Pirate Bay to Purchase Sealand?

paulraps writes "Notorious Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is planning to buy its own nation in an attempt to get around troublesome international copyright laws. The organization, the world's largest bit torrent tracker, has set its sights on Sealand, a former British naval platform in the North Sea that has been designated a 'micronation' and claims to be outside UK jurisdiction. With a target price of £500m it won't be cheap, but Pirate Bay says contributors will become honorary citizens."

Comments

Arrr!

[Rob T Firefly]

Pirates and the sea! Aye, this be a perfect match if ever there be one.

Re:Arrr!

[walt-sjc]

How true. A simple single torpedo from a sub on a "training mission" would mean the end of Sealand. Anonymous and deadly. In reality though, people would find out. It's not like Sealand will have "weapons of mass destruction", and no history to suggest it ever did or ever will (unlike Iraq.)

On the other hand, I think the consequences would be rather severe, as now all small countries who have done nothing wrong will feel that they are targeted. Remember: if your country doesn't have copyright laws, it's not wrong to copy stuff. Many many many things that are illegal in the US are legal elsewhere, and vice versa. Political pressure is not the same as military action.

Re:Arrr!

[pdboddy]

500 million pounds? That won't pay for many legal copies of anything... wasn't the RIAA charging 175,000 dollars per copyrighted song? Better to buy Sealand... As for not being able to make a living... I see Metallica is doing just fine, despite all those songs of theirs being available for free off P2P networks. I won't say piracy is stealing... but piracy doesn't mean people would have bought it otherwise. So, no sale or ... no sale. How does that affect your ability to make a living?

Re:Arrr!

[Yvanhoe]

"I will make this song, pay money to record it, pay money to make a disc out of my recording, pay money to distribute it, but as I will have X thousands people listening to my song, I will sell X thousand discs and be able to pay my fees and have a living." was a valid thinking but is not anymore. I would not call it stupidity because changing old thinking habits is a feat few people achieve but now this is it :
Stop thinking you can force someone to buy a physical support for information (this is hard for a lot of people)
Stop thinking you can get money for transmission of information (this is hard for most people I know)

The only solution I see is that people should be able to be paid at the production step, not at the distribution step.

Also I am getting tired of the "respect my artist lifestyle, I expect to get money when I distribute music" tirade because it is not an argument, I could easily tell "respect my computer scientist lifestyle, I expect to be able to share, upload and download informations without constraints" that is true and that is not an argument either.

Re:Arrr!

[FLEB]

As opposed to the people who immediately sidetrack, at the first possible opportunity, to the overcomplicating and oversoftening semantic argument of whether or not copyright infringement is "theft", completely distracting everyone from the more important question of whether it's "wrong" or "harmful".

Re:Arrr!

[Anonymous Coward]

France doesn't do that anymore and people still consider it a country.

Re:Arrr!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they already won two wars:

http://www.seanhastings.com/havenco/sealand/histor y.html

Sealand Fights Off Invaders (Wins War)

In August of 1978, a number of Dutch men came to Sealand in the employ of a German businessman. They were there to discuss business dealings with Sealand. While Roy was away in Britain, these men kidnapped Prince Roy's son Michael, and took Sealand by force. Soon after, Roy recaptured the island with a group of his own men and held the attackers as prisoners of war.

During the time that he held the prisoners, the Governments of the Netherlands and Germany petitioned for their release. First they asked England to intervene in the matter, but the British government cited their earlier court decision as evidence that they made no claim to the territory of Sealand. Then, in an act of de facto recognition of Sealand's sovereignty, Germany sent a diplomat directly to Sealand to negotiate for the release of their citizen.

Roy first released the Dutch citizens, as the war was over, and the Geneva Convention requires the release of all prisoners. The German was held longer, as he had accepted a Sealand Passport, and therefore was guilty of treason. Prince Roy, who was grateful that the incident had not resulted in a loss of life, and did not want to bloody the reputation of Sealand, eventually released him as well.

Hmmm...

[psykl0n3]

WOuldn't this be even more dangerous though? Now, MPAA and RIAA would actually be lobbying for military action against the Sealand nation... Imagine that, sorry our servers are down due to an air strike... Please donate to purchase more airplanes and subs.

Theres a problems with this.

[AltGrendel]

As pointed out in the previous Sealand article, you have to connect to someone. So you get your fiber run out to.... who? England? France? India? Look what the Russians are doing with their oil.

Pirate Bay would get cut off in a heart beat.

Re:Theres a problems with this.

[Alchemar]

You don't have to have the gear located inside your country. You find a friendly third world country (ie they will accept you bribe) to set up an embasy. The embasy is now considered your soil under your laws. I don't think there is anything in international law that says you can't have an embasy that is larger than your native country. Now you can just make a deal to tie into the main fiber for the country your embasy resides in. Tell them you need a direct connections for reasons of national security.

Think of the extended benifits. Under the guideline set by the US, no one should have problems with you kidnapping the head of the RIAA and using waterboarding techniques to extract information about how they are planning to shutdown your network, thus causing the complete economic colapse of your country as well as threatening (ie terrorizing) all your honorary citizens.

Re:Theres a problems with this.

[AlphaLop]

Wow, What a great plan. That only leaves one question... Do you work for the government or the Mafia? Either way I think you have the right mindset..... And I like the way you think :)

The National Anthem of Sealand

[Van Cutter Romney]

We download, we copy, we share and loot
No more DRM me hearties, yo ho
We file swap and upload and don't give a hoot
No more MPAA me hearties, yo ho

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me

Citizenship?!?

[PetrusMagnusII]

Dude, forget the whole bittorrent part, I'd donate just so I can get citizenship. That'd be a sweet novelty item, a Sealand Passport! Just as long as they don't have laws against dual citizenship that is ;)

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

They wouldn't be buying just a platform. Sealand has a complex history; it was in international waters when built in WW2, and still was when its owner/leader declared it an independent nation. Since then international maritime laws have changed, and if a similar platform was built today it would be a part of the nation closest to it. There was actually a confrontation between Sealand and the Royal Navy in the 70s, IIRC, a standoff which ended with the withdrawal of the RN, supposedly cementing Sealand's place as a sovereign nation. So, that's what The Pirate Bay would be buying: not just an offshore platform, but a true data haven, a sort of modern-day Tortuga, a port from which to set sail on the high seas of the internet with blatant disregard for copyright law.

500 million for that? Why not launch a satellite?

[vadim_t]

With that price, couldn't they do something better with the money?

For that amount of cash they could probably launch a satellite. Now that's an idea -- how about trackers in the sky people can connect to by pointing an antenna to it? Since you'd have to aim at the satellite, it'd be very unlikely that somebody could snoop on the communication, and the precise location of the users could be unknown.

At least, unlike with Sealand, anybody with the right equipment could connect to it, without having to rely on other countries not cutting the connection to it.

Re:Hmm . A bit slow thought.

[operagost]

Seaworld? Are they going to use TCP/IP over dolphin carrier?

Account number?

[XSforMe]

Please donate to purchase more airplanes and subs.
You mean we actually get to fire live ammo on the MPAA/RIAA lawyers? Can you repost the account number accepting these donations?

Re:500 Million ??

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Sealand claims some sort of special status, and has indeed seen off a couple of half-hearted attempts to get rid of it.

However, let's be serious for a minute. The UK does not recognise the independence of Sealand, which is entirely contained within UK national waters under international law. Seeing off the navy is a cute joke, but if anyone who "bought" the "nation" started seriously impeding UK interests, for example by flagrantly violating UK law, then the "nation" could cease to exist rather abruptly. More realistically, the government would probably just ship a few police officers over there, arrest everyone, and throw them in jail. You'd hear their cries of "You have no jurisdiction!" all the way to the police helicopter, of course. :-)

TCP/IP Over Dolphon

[maroberts]

Are they going to use TCP/IP over dolphin carrier?

TCP/IP over Aquatic Mammal carriers, as it is more officially known, is simply an modification of
RFC1149 (A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers).

The above spec has been "embraced and extended" for Aquatic Mammal use; (much) larger packet sizes are supported, as well as a separate optional High Frequency Audio command channel, which is sometimes used for Relay transmission of packets, and the possibility of dynamic packet routing..

Re:problem...

[drgonzo59]

who wants to spend their entire life on a floating platform simply to pirate movies and songs?

You must be new here...

Standard 'Infringement != Theft' Note

[kahei]

Copyright infringement is not theft. The most obvious and conspicuous difference is that the former is civil and the latter criminal law. This has vast implications vis-a-vis the manner in which suit is brought, the possible penalties for the defendant, and the burden on the plaintiff. Another huge difference is that the latter involves denying the owner the use of an asset whereas the former involves unlawfully creating/distributing copies of a work. Copyright infringement and theft are not even closely related issues, and it's impossible to discuss them usefully without realizing that.

Now, these are obvious, relevant, basic facts about a topic which is important and much-discussed on Slashdot. And yet there a largish population (maybe 15% of those who express an interest) on Slashdot of people who just physically cannot learn them. Whence, then, this 'fool reserve'?

Originally I theorized that it relates to sunspot activity but later I came to feel that El Nino, peak oil, the war in Iraq, and the new 'gritty' James Bond may all play a role. And maybe chupacabra. Chupacabra's a pretty sinister beast... think about it, it's a monster named after a lollipop... what could possibly be spookier?

Re:Standard 'Infringement != Theft' Note

[Cederic]

I saw True Romance at the cinema. I own a copy on video. I own it on DVD. I own the directors cut unrated version on DVD. If I'm away from home and decide I want to watch it, and use a copy of the DVD I put onto my laptop hard disk, I put it to you that I am depriving nobody of their rightful income.

I am depriving them of income they'd like. But frankly they've been more than compensated by me for their effort and artistic output.

My thoughts may not match the law on this matter. I'd prefer to change the law.

Re:Screw the account number...

[TheNinjaroach]

That part's easy - just leave.

The official reason when Sealand gets squished

[nickco3]

> It's not like Sealand will have "weapons of mass destruction"

No, they will accuse it of trafficking in kiddie porn.