The Fall of Data Haven Sealand 210
Fluffeh writes "Ars has a great article about the history of Sealand, a data haven — a place where you can host almost anything, as long as it follows the very bare laws of Sealand Government. Quoting: 'HavenCo's failure — and make no mistake about it, HavenCo did fail — shows how hard it is to get out from under government's thumb. HavenCo built it, but no one came. For a host of reasons, ranging from its physical vulnerability to the fact that The Man doesn't care where you store your data if he can get his hands on you, Sealand was never able to offer the kind of immunity from law that digital rebels sought. And, paradoxically, by seeking to avoid government, HavenCo made itself exquisitely vulnerable (PDF) to one government in particular: Sealand's.'"
This is why we have Tor (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that you could escape from your own government's laws by keeping your data somewhere else is preposterous on its face. At some point, you have to get that data, and that data will have to cross into your own location, which would make you in possession of the data and liable for possessing it. Unlike Swiss bank accounts which hold money secretly for you, and are relatively safe from the prying eyes of the government, data is something that is not as easily picked up in person.
Tor onions. Are they good or are they whack?
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At some point, you have to get that data, and that data will have to cross into your own location, which would make you in possession of the data and liable for possessing it.
What about a situation wherein you move data from Server A in Germany to Server B in Switzerland? It never crosses your computer, all you do is send the command.
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You score a technical point, but I have to ask: what would be the practical usefulness of doing that. It's like hoarding money, or ammo, or food: although you can wave it around and its presence might make you feel secure, if you don't actually use it all you've gone is created a big pile.
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You know that, for most intents and purposes, money is just data, right?
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I think you miss the point, though.... (Score:3)
The reason Sealand was created was an understanding that most often, government and law enforcement will attempt to shut down the SOURCE of data they have a problem with. Just like the "War on Drugs", they're most interested in catching the major dealers, as opposed to small time individual drug users (though certainly, many of them get caught in the wide nets they're constantly putting out, too).
With computer data, it's kind of an "every man for himself" situation out there. If you want to view illegal con
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Not to mention you might not want to start with a former British military outpost which is located beyond any doubt what so ever inside the territorial waters of England and has ALWAYS been considered British soil. They could of moved London on board and it wouldn't have mattered, its part of England.
What these guys did was no different than a moon shiner in the Ozarks claiming he doesn't live in America and isn't bound by American laws.
He can say it, but you're an idiot if you believe him.
But back to what
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If I am earning 1 million dollars a year, one supposes that having the money deposited in an offshore account with a reputation of safety may be a good thing. I can pay them much less than would be requir
Re:This is why we have Tor (Score:5, Funny)
Sealand is SO last year, now it's servers hosted on drone aircraft...
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Well, no, according to the comments on that article the RIAA would send their navy out to shoot the drones down.
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I still think pirate bay should use ronpaul blimps. Clustering up the absurdity makes easier shooting I reckon.
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Does that seem contentious or inaccurate to you?
Windows 3.1 (1992) certainly didn't have the net in mind.
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You're talking about Microsoft Windows right? The same OS where TCP/IP was at one point a 3rd party addon? How could it possibly have been designed for the internet without having TCP/IP?
ah, libertarians (Score:3, Interesting)
The freedom-minded Hastings had moved to Anguilla to work on online gambling projects
What they really want is an abolition of all regulation so they can exploit your weaknesses and suck you dry.
I wonder whether Parker and Stone are finally realising this with their latest South Park episode on Cash for Gold services?
Re:ah, libertarians (Score:5, Insightful)
A person who believes that oppression is best handled by the private sector.
Re:ah, libertarians (Score:4, Insightful)
Democrat, n:
A person who believes the more government you have, the freer you are.
Republican, n:
A person who believes that every American is born with a mandate to love Jesus and murderously despise foreigners.
Inaccurate and inflammatory statemens are fun!
Re:ah, libertarians (Score:5, Insightful)
Republican, n:
A person who believes that every American is born with a mandate to love Jesus and murderously despise foreigners.
If you think that's an inaccurate statement, you haven't been paying attention to the primary debates.
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In US context, I don't see anything inaccurate about your statements. They're just as spot on as GP's definition of libertarian.
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I was amused.. people need to lighten up!
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Libertarians have been repeatedly shown to have the least sense of humour of all Internet kooks.
You should read up on Russian Soviet era Black Humour. Just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it isn't funny.
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Well, no, they don't think that
They usually think that the Government does a excellent job at it.
you left out a noun (Score:2)
Libertarian, n:
A person who understands the difference between government oppression and free market oppression and prefers free market oppression.
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Free market cannot in principle oppress you, there is no legal body that is above you in the eyes of the law to do so.
Re:ah, libertarians (Score:5, Insightful)
aka, an idiot who doesn't know history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency [wikipedia.org]
"Pinkerton's agents performed services ranging from security guarding to private military contracting work. At its height, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency employed more agents than there were members of the standing army of the United States of America, causing the state of Ohio to outlaw the agency due to fears it could be hired as a private army or militia."
and do you know what these guys did when people tried to exercise their freedoms?
the rise of pinkertons is why we have things like minimum wage, hours per week to work, no child labor, etc.
because without government, the private sector WILL rape you and enslave you, until the people get fed enough and fight back. why? MORE PROFIT, MOOOOORRRREEEE. there is no other motivation. and this motivation blows right past respect for freedom, or anything else
the government sucks. its just that compared to all other options, the government is the best option
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and do you know what these guys did when people tried to exercise their freedoms?
So, why wasn't your much vaunted gov't there to protect them when they tried to exercise their freedoms? Sitting on its hands? Toadying to deep pocketed corporatists? Accepting bribes to keep their hands off?
At least Sitting Bull had the guts to stand up against the bastards.
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the government is warped by corporate interests, and moves away from its intended masters, the people
do we
a. remove the government, so the corporations can rape you directly
b. remove the corrupting influence of corporations, so it is accountable to the people, as intended
so do we kill the patient, or cure him?
(cue republican talking points on healthcare, which amounts to basically "just die already, we have a profit principle in healthcare which is more important than your health")
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Certainly private health care and private insurance did a much better job [slashdot.org] at actually getting care to the people than gov't mandated BS system does. Same with everything else, including SS [slashdot.org], individual freedom to live one's life as one sees fit, this includes the right to do drugs [slashdot.org]. Then there are wages and money [slashdot.org], education [slashdot.org], due process [slashdot.org] etc.
As to your fallacy of a question:
so do we kill the patient, or cure him?
you are obviously approaching it from your tyrannical anti-freedom perspective, which includes establishing a big enough gov't to steal a
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if you are poor, do you just die in the street?
you are a special combination of callousness and stupidity aren't you?
you won't be happy until you see the russian revolution or the french revolution reenacted, will you? this seems to be the only way certain people such as yourself get educated about what happens when you systematically condemn people to a lesser and lesser existence just for being poor in the first place. which is a direct result of your thinking, but you're too dense to see it
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Friend, don't ever argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
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I've noticed that some of the most rabid libertarians on here, including roman_mir I believe, are actually Russian emigrees.
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do we
a. remove the government, so the corporations can rape you directly
b. remove the corrupting influence of corporations, so it is accountable to the people, as intended
How are you going to accomplish "b"? The "corrupting influence of corporations" only exists if politicians are corruptible, and they almost Universally are.
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It wasn't perfect but it used to work, it was called the Constitution. Of-course they abandoned it due to their Marxist and/or fascist ideologies, they used the desire of the masses for free bread and circuses and willingness of the masses to pay for that with what actually matters - freedom.
There can be no accountability to the people without the rule of law ABOVE the government, and the rule of law was the Constitution. The circle-blabber-mouth here believes that the Constitution is outdated and that Marx
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You cannot ever have a government that is not corrupt. Oh, sure, you can imagine one, but like me imagining that circletimessquare will learn to operate the shift key, it's not ever going to actually happen.
So, if a corrupt government is stipulated, what's the best plan? Not anarchy, but a weak government. One that has the resources to do the minimum sorts of stuff a government has to do to call itself that (which is quite a small fraction of our current budget), but that's all. The commodities markets,
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So, why wasn't your much vaunted gov't there to protect them when they tried to exercise their freedoms?
They weren't doing anything, as the government was comparitively small and weak back then. As referenced directly in the post you responded to without reading all the words.
Re:ah, libertarians (Score:5, Funny)
There is no child labour because of industrial revolution and capitalism, which increased productivity of the population to the point, when parents didn't have to send their kids to work.
Or did you think somebody forced the parents to do so? Or do you believe that gov't has wealth that it gets from anywhere else rather than stealing it from the people who produce it?
Gov't has nothing, children always worked until free market capitalism and industrialisation increased people's productivity by applying savings as investment to build/acquire better tools.
It's capital that makes people more productive, because capital creates better tools, and so instead of a stick, the person gets a shovel and then an excavator and can do work of hundreds of people by himself.
Without free market capitalism and industrialisation children still would have worked since very young age, and now, that USA has abandoned the principles of freedom, children WILL WORK ONCE AGAIN, and they will starve and that's what your bankrupt ideology is leading to, circlehead.
As to pinkertons, etc. - I would absolutely protect my private property with private security force, and that's my absolute right as a property owner and it's my responsibility as well.
Gov't is tyranny, and those who promote more of it are the tyrants.
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i only read your first sentence. then i laughed and read no more. it must be nice to just make stuff up
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There is no child labour because of industrial revolution and capitalism, which increased productivity of the population to the point, when parents didn't have to send their kids to work.
"Shit, nobody's sending their kids to work anymore. Quick! Write up some child labor laws to make it look like we deserve the credit! [wikipedia.org]"
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There are always outliers in every case, but it's not like gov't can force a massive change without the society actually going in that direction in the first place.
Gov't can't today dictate that all cars must fly instead of drive on the roads. Why can't the gov't do so? Because we don't have real flying cars yet.
Once the economy/society creates the flying cars (if ever), then the gov't can come up with whatever laws outlawing normal driving cars, because even with a huge demand for flying cars and most pe
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Oh, and if you think that what I wrote here [slashdot.org] is nonsense, consider that when society is NOT ready or is actively unwilling to participate in some nonsense law that is pushed by a crazy gov't of some kind, then the society actively finds ways around the laws, generally disregards them and creates means to go around them one way or another, and the only real consequence of this is that the costs go up, the efficiencies and quality go down.
This is true for every such situation, for example prohibition or the wa
Re:ah, libertarians (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and as to the profit motive - that's right. That's the ONLY motive that increases the overall wealth in the market because it allows allocating resources efficiently. There is no other mechanism known to men to do so, no amount of central planning, no amount of dictatorship and totalitarianism can do as good of a job allocating resources as private individuals and businesses within the context of free market (market free of gov't intervention).
The more profit the better.
Profit is VIRTUE IN ITSELF, because it is the only real indicator telling us whether the enterprise is worthwhile or worthless and which way to move.
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your personal freedoms will be gleefully trampled upon by the free market were it not restrained by a government. do you understand that?
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Personal freedoms cannot be 'gleefully tramped upon by the free market', because personal freedoms - rights of the individual, are only meaningful in the context of the relationship between the individual and the collective.
There is no such thing as a 'right' that defines interaction between two peers, two individuals or two businesses or individual and a business (businesses are people, and what I mean by that is that people own businesses. Corporate protection by gov't creates a different kind of a busin
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if organization A is larger than organization B, and there is no rule of law, which is possible only with a government, then organization A is free and ENCOURAGED in your view to engage in all manner of vile conduct
rule of the strongest, warlords, somalia, etc.
this is your utopia?
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Nonsense.
There is only one law, that, which governs. The government of USA was puny, tiny, compared to what it is today exactly when the individual freedoms were maximised and allowed the people to create the most wealth (and then they squandered it over the next 100 years of-course by growing government and reducing freedoms).
Government has the authority to set the law based on the silent or explicit cooperation of the majority. If people rise today and march towards your capital city and then take down t
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go
go to greenland, tierra del fuego, somaliland, western montana... go, create your utopia, like utopian enthusiasts in the past in the american frontier
stop destroying my society with your ignorant WHARRRGARRBBBBLLEE of the clueless naive enthusiast with no understanding of history or human nature
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It's not about 'going', it's about setting the affairs in an appropriate manner in the global economy. The physical location doesn't matter anymore, didn't you know that, headsqure?
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your religious devotion to free market fundamentalism is an inspiration to us all
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It's better to believe in freedom than in slavery, such as in your case.
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So, your response to an argument for a free market, is to argue that government will abandon it's true role (to maintain a free market), in exchange for a cowardly position of supporting thugs? And you dare call someone an idiot?
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no, that's not my response. try again, you _____
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"...its just that compared to all other options, the government is the best option"
You might want to rethink this.
http://www.businessinsider.com/oecd-better-life-index-2011-5#1-australia-11 [businessinsider.com]
http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/19/norway-denmark-finland-business-washington-world-happiest-countries_slide_11.html [forbes.com]
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mef45ejmi/the-worlds-happiest-and-saddest-countries-2/#content [forbes.com]
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given the choice between that and places with weak government and no social safety nets (aka, a few ultrarich and teeming poor and corruption everywhere, aka cameroon, bangladesh, philippines, etc.), i'll cast my lot with the stoic gloomy nords any day
or rather, i'll convince my country and government. i'm not leaving my country, i'm fighting for it and winning it back from the hordes of the faux news propagandized and stupid, who won't stop until the USA is just like cameroon, bangladesh, philippines, etc.
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Yes that's pretty much where I'm at though I don't see much light at the end of this particular tunnel.
Waste of effort (Score:5, Interesting)
Sealand has no practical sovereignty. The most they can say is that so far the UK hasn't chosen to take over, and they're not aware of any plans to do so. Nobody believes the UK couldn't take Sealand if they want to. Nobody believes that it would be a diplomatic problem for the UK in their relations with other countries if they did. So Sealand, at best, can operate only if the UK lets it. That's not sovereign in any meaningful sense. Even if you feel that it would be wrong for the UK to interfere, that's hardly something you're going to rely on to stop them doing so.
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Sealand is no Argentina, though.
Re:Waste of effort (Score:5, Informative)
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Last time they were seen in action was the Falkland Islands wher they had their asses handed to them by a bunch of natives. They are a shadow of what they once were.
Who won? And at what relative cost?
Also the "natives" were armed with mostly French and British and American kit.
Re:Waste of effort (Score:4, Informative)
Last time they were seen in action was the Falkland Islands wher they had their asses handed to them by a bunch of natives.
Prince Andrew, Duke of York (who was there) and Margaret Thatcher (PM at the time) would beg to differ, for 2 reasons:
1. Argentina had fairly sophisticated military equipment, with very effective missiles and infantry, and were most definitely not 'a bunch of natives'.
2. The UK won and had 1/3 the casualties of Argentina.
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This is an interesting article on whether or not the UK could still defend the Falklands against Argentina (assuming we take the position that the Falklands belongs to the UK): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17157373 [bbc.co.uk]
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When you're in a war, there are no "out of the war theaters".
Which still leaves the Aregentians losing more than the Brits. Including losses on Sheffield, which also didn't have much to so with their respective infantry.
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Last time they were seen in action was the Falkland Islands
Technically this is correct.
No one sees the SAS coming.
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That said, the UK and all her allies have been having their asses repeatedly handed to them by a bunch of natives in Afghanistan for much of the last decade, which is significantly more recent than the Falklands War.
The reason why the UK "and her allies have been having their asses repeatedly handed to them by a bunch of natives in Afghanistan" is in part because they choose for international public relations purposes. Yes, it makes people angry to see imperialistic expansion, but had the British or Americans decided to conquer and even annex the Afghan people in even a manner like the native peoples of North America were subjugated, much less to deal with the country like the Romans dealt with their conquered provin
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No-one has done anything illegal... except for shoot at civilians in boats. Stage armed invasions. Use and take British military equipment without permission. Kidnap foreign nationals. Data Piracy. Tax evasion. Smuggling. Oh and Various cases for treason could be applied too.
Residents of "Sealand" have broken lots of laws and show themselves to be quite indifferent to the laws of the land. The reason no-one deals with Sealand is because it would be a political hassel. They've broken plenty of laws.
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That all happened when Sealand was in international waters.
Data Piracy.
When? Unless someone actually makes a complaint, they're assumed innocent. The data haven did have a policy that they wouldn';t host data that violated UK copyright laws.
Tax evasion
I don't think anyone is using Sealand's alleged statehood for tax evasion Smuggling
Unless p
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Tax evasion
I don't think anyone is using Sealand's alleged statehood for tax evasion
No, but anyone who claims sovreignty there and doesn't pay UK taxes (property tax, income tax, etc) is evading UK taxes. The UK could have anyone who works there and then visits England arrested for tax evasion if they don't pay UK tax.
Why not a real country? (Score:2)
Foreign aid for a start (Score:2)
and there is that pesky little problem of the other countries being able to threaten corporations and banks so that you would have no commerce.
Re:Why not a real country? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's like this. North Korea would be *thrilled*, just thrilled to host Wikileaks. As long as Assange can make reasonable (read "absolutely iron clad" ) guarantees that North Korea itself will never, ever, ever be portrayed as anything other than a country of perfection and bliss. The problem for Wikileaks is two fold:
1) They are equal opportunity whistle-blowers. They aren't going to compromise their principles by immunizing their host country from scrutiny.
2) Most countries that really want to embarrass the US have far worse secrets than the US does, and even less of a sense of humor about them being revealed.
The US may want to prosecute Assange and put him in jail for revealing classified documents (Which I happen to think they can't legally do, he neither stole those documents, nor had legal access to them via having signed a security agreement. He just published what someone else gave him), but North Korea would happily put him in a labor camp and work him to death for publishing anything that reflects vaguely poorly on them.
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They aren't going to compromise their principles by immunizing their host country from scrutiny.
^This. The moment Wikileaks or anyone of the like starts tailoring their revelations to shield some and damage others, they become another propaganda organ and lose any credibility they might have.
So the idea of stateless hosting is probably quite appealing, even if it's a mere fantasy.
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Wikileaks had dirt on every country where the US have/had an embassy... Which doesn't leave that many.
...and the ones it leaves are generally ones where there was no embassy because of known human rights abuses (namely, places that wouldn't let WikiLeaks operate in the first place).
Failed for practical reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Sealands failed because hosting anything there was crazy expensive and their only known data link was WIFI from the UK mainland.
Also anytime the UK government felt like shutting them down they could. The UN won't defend a country it doesn't recognize.
Re:Failed for practical reasons (Score:4, Informative)
Also anytime the UK government felt like shutting them down they could. The UN won't defend a country it doesn't recognize.
Even easier than that: they could just shut down the Wifi access point, which would be on UK territory... Same weakness than the raspberry pies in the sky, really...
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The UN won't defend a country it doesn't recognize.
In other words, the UN won't defend anybody from the USA, Russia, China, the UK, or France, or an ally of one of those powers, unless there's some complex diplomatic maneuvering like what happened at the beginning of the Korean War.
Cables still have to come ashore (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't the big problem that Sealand's cables would still have to come ashore somewhere? Even if they used satellite the ground stations would still be in somebody's jurisdiction.
The only way I can see their concept working is on their local LAN. Once they hook up to the internet, they can simply be regulated through their upstream carriers.
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They didn't even have cables or the satellite connection they claimed to have. It was long distance WIFI done on the cheap from the UK mainland.
Their setup was rubbish.
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I think you're missing the point that it takes two radios to work. They were, for all intents and purposes, merely a .uk POP, not independent in any way.
Now if they had also run a cable to france, a cable to spain, a cable to canada, now we're talking.
Re:Cables still have to come ashore (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sealands isn't near enough to any other country for a fast and practical wifi link. Satellite is too slow and expensive.
Yes they should have multiple uplinks but I doubt they ever did.
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Sealand could launch its own satellite and bypass all of that stuff.
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Nah... Sealand is smaller than the footprint required to launch a rocket. Also, at that latitude it would be more difficult than at the equator. They would need to aquire territory near the equator and with a military of two people- that might be tough.
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You're taking him too literally. The idea is that Sealand would pay another entity, like say Sea Launch, to put the satellites up.
Of course, in this case it wouldn't happen due to the expense.
But it's still a novel idea. What if you put the servers on the satellite as well? Anyone with an appropriate dish could access it.
What country would be able to say "You can't put that data up there!" (This is assuming that one could overcome all the
issues surrounding satellite positioning and bandwidth allocation
Definitely not news anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a real country (Score:3, Funny)
How can it be, when there are no horses?
UK - Horses.
US - Horses
Spain - Horses.
Sweden - Horses
France - Horses
Sealand - No horses!
WARNING - OBVIOUS RESPONSE FOLLOWS (Score:5, Funny)
Sealand - seahorses.
Sealand, the BitCoin of countries! (Score:3)
Sealand (and HavenCo)... just like BitCoins. Interesting in an academic sense, but not at all practical or viable in the real world, for reasons which should have been obvious to everyone involved before things even got started.
Spelling (Score:2)
The proper English spelling of naÃveté is libertarianism, as in, "all we need to do is create our own island and we would be free".
No you wouldn't, and if you had spent five seconds thinking about it you would see the obvious flaws on your naÃve solution. Or you can call it "libertarian" and automatically feel validated without having to think about it.
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The proper English spelling of naÃveté ...
Not sure what OS you typed that on, but on my Mac that doesn't look like the proper English spelling of anything.
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Windows. I thought by now an HTML form editor would be smart enough to convert on its own to HTML entities but I was wrong.
I tried previewing it, but got a 406 message and then the thing got posted automagically when I tried to preview it again.
Naïveté
Too tiny (Score:3)
Having read the whole paper, the history part is great, and the legal part is speculative. The key point that comes out is that Sealand was just too small to be taken seriously as a country. The population ranged from 1 to 4. That was the big problem.
If you wanted to start a data haven, Nauru is probably the place. Nauru, population about 9000, is a moderately successful financial haven. Nauru is recognized as a country by all the relevant organizations. It's been a popular location for "High Yield Investment Programs".
The country was once supported by phosphate mines, and had a very high income per capita until the phosphate ran out in the 1980s. 90% of the land area is now a useless wasteland. [wikipedia.org] 90% of the people are unemployed. GDP of the whole country is $60 million and dropping. Only aid from Australia keeps the place going. If someone was looking for a microstate to buy, Nauru would be the choice.
That's the low end of microstates.
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And when they find out how badly they're being treated compared to the "consuming world" boy are they gonna be pissed.
So one of two things will have to happen: Either their standards of living are raised to the point of the industrialized countries, or our standards are brought down to theirs.
I guess we know which one the corporate elite would prefer, based on what they've done to the economies of the industrialized nations.
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Either their standards of living are raised to the point of the industrialized countries, or our standards are brought down to theirs. (...) I guess we know which one the corporate elite would prefer, based on what they've done to the economies of the industrialized nations.
That's a vast oversimplification, our standard of living is based on being able to hire people to work many hours for one of our hours. If you had to pay US wages to all the people that produce your goods then prices would be higher and your effective wealth lower. Redistributing wealth is easy - it happens every time you buy something from India or China. Creating more wealth is hard, businesses aren't inefficient on purpose. In the end you need to have some sustainable advantage to sustainably have higher
Re:You can't opt out of capitalist imperialism (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a vast oversimplification, our standard of living is based on being able to hire people to work many hours for one of our hours. If you had to pay US wages to all the people that produce your goods then prices would be higher and your effective wealth lower.
This is so wrong it is almost humorous... except for the fact that many people believe it and don't understand where the wealth of 1st world countries come from.
No, the wealth of people in major industrialized countries comes from the ability to work more effectively and be able to perform tasks with less effort and to collectively be able to do things in less time or to produce more with the same amount of labor. This is usually done not through hiring slaves or paying people in 3rd world countries, but rather through designing machines or better manufacturing processes that people who live in countries with less wealth.
If you take how many farmers it takes to grow a bushel of wheat or corn in America vs. Ethiopia or Madagasgar, there is a huge difference. One farmer in America can feed nearly a thousand people out of his (or her) own labor. In Ethiopia, perhaps a dozen people. In practice this difference is even more exaggerated but the basic principle still hold true. This also applies to how cloth is manufactured, how lumber is harvested and machined down to be able to construct housing, and just about everything which can be imagined that is made by the hand of men.
Face it, if 3rd world countries simply stopped selling stuff to 1st world countries, those 1st world countries wouldn't starve or even go without luxuries. Many like the United States even historically didn't even depend much upon foreign trade and domestically has been able to produce just about everything it needed and then some. If these "wealthy countries" simply pulled in on themselves with an isolationist movement, they would still be wealthy and be able to tell these poorer countries to "get lost" or even "nuke themselves into oblivion" for all that matters.
Yes, in the short term there might be some inflation if suddenly goods and services from poorer countries stopped flowing into the wealthy countries. But they would recover and in fact the incentive to increase efficiencies in the factories that would at that point by necessity have to be domestic producers would likely improve to the point that overall wealth would even increase relative to the amount of labor that an ordinary worker would have to perform in order to maintain a given standard of goods, services, and supplies available to that individual citizen in that country. Over the long term, the wealthy would become even wealthier.
As for the poor countries, as soon as they told off the wealthy countries they would also be cut off from the wealth of those countries and be forced to make their own luxuries... which they may or may not be able to do. If anything, there would be short-term deflation and then they would spiral downward in a vicious cycle of economic collapse that would be hard to recover from.
You claim that creating more wealth is hard. Absolutely it is! It takes primarily the ability for letting people make their own decisions acted out on a massive scale so that eventually the best ideas can come forward. Bad ideas will be presented too, but those will eventually disappear in the marketplace of ideas... or simply in an open market in general that allows anybody to participate. If you are in a government or society that doesn't allow these ideas to come forth, that society will literally be poorer because of it. Individual personal liberty is the key to wealth creation. Some people simply enjoy living in poverty and I don't mind if they want to follow that as a sort of religion or philosophical principle. I just don't want to be forced at gunpoint to be one of them.
Re:You can't opt out of capitalist imperialism (Score:5, Insightful)
This is usually done not through hiring slaves.
Really? Then why are American corporations measuring their success in terms of "profit per employee" lately? Last time anybody did that was prior to the Civil War...
Back when Henry Ford revolutionized industry, he realized right away that it was no one else's responsibility to hire potential customers. So the real question is: with so many people making stuff they can't possibly afford to buy, who the fuck is supposed to buy it?
That's the real reason behind the current economic collapse -- a culture of companies that are all trying to squeeze out a little extra profit by hiring people that can't quite afford the product they're producing. The result is more wealth, sure, but when everyone starts doing it, everyone has fewer customers. More wealth X fewer customers = reduced profits. So they try to squeeze harder, and they start using slave-labor metrics to guide their decisions, and the economy continues to become more and more suceptible to disruption as fewer and fewer people actually have the power to make choices in it. Seriously, what's the difference between Soviet bureaucrats and today's wealthy capitalists? Either way you've got 1% of the population planning the economy.
Re: (Score:2)
Aren't the 1st world countries dependent on energy though? I mean, without oil nor gasI think there will be some serious issues pretty quickly. And please, no solar or wind power in your response. Nuclear either since 90% of the 1st world countries don't product any uranium.
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No, the wealth of people in major industrialized countries comes from the ability to work more effectively and be able to perform tasks with less effort and to collectively be able to do things in less time or to produce more with the same amount of labor. This is usually done not through hiring slaves or paying people in 3rd world countries, but rather through designing machines or better manufacturing processes that people who live in countries with less wealth.
And who exactly takes it from there? You design it, cheap foreigners produce it, operate it and support it is the norm today. Sure it's nice to be skimming off the top keeping only the high cost, high skill labor in the US but it won't last forever, in fact it's running out of time. Production, transportation, material moving, natural resources, construction and maintenance occupations in total make up about 20% of the jobs, the production workers alone some 6%. I don't think there's a single thing in my PC
Re: (Score:3)
Look back in history and realize that it was ALWAYS the "bourgeoisie" that led revolutions. The myth of the worker standing up and rebelling is just that, a myth. Every at least halfway successful rebellion was led by some "educated" people on top of the chain. Sure, having "pleb soldiers" sure helps, but the heads of revolutions always came from a fairly educated background, never from "the mass" of people.
The main reason why revolutions have been fairly rare lately is that these people have been admitted