Has HavenCo's Data Haven Shut Down? 287
secmartin writes "HavenCo, the self-proclaimed data haven located on the micronation Sealand, appears to be offline. Their website is down, and there have been no announcements from either HavenCo or Sealand. HavenCo has been covered here before; it was mostly known for offering hosting of content that might be illegal in other countries. Does anyone have news about what happened to them?"
Well, some really rich person (Score:2, Insightful)
Deal between HavenCo and Sealand (Score:5, Insightful)
HavenCo has to pay Sealand considerable amount to keep the business running there. Therefore, the recently financial crisis would hit HavenCo badly.
Re:Sea Boundaries (Score:4, Insightful)
Sovereignty is independent of any court. That's what sovereignty means: you are not beholden to or dependent on another power. As such, the test of sovereignty is quite simple: can you fight off any attempt to deny your sovereignty ? If yes, you're sovereign; if not, you're not.
Since Sealand quite obviously has no chance in Hell in fighting off Great Britain, they're not sovereign. They might gain some manoeuvring room by skilful use of legal tactics, but the very fact of needing the help of a British court and law to keep from getting crushed like an ant also means that they're beholden to it. You can't be dependent on and independent of the same thing at the same time.
Sealand gets shut down as soon as they annoy someone enough that they'll bother.
Re:So, if Sealand isn't part of the UK... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sea Boundaries (Score:3, Insightful)
The irony is that both governments are run by the same party (Democrats), and yet they still can't get along with one another.
That's not too surprising. Both major parties in the US are marriages of convenience between groups with wildly different views. The same can be said of the major parties in the UK, and probably in any effectively two-party or three-party state. In fact, given the frequency of party splits in countries with proportional representation it may well be true of any political party in the world with more than 100 members.
Re:Sea Boundaries (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, by that argument, most of the countries in the Middle East and Africa haven't got a snowflake's chance in hell of fighting off either the US, Russia or China. By that yard stick, they aren't sovereign either.
One of the reasons we aren't mired in huge amounts of empire building these days is because the major powers are largely bound by international law (which is still young and a little 'edgy'). Sealand makes interesting use of those laws in maintaining its independence (and hey, lots of places are now no longer truly independent, just look at the effects of this global credit crisis to see how far and how deep international trade runs).
Should the UK get sufficiently peeved, it will still need sufficient legal backing to annex Sealand (otherwise, it could quite happily decide that it'll expand its borders into, say, France).
There is already a lot of jostling and arguing over National boundaries, and has been for some time; it's just all handled in the courts (well, apart from the jostling in the fishermen's boats). Sealand is just using exactly the same laws.
I suspect the legal wrangling would be that Sealand was never truly a sovereign nation anyhow, making the whole of the later legal premises void. But that in itself would be an interesting courtroom wrangle.
You can of course say "What the hell" and just shut it down. But that would be against the law.. And the UK has big enough issues at the moment without getting hauled through the international courts.
Re:Sea Boundaries (Score:3, Insightful)
Strictly speaking the Vatican has no chance in hell of fighting off Great Britian or, say, the Italian Republic. This does not mean however that the Vatican is not a sovereign country.
Re:Sea Boundaries (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sea Boundaries (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lack of funding, maybe? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do all these slashdot hyped hacker projects have to be so half assed.
Obviously, if these projects weren't at least a little bit insane, they'd attract real investment that would hire professional and competent staff.
I think we all have a soft spot for cranks, especially cranks that are almost believable when viewed from a certain angle (and not to closely). They perform an important service to society, even if their ideas nearly always fail.
I think of the culture of ideas as being like an elastic band. One end is anchored in the great mass of the mundane, unimaginative, mediocre minds who perform all the useful but completely unoriginal work. On the other end of elastic are the people who in exchange for appearing occasionally incapable of tying their own shoes, sometimes come close to inventing an ingenious shoe tying machine. Most of their minds are are mediocre too, but they're not unimaginative, they are too imaginative. They aren't unoriginal, they nurse an irrational disdain for proven solutions.
If I had a choice of ends, I'd stand with the crackpots who keep the elastic band of creativity stretched taut across the entire range of possibility, rather than the mass of dead weight on the other end. I'd stand with the crackpots even though the cost is nearly certain failure and humiliation. There are a million Charlie Browns for every Joe DiMaggio. There has to be. If there weren't, then there wouldn't be any Joe DiMaggio either.
Re:So, if Sealand isn't part of the UK... (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope sealand was billed for the rescue costs and medical fees.
Re:Sea Boundaries (Score:3, Insightful)
Very doubtful that any one would really care beyond the academia and geek circles. Most of the world regards sealand as just a bunch of crack pots on a abandoned oil derrick. Never mind it wasn't abandoned and its not a oil derrick. If some point couldn't be made about it, it would be on page 6 of the paper right next to an add for toilet paper.
Look at the incidences in the US in the past 20 years of ruby ridge and david koresh in texas. Yeah, I misspelled it and I don't care. There where some serous legal issues involved how that was handled but since the public at large though they where all loons nobody really cared. Sad, maybe, but that is how it is.
Re:Sea Boundaries (Score:3, Insightful)
The "if you can't defend it then it's not yours" trend is a little worrying. There are plenty of countries that would find it rather hard to hold out were they to be invaded by the armies of a western nation, but they are no less sovereign states.
Simply having the power to take something does not grant you legal right to it (if it did then, for one thing, the copyright debate would be significantly easier to settle)
Re:Sea Boundaries (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm Finnish. My "attitude" is based on dictionary definition of sovereignty, as well as the history of my homeland - it's located right next to Russia, and until the dissolution of Soviet Union was pretty much forced to seek Moscow's approval for political decisions, least it be invaded. That means it wasn't fully sovereign.
Yes. And bombs, cannons and nukes.
No, it makes you sovereign. Right has nothing to do with it.
That is true. And historically, the rest of the world has revolved around them. Take the whole Cold War as an example: Warsaw Pact was Russia's sphere of influence, Nato was US's, and the rest of the world was fought over more or less covertly.
Diplomacy, international recognition, and the compliance of the people being governed all translate into strength of arms.
Yes. Or do you claim that they were independent of Berlin during that period ?
Yes.
Yes.