HavenCo In Trouble? 305
Evil Al writes "News.com is reporting on the talk given by Ryan Lackey, former CTO of HavenCo, at DefCon. Lackey claims that the company is teetering on the edge due to internal upheaval and lack of customers. Oh, and 9/11, of course."
i think... (Score:4, Insightful)
It was only a matter of time... (Score:5, Insightful)
This was a solution looking for a problem that never materialized. The idea certainly captured the imagination of slashdotters though.
-josh
Hrmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Not worth the money... (Score:1, Insightful)
Perhaps they were hoping that Napster would find refuge there?
poltiics? (Score:4, Insightful)
no solution to legal responsibilities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It was only a matter of time... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is also mentioned that Sealand does not allow the hosting of any activity that violates international law or can be connected to terrorism, so there goes your mobile nuclear bomb.
Did you happen to read the article?
Re:Bad Publicity? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It was only a matter of time... (Score:5, Insightful)
they will host everything not forbidden by Sealand's law
The only problem is that Sealand's Law is whatever their "Crown Prince" says it is. As quoted from the linked article:
So no matter what the AUP may say, the real "terms of service," like the law in general in Sealand, is whatever their "ruling family" says it is. Companies like stable governments. They do not want to take risks dealing with governments that change the way they do business in a rapid manner. With this latest change, Sealand has become no different than any other jurisdiction in which internet service is offered. As a result, they can only compete on price, and with cheaper prices and more reliable service elsewhere, companies will skip over Sealand.Also from the article:
No company will want anything to do with any government touching their connectivity in such an arbitrary manner, especially when they are paying a premium for Internet Access whose claim to fame is that they "don't do that." Another thing Lackey mentioned was Sealand's attempt to tax its customers. That is another example of a bait-and-switch tactic which will drive away existing business and scare away future customers.
Re:Bad Publicity? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sealand's soverenty will last only until they cross over a line. And the line has shifted a lot closer since 9/11, Afganistan and Iraq. He's certainly no terrorist, but if he annoys someone or some company, they just have to get a court order and send the police over to arrest him. The British love an excentric, but that only goes so far.
Re:It was only a matter of time... (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole edge that HavenCo has over it's mainland competitors, is it's different IP "laws." With the Sealand "Royal Family" outlawing the exploitation of the difference in IP law, HaveCo is surely doomed to failure.
I mean, what's HavenCo got to offer that's so special now?
Re:Ruling requested..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It was only a matter of time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sealand's law is whatever the British Government will let them get away with. A frigate's detachment of Marines could re-occupy the platform in minutes without breaking a sweat. The Crown Prince is tolerated because Britain has a tradition of tolerating eccentrics so long as they don't harm anyone. If Sealand were to declare that it was willing to break British laws wholesale, bearing in mind that it is strategically located, it would rapidly - and perhaps physically - cease to exist.
Re:i think... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ruling requested..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oddly enough, I can see that happening. The coast guard finds 1 too many ships with Cuban cigars and Bush sends a carpet bombing campaign for 3 weeks straight to "liberate the oppressed masses". This of course done concurrently with a law stating the waters are extended temporarily to 300 miles "in order to protect America from impending terrorism".
Hey, it could happen. I never thought in a million years that I'd see a time where a company is claiming ownership of Linux because of a couple lines of code, America occupying 2 other countries with the same ROE as Vietnam, and the rest of the world becoming more free than America.
Re:All about the price (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe so, but if not enough people need HavenCo hosting for HavenCo to survive, perhaps they need to compete as a conventional provider at least long enough to fill in some of the dead slots. So long as the incremental cost of adding servers is less than the money each would gross, this is only common sense. If the incremental cost of adding each extra server actually approaches $500/month however, then they have some serious problems.
Re:Ruling requested..... (Score:3, Insightful)
You may think that, but that's not the case. It could only be considered a ship if it was in some way moveable. It's no more a ship than is a load of rock towed out to a sand bar and dumped. It's a fixed emplacement that was built outside territorial limits and abandoned. It may not be recognized by the crown and/or parliament as a sovreign nation, but the courts have definitely ruled that it lies outside their jurisdiction. This is de facto sovreignty, which is all that matters.
Though I agree that, if they so desired, the british government could just waltz in there and say "ours. get off." and basically render the sovreignty issue moot. Posession is all that matters here, really.
Re:i think... (Score:3, Insightful)
You make it sound like the UK increased the extent of its sea claims in response to the Bateses. Like many other countries during that period, the UK enlarged its territorial waters around the whole of its coastline.
Re:Ruling requested..... (Score:2, Insightful)
I suggest you read the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Part V, Article 60, Paragraph 8:
Sealand has no territory. It therefore can make no claims to territorial waters. Therefore the UK's 12-mile claim is not overlapping with any valid claims. Therefore Sealand is within UK territorial waters and has been for decades.
Sealand has exactly two things on its side, one useless and one which has been to its advantage so far:
The collective wishful thinking of a lot of science fiction readers.
The inertia of a UK government that has not found it worth the hassle to go after some guys on a concrete pylon in the North Sea, especially when those guys are too wimpy to host anything more controversial than can easily be found in dozens of other countries, including the UK itself.
I'll let you figure out which is which.