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."
Havenco an interesting case... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RIAA Air Force (Score:5, Interesting)
but if you meant "bombers" as in "port spamming" or such, it is very conceivable. if people can distrubute music and RIAAs requests recieve no action by HavenCo since RIAA has no jurisdiction (this was exactlly HavenCo's stategy), then RIAA would be inclined to use every security hole-IP DOS attack-anything that they could come up with because again, who would stop them? Itd be cool to watch tho, it would be the wild wild west cyber.
Bad Publicity? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tan was prepared to pay HavenCo millions of dollars to host a Web site that would let customers stream movies from legally purchased DVDs, something that was not clearly illegal because only one customer at a time could view each stream, Lackey said. The Sealand royal family balked over the possibility of bad publicity, Lackey said. "I decided as soon as I got out of the meeting that I was going to quit," Lackey said.
No wonder they're going under. They're HavenCo, they should be hosting these types of sites. They turn down hosting sites like this that seem almost custom fitted to their business model! The king of sealand must be a quirky fellow indeed.
A successful site hosted at HavenCo/Sealand (Score:3, Interesting)
MultiPlayer Poker at TGC is a great time consumer!
Ruling requested..... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's legal status was determined a long time ago. here [seanhastings.com] is a good place to start.
"On October 1st, 1987, Britain extended its territorial waters from 3 to 12 nautical miles. At nearly the same time, Prince Roy declared the extension of Sealand's territorial waters to be a like 12 nautical miles, so that right of way from the open sea to Sealand would not be blocked by British claimed waters. No treaty has been signed between Britain and Sealand to divide up the overlapping areas, but a general policy of dividing the area between the two countries down the middle can be assumed. International law does not allow the claim of new land during the extension of sea rights, so Sealand's sovereignty was safely "grandfathered" in. Britain has no more right to Sealand's territory than Sealand has to the territory of the British coastline that falls within its claimed 12 nautical mile arc."
Since sealand was outside the initial 3 mile border when it was first claimed, England cannot claim sealand for itself. It would be similar to the United States attempting to annex Cuba by extending the border a further 90 miles south.
"Some nations might have tried to use this as an excuse to try to claim all of the territory of the weaker and not well recognized nation regardless of international law, however, this has not been the case. Britain has made no attempt to take Sealand, and the British government still treats it as an independent State. Prince Roy continues to pay no British National Insurance during the time he resides on Sealand subsequent to a ruling by the British Department of Health and Social Security's solicitors branch. Also, there was another fire arms incident in 1990 when a ship strayed too near Sealand and warning shots were again fired. The ship's crew made complaints to British authorities and a newspaper article ran detailing the incident. Yet despite Britain's severe prohibition of firearms, British authorities have never pursued the matter. This is a clear indication that Britain's Home Office still considers Sealand to be outside their zone of control."
Re:Not worth the money... (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, if I was hosting seriously illegal content on a huge scale, I would question the militarial resiliance of Sealand too. They are just a small fort, probably with no real defences to speak of anymore. Would a certain country or two we know go as far as invading it because the rampant piracy was hurting their economy? These countries have already ignored the UN's opinion on a certain military campaign very recently. At least only a very stupid country would dare invade China!
Re:no solution to legal responsibilities (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Havenco an interesting case... (Score:4, Interesting)
God its small (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ruling requested..... (Score:3, Interesting)
In their imagination maybe. Until it gets a seat at the UN, or is even recognised by a single real country it remains a joke.
Re:no solution to legal responsibilities (Score:3, Interesting)
To add insult to injury, evidence was collected against these people in a manner that would normally be illegal (entrapment etc.) but since it was done by "liason officers" of the US embassy, which have diplomatic immunity, and the US constitution (i.e. 4 amendmend etc.) do NOT apply in The Netherlands (while criminal statutes DO) they are totally fucked.
Usually these people succumb to some hefty offer from the US "diplomats" to produce and sell to the "diplomats" some synthetic drugs, and are then deported to the US, where they do NOT get their day in court, but rather take a plea bargain offer, and then rot away in US jails for a few years. (They are rarely allowed to sit out their sentences in Dutch jails, even though the US has agreed to this in the extradition treaty; but you see, the judiciary isn't bound to that treaty, because judges decide what the law is in the first place..)
In other words; you're fucked in any jurisdiction, because there will always be a country you will be deported to even if you're not doing anything illegal at that time and in that jurisdiction.
Why the sudden reversal from Ryan Lackey? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why the sudden reversal from Ryan Lackey? (Score:5, Interesting)
My Defcon 11 talk describes the problems and why I've gone public (I have more responsibility to the public than to HavenCo, once management begins to engage in fraud)
I'll be at Linuxworld Expo today, if anyone wants to talk about this...should be easy to spot. (I'm on BART right now)
I'm posting an in-depth story for slashdot in a day or so, using objective proof of my claims, so there won't be any more "it is this way" "no it isn't" "yes it is" press release communication
Re:Ruling requested..... (Score:2, Interesting)
>attempting to annex Cuba by extending the border
>a further 90 miles south.
We seem to have no problem establishing prison camps for our political prisoners there. To me, that has been among the most troubling aspects of the post-2001 world.
location of sealand, and maps. (Score:3, Interesting)
on the sealand website it lists the location as:
51 53' 42" N;
01 28' 51" E;
which is roughly ten miles southeast of Ipswitch, or twenty miles northeast of london.
the only place I could find a map of that area was on this site, where it is simply labelled "rough twr":
zoomed in map [multimap.com]
zooming out we can see it's location relative to the coast:
[multimap.com]
zoomed out map
Re:All about the price (Score:3, Interesting)
If you can't afford $500/mo for 64k you don't need HavenCo hosting. They should be handling online gambling sites and the like that can easily make up that kind of overhead.
It's not an unreasonable price considering what a quality business-class satellite connection goes for and that they need to generate their own power, maintain the platform, fend off the Bobbies, make a profit, etc.
If I were the FBI, CIA, I'd try to bug their platform as a customer, so their home-built computer restriction isn't unreasonable either.
They are dumb, however, to turn down lucrative projects due to 'bad publicity' concerns. Theirs is a political game, and in politics, there's no such thing as bad publicity.
Re:i think... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually they have some more modern military hardware (20mm cannons if rumours are to be believed, and certainly automatic weapons), but I agree with the point you're making - they'd have trouble dealing with what is still one of the best trained armies/navies in the world.
Re:New place for libertopia? (Score:3, Interesting)
What if its underwater? If I had the money and the technology, could I go find an undersea mount in the pacific where the seafloor comes up near the surface and build an underwater 'city', claiming that land as my own country?
Making this relevant to Sealand as a man-made object, what if I built large towers in my city that extended out of the water? They would have to be part of my territory too. Seems to me that Sealand is actually a submerged country with a couple of large towers to make living there a bit more convienant for regular humans.
I'm really curious what would be a recognized claim as a soverin nation.
Re:A successful site hosted at HavenCo/Sealand (Score:2, Interesting)
If you mean, how do I know they are successful - then it is because they have managed to be around for several years, they seem to be popular in the internet gold world, and they say the following things regarding themselves:
That is from another successful HavenCo site, dBourse [dbourse.com] that sells shares in TGC.
Re:i think... (Score:3, Interesting)
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, drafted in 1982 and put into force by a quorum of signatories in 1994, grants all nations the right to extend their territorial miles from 3 to 12. This was merely an ex post facto formalization of the reality that by 1967 over 80% of the world's nations had already done so. Hence your statement about "International Law" = bunk.
My understanding of UK law is not perfect but as far as I know a pre-trial finding of no jurisdiction has no precedent value and therefore means absolutely nothing except that one judge didn't take one case.
Re:It was only a matter of time... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure how you'd *pay* them anonymously, but providing the "naughty" services instead of expecting others to rent trifling bandwidth from them to do so might have provided a better revenue stream."
Hmm... I'll take a crack at this.
When you open an account with the hosting company they issue you an account number. They do not collect ANY information from you. When your bill is due, you stuff cash into an envelope and send it off to them with your account number on it.
Another added layer is to make sure they keep no logs whatsoever on anyone that uses your account/site.
The problem with this is that if your site gets hacked YOU will also have no way to track the hacker down since the host does not keep logs.
The account will remain active for up to x days after your payment is due. If nobody sends money for that account, they can delete it. You would probably pay by the year or something though as opposed to paying by the month.
Re:i think... (Score:3, Interesting)
From Ryan's story, it sounds like he was the only sane person there, but be actually probably is insane also. It very much sounded like the "owners" of sealand never understood the freedom intentions ryan had, and were *always* ready to hand things over to authorities if asked. But luckily none of their customers required an actual Data Haven, ryan said they were mostly online gambling companies with too much spare cash who just hosted there for the novelty.
Ryan is writing a book about all this, which I may actually buy. He's also still trying to sell colo service, which I would never in a million years buy after hearing his talk...
Re:What a way to kill a career (Score:5, Interesting)
The information I have made public is entirely from public sources, so please read the defcon talk before making assumptions.
I've certainly had no shortage of work since leaving HavenCo, and am well respected in the security and networking communities.
How to demolish Sealand (Score:3, Interesting)
The way to get rid of Sealand is by *accident*. "Ooops, that barge of barrels of petrol slipped off our tugboat in the storm and it's headed right for you and we just *can't* control it. Terribly sorry..."