Sealand

[deathboy]

The Pirate Bay plans to buy Sealand

That seems ill-informed.

I'm quite certain that I read that in previous legal trials in the US (at least), pirate-radio ships claiming Sealand as their nationality were impounded / people arrested when sitting outside the US, trying to claim that they had no agreement with the US not to broadcast shit onto their shores.

I believe the US court decided that Sealand, for all its claims was in fact just a part of the UK and as such were breaking international agreements, thus arresting those involved.

I'm pretty certain that the casino people who bought it last were quite furious to discover that this was the case, and that for all intents and purposes they'd shelled out to have an exotic-sounding hosting company that might as well have been positioned in the centre of Kent for all the law cared about its supposed sovereignity / legal immunity.

If I were less busy I would find sources to back up my hearsay, but for now, I shall simply state that this is the opinion of the King of the sovereign nation of My Pants, which seceeded from the UK some time around 1995 and have been broadcasting pirate "material" to the UK ever since. The gang controlled areas have become known as "free-fire" zones. Police will not enter. There Is No Law.

Comments

[moosipher.livejournal.com]

Damn your old school heart - Now I've got ANOTHER damn tune rattling around in my head...

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

can I interest sir in:

http://deathboy.anti-goth.com/radio/DeathBoy%20-%20Bloody%20Mary%20Mixdown.mp3

?

[moosipher.livejournal.com]

Grabbing, danke :)

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

12 minutes in, feller.

;)

[moosipher.livejournal.com]

Damnit - I'm loving this. I know all of 'em so far - just didn't find out all of the names at the time. That hoover synth sound ... verdamnt, I LOVE it :)

On the subject of the Loonies and the Island - One of my fave authors, Neal Stephenson, Wrote a fantastic book (http://www.cryptonomicon.com/text.html) a while back thats deals with (amongst other things) the idea of a 'Data Haven', extremely similar to the Loonies 'Sovereign Island' idea.
Aaah, cryptology :)

Heh ...

[btripp.livejournal.com]

I find their abbreviation of "Association" down to "Ass." for the MPAA subtly amusing (or is that a Brtitsh alternative to "Assn."?).


(http://www.btripp.com)

Re: Heh ...

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

Not to my knowledge, I think they're just calling the MPAA arseholes ;)

[tashaa.livejournal.com]

I have had the honour of sailing near and being shot a from the lovely inhabitants of sealand!

[yaruar.livejournal.com]

Sealand has no international recognition. They did win one court case in teh UK, which was appealable, but the government decided it wasn't worth the cash to bother with. + It's being sold because it's uninhabitable now after all the living quaters were burned out in a massive fire.
I will laugh if anyone does fall for the scam and pays 100+ million for it :)

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

I thought that. It kinda damages TPB's credibility to be taken in like this.

[yaruar.livejournal.com]

Personally i think they are planning to build up £65,000,000 in donations and then laugh at all the leachers whilst sunning their pasty geek torsos on a Brazilian beach with all the paid for virtual girlfriends they can muster.

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

it does reek of that a bit, doesn't it?

I used to like 'em, but how this pans out might affect that quite heavily.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grimtales_/]

I did a fair whack of research a while back into this, looking into the feasability of starting new independent nations.

Legally speaking they are considered independent to the UK, but as with all these things it's a matter of what's enforcable by states over others.

Other than their legal standing they have nothing to actually protect themselves or people shifting citizenship to there other than legal paper tigers.

[madkatsjournal.livejournal.com]

I heard they fired on someone in a dinghy or something - but that's not going to stop any army if a country decides it doesn't like the place. And waving your independance in the face of other nations isn't going to endear them to protect your cause.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grimtales_/]

They held off the navy once and it was retaken years ago from (german?) terrorists who tried to take it over.

Unfortunately as with most things it seems, what you really need is big money backing it up.

I think some sort of 'free technology' Israel might be possible, perhaps buying up land from an impoverished nation in Africa or building an island.

[rik.livejournal.com]

they also had ain interesting time when some Germans decided to invade. They made it onto the island, and were captured by its inhabitants. Germany asked the British government "please can we have our citizens back?", Britain said "uh.. nuffin' to do with us, mate. Try contacting Sealand".

I understand that they were released and told they were very naughty boys, and not to do it again.

Ladies and gentlemen!

[malcubed.livejournal.com]

You're all a part of history.

[rik.livejournal.com]

I think you should chat with Octal. He used to man AA guns on Sealand when he wasn't looking after servers there. He's currently out in Iraq installing network infrastructure. He Has Views.

[4nthr0.livejournal.com]

FIGNUTS!

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

Sealand, originally outside the 3 mile UK territorial waters, is now an enclave of (entirely surrounded by) the revised 12 mile UK territorial waters. The only country ever to have invaded Sealand were the Dutch, via international waters that existed prior to the revised UK territorial claim. The British have never invaded Sealand even when it was running quite a high powered pirate radio station and even when it had armaments in the form of two working mounted machine gun emplacements. Given that the Dutch are now unlikely to sail their naval vessels through the revised British territorial waters, I'd say Sealand is safe from invasion.

However, millitary power is not the point. Connectivity is. Internet, as the name suggests, is an interconnected network. Unlike radio, where you just need one transmitter to reach a wide audience regardless of borders, on the Internet you are reliant on the next router in the chain, unless you are planing to only have users inside Sealand alone. Even with a satellite connection, there has to be a groundstation somewhere, those groundstations have to be in another country. At that point, those country's laws can dictate that you cut the buggers off.

To get around this, you need *multiple* data connections to *multiple* countries, and then play cat-and-mouse by opening up another connection as each previous one is closed down. With a major country like Sweden this is not a problem, there are bags of cables through Norway, Denmark, Germany, the UK, Russia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland etc.

Sealand has NO cable connectivity, it is dependent on satellite and wi-fi. The only Internet satellite groundstations are in Portsmouth and Germany. The only place reachable by wi-fi from Sealand (with a Pringles antenna on a good weather day [1]) is Essex.

[1] NORTH SEA, remember? You can count the good weather days on the fingers of one toe.