Sealand- A revolutionary idea: An Offshore Country. Amazing Technology and Freedom

Freedom the next killer app says 21-year-old MIT dropout and self-taught crypto expert, sees fantastic things for himself in 2005.

Lackey's aim is to give corporations and frisky individuals the "freedom" to store and move data without answering to anybody (governments or otherwise) competitors, regulators, and lawyers. That's working to transform a 60-year-old gunnery fort in the North Sea - an odd, quasi-independent outpost whose British owner calls it....

"The Principality of Sealand"

Here's a little info about Sealand....

Sealand was founded as a sovereign Principality in 1967 in international waters, six miles off the eastern shores of Britain. The island fortress is conveniently situated from 65 to 100 miles from the coasts of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. The official language of Sealand is English and the Sealand Dollar has a fixed exchange rate of one U.S. dollar. Passports and stamps have been in circulation since 1969, however, contrary to many misleading websites and news articles, Sealand passports are not for sale, and anyone offering such are selling forgeries. Within a radius of 500 miles of Sealand live more than 200 million people who enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world. This area also encompasses the financial, industrial and cultural heart of Europe.

The startup is called HavenCo Ltd. Its placed on a 6,000-square-foot, World War II antiaircraft deck that comprises the "land" of Sealand.
The facility isn't much to look at and i dont think they are quite bothered about that.
It consists of a rusty steel deck sitting on two hollow, huge concrete cylinders that rise 60 feet above surface of the North Sea.
Up top there's a drab building and a helicopter landing pad.

The history of Sealand is a story of a struggle for liberty. Sealand was founded on the principle that any group of people dissatisfied with the oppressive laws and restrictions of existing nation states may declare independence in any place not claimed to be under the jurisdiction of another sovereign entity.

High tech stuff....

Sealand will have some nice hardware...
HavenCo will provide its clients with nearly a gigabit per second of Internet bandwidth by year's end, at prices far cheaper than those on the overregulated dry land of Europe.
The huge concrete cylinders will contain millions of dollars worth of networking gear: computers, transaction processors,servers, , data-storage devices - all cooled with banks of roaring air conditioners and powered by triple-redundant generators. Three speedy connections to HavenCo affiliate hubs all over the planet - microwave, satellite, and underwater fiber-optic links.

I would be interested on people's opinions on this... Is this the future?
Hundreds of off-shore platform's with goverments of all type's,their own specific laws if any laws at all, and no one could do anything about it?

www.sealandgov.org...

[edit on 21-8-2004 by markjaxson]

yeah there was a documentary about it on TV

I don't see the point in making a country out of an old WW2 AA defence platform

they even have their own passports

Somehow this HavenCo sounds very familiar.
I wonder did they try this kind of thing earlier somewhere else.

In, 1966 a former British major named Roy Bates moved, with his wife and son, to a 10-25 ft cement caisson built seven miles off the British coast during WWII. Bates named the platform "Sealand", declared it to be an independent country, crowned himself king and his wife queen, issued postage stamps, designed passports, and even created a Sealand dollar. Today, Sealand is the worlds smallest country, and "King Roy" still reigns. Since they are beyond the 3 mile limit, Bates and his kingdom are outside the jurisdiction of any other country. Wow, it sounds more like an amusement park rather than a country.

So could you just create your own country if you made a huge man made structure in international waters.

Could you have your own rules and no one could say anything?

If so thats pretty cool but the name Sealand has to go it does sound like a Disney land resort or something.

The future? hardly, this idea has been boiling for quite a while, and I think thats about all it will ever do. Why would someone want an isolated datacenter, where a huge storm could potentially wipe it out. I think the location is whats dazzling everyone, but when you get down to it its just a datacenter with the same technology as any other in the world, just a fancy location. Sure the place is technically not part of any country,but that also means that it has no real defense. Just another passing fad most likely.

Man that place is tiny. I think those cylinders look pretty solid and it should be safe judging from the pics. I wonder if you could make one of those old half mile oil haulers a country if you have a permanent achor or something.

This guy must have really loved the book Cryptonomicon, Because this idea is pretty much straight from the book.

-Attero