

Sealand, HavenCo, and the Rule of Law - rdl
http://illinoislawreview.org/article/sealand-havenco-and-the-rule-of-law/

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rdl
I realize this is 10-12 years ago, but the analysis here is quite interesting
in applicability to other cases -- Megaupload, jurisdictional issues in
general, etc.

The summary of this over at Ars Technica is great too.
([http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-
and-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/sealand-and-
havenco.ars))

~~~
ayuvar
I was really surprised at their server farm; I always figured (from the
original Wired article) that it was fairly busy with servers.

I guess losing the fiber optic link kind of ruined that. Or, you know, having
to put your customers' data into a Zodiac to hang out on a plank of metal in
the sea.

~~~
rdl
That photo was early in the buildout, but yeah, it was a single 300 square
foot circular room in one of the towers with 5-10 racks, loosely populated.

We planned to raise $3-5mm plus followon financing, and ended up raising only
$1.5mm or so, most of which was spent on mechanical/life safety upgrades to
the facility -- we didn't have a whole lot left for datacenter. Losing the
155Mbps link was a big problem -- the best we had was 4xE1 (8Mbps), some
caching/CDN, and 128-512k of satellite. Thus, our costs never dropped the way
we wanted, so we couldn't really be price competitive.

Wired has a 3-6 month lead time, so the Wired article actually got written
while we were first looking at the buildout. This happened to overlap with the
collapse of the dotcom bubble.

~~~
ayuvar
I can see a definite advantage in cooling being that close to the North Sea.

How far down did the towers go? Was the entire hollow space within them
basically inhabitable (if uncomfortable)?

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rdl
Each side was 7 (I think) hollow 300sq ft concrete rooms, circular. We had
forced air circulation, and AC in the "datacenter" tower (which was 2 rooms of
datacenter, some power conditioning, and a NOC); just forced air in the
residential one (and some heating using electrical heaters).

During the war, those towers were where people lived, and the lowest levels
were shell magazines for the big AA guns (3.9"?). They had a bigger
superstructure, too. I absolutely would not have wanted to have been there
with 300 people; even with 6-10 it was pretty bad.

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moonchrome
If I was a billionaire I would probably buy Nauru[1], it's a 21km2 independent
island state with <10k people and GDP ~30M$, which comes at 3000$ per capita.
I would offer 50.000k$ to every citizen (more than they will earn in 15
years), which comes down to 500M$, to abdicate authority trough democratic
process and move off the island (or possibly stay and work for me). Then build
your own benevolent dictatorship that's already recognized internationally as
a state.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru>

~~~
tesseractive
Ok, fine. So you're a billionaire with an island nation state and (presumably)
a private army to protect it. As a business owner, I then have the choice of
doing my business in a major Western democracy with an elected government that
is publically answerable to millions of people, or subjecting my business to
the whims of an eccentric billionaire with his own private army who is
answerable to no one.

If you want to do that with your own billions, have at it. But I wouldn't want
to locate a business there, do business with you, or even go to work for you,
an employer from whom I could have no possible legal recourse in the event of
a dispute.

~~~
michaelkeenan
> an employer from whom I could have no possible legal recourse in the event
> of a dispute.

That part is easily solved: the dictator can put up a bond in some trusted
country. The bond is forfeited if the dictator betrays you. The contract laws
of the trusted country apply.

It could be that some enterprising dictator could gain a better reputation for
respect of property than the US government[1]. A reputation for respecting
property rights, combined with a country, is an extremely lucrative asset, and
it would be costly to lose it.

> As a business owner, I then have the choice of doing my business in a major
> Western democracy with an elected government

If moonchrome can offer a better regulatory environment, you might prefer to
do business with him. Maybe your business is melanoma detection. HN user
danifong approached YCombinator with that idea, and Graham told her[2]: “The
trouble with the melanoma detection idea is that you’d spend most of your time
dealing with legal and regulatory crap. That sort of work doesn’t really take
advantage of your skills.”

[1] The USA has questionable regard for property rights, e.g.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London>

[2] [http://daniellefong.com/2010/02/11/how-law-shapes-the-
busine...](http://daniellefong.com/2010/02/11/how-law-shapes-the-business-
landscape-and-a-patent-puzzle/)

~~~
tesseractive
For all the issues that can crop up with property rights around the margins in
the US, the EU, and any other established democracies, doing business in a
country where decades or centuries of history has established a strong general
belief in property rights and the rule of law gives you a very strong set of
baseline protections. Abandoning that for a brand new country where what one
guy says goes introduces a whole new kind of risk that most of us here at HN
are not used to dealing with and factoring in.

For example, requiring a dictator to post bond is all well and good until he
decides at some point while you're within his borders that he's going to (a)
kill you, in which case collecting on the bond won't you much good, though it
will soften the blow for your investors, or (b) start cutting off toes and
fingers until you release the bond. (Obviously you could structure the bond in
such a way that option (b) is unworkable, which means that it either becomes a
straight up hostage ransom situation, or reduces to option (a).)

Even given all of that, you're right that it still might make sense to do
business there for a particular kind of business given a particular risk
tolerance. It might well be an experiment worth trying. By the same token, if
you develop a new kind of versatile routing software that does an especially
good job of finding the optimal approach to trying to route materials past
someone who is actively trying to stop you, selling it to Mexican drug lords
might be an experiment worth trying. Just make sure you have a really good
idea what you're getting into and that the risks to your person as well as
your business are worth it to you.

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ChuckMcM
This should be mandatory reading for "Internet generation" entrepreneurs.

It is a clear exposition on why people need to engage their local institutions
to change the law to meet their needs, rather than to try to create from whole
cloth new institutions. When folks argue that changing the law of the land is
'hard' I do not disagree, but when they say creating something new from
scratch is 'easier' I do. Like a manager who just sees the effects of the
software and not how it achieves those effects, creation tends to look easier
to the ignorant than to the experienced.

Anyway, there are great lessons to be learned in the story of Sealand.

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stcredzero
My version of a datahaven:

A series of small cases with a 12 volt auto plug, a small fanless computer,
some batteries, and a 3G wireless connection. Hire some vehicle operators to
keep it plugged in while they are moving. Once started, they will need a daily
activation code to keep operating, otherwise they erase their hard drive
encryption key and deactivate, requiring their encryption key to reactivate.

The small cases will constitute a low-powered cloud with no permanent address.
If a case is seized in a raid, it becomes inactivated.

~~~
vegardx
Your version of a datahaven seems flawed. What if no-one want to sell you
connectivity? How will you manage what adresses they are accassible on? Heck,
you even made your data trackable down to a few meters by using GSM.

~~~
stcredzero
_Your version of a datahaven seems flawed._

Granted. I was just thinking of what could be done with off the shelf parts.

I think the scheme can stymie anyone without a wiretapping or a search
warrant. Eventually, the law will change to adapt.

 _How will you manage what addresses they are accessible on?_

Steganographic messages posted on darknets over TOR.

 _Heck, you even made your data trackable down to a few meters by using GSM._

My design goal is to let the authorities eventually shut down the operation,
but still deny them any information when they do. I think that's as far as one
can practically go with off the shelf hardware.

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algoshift
Can a privately launched satellite in orbit be considered free from control
from any one nation? Would my satellite be sovereign territory?

Might this be an idea for the future of DNS and highly-independent web hosting
in some form? No cooling problems for shure!

Of course, there's the minor issue of a connection to the wired internet...

I want a .orbital TLD!

Forget the "cloud" how about "space"?

Hmmmm, isn't there a prominent web entrepreneur who's building a rocket
company?

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smhinsey
I think you got the cooling problems backwards. In vacuum it's a lot harder to
get rid of excess heat than it is inside an atmosphere. Latency might be a bit
of a bummer.

~~~
algoshift
Here you go:

<http://www.tak2000.com/data/Satellite_TC.pdf>

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wisty
I think the review plays down one thing - time. Sealand may (I'm not a lawyer,
and certainly not an expert in the laws of statehood) become a state if:

* It stays independent.

* It obtains a sustainable population.

* Commercial independence. Not just as a "data haven", but hydroponic food production, and stuff being built there (possibly just IP, but more than just what you get from legal arbitrage).

* A functional community, with a rule of law.

Not too likely. The platform is simply to small to support any of this.

~~~
rdl
It would be way easier to find a "real" country and convince them of the
merits of doing a favorable free trade zone, than to try to rehabilitate
Sealand.

(our plan was actually to use Sealand to get press, and then develop both
technical means like anonymous ecash, and political means (going to various
neutralish countries to try to sell them on the idea), which is why we did
such a big PR campaign)

~~~
excuse-me
The trouble is that you need to get enough customers quickly enough that they
have more power than the governments opposing you!

eg. Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Monaco, the Channel Islands, most of the
caribbean etc. The US could probably manage to shut any of them down if their
'customers' didn't have so much political clout in Washington

The difficulty is going to be getting enough customers who donate more to US
politics than the MPAA/RIAA

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shawnbaden
I'm ignoring the core issue here but I just want to say:

SEALAND IS AWESOME

The location and structure itself I mean. What a sweet pad that'd be. Sure, it
makes no sense from an economical standpoint. Or if you value safety. Or any
logical reason really. But it's awesome.

That is all.

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samstave
I sent the article over to Ryan Lackey via Quora to see if he had any
comments. Maybe he'll come post here as well.

(Ryan Lackey was founder of HavenCO.)

HAHA edit: RDL is already in this thread! I sent before looking at the
comments :(

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rdl
I'd kind of prefer to use Askolo for this (<http://askolo.com/rdl/>)

~~~
samstave
Great Idea.

