking it back since it can only be attacked from the north.

Sun? In ENGLAND?

[evilandi]

bladesjester: the sun do its work

Off the coast of Essex, England, UK? In the North Sea?

I'm guessing you've never been to the east coast of England. It is sunny for approximately half an hour in the afternoon only of the third Wednesday after Pentecost.

A far, far faster method of obtaining fresh water in the North Sea would be to simply open your mouth and tilt your head skywards. It'll fill with fresh rainwater - no desalination required - in about six seconds.

Stating the obvious.

[mumblestheclown]

For far less than 65m you can build your own damn platform and anchor it in the channel or north sea.

Re:Stating the obvious.

[Cauchy]

The problem is that in 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea changed international law so that no new artificial platform could claim nation status. While no country explicitly recognizes Sealand, since its claims to independence predates 1982, it is exempt from this convention.

Coup de Nowhere

[fm6]

Well, the Principality Army could stay on site to prevent a coup. What? There is no army? Well then, the citizens can form a militia... You say there are no citizens either? So what does "Prince" Michael rule over?

This notion that an abandoned radar platform has somehow achieved sovereign nation status just because its squatters say it is has always been a bad joke. They've only gotten away with it because nobody gives a shit. They claim to have a legal decision, but what they really have is a court case the the UK crown won't appeal out of bureaucratic inertia. The very first time they'd done something to really piss people off, a platoon of Scotland Yard bobbies would have landed, sent the "Prince" back to his sheep, and that would have been the end of it.