{"id":35,"date":"2012-03-28T14:17:14","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T21:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/?p=35"},"modified":"2012-05-04T16:16:03","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T23:16:03","slug":"sealand-havenco-and-the-rule-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/?p=35","title":{"rendered":"SEALAND, HAVENCO, AND THE RULE OF LAW"},"content":{"rendered":"

SEALAND, HAVENCO, AND THE\u00a0RULE OF LAW<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2000, a group of American entrepreneurs moved to a former\u00a0World War II antiaircraft platform in the North Sea, seven miles off\u00a0the British coast. \u00a0There, they launched HavenCo, one of the strangest\u00a0start-ups in Internet history. \u00a0A former pirate radio broadcaster, Roy\u00a0Bates, had occupied the platform in the 1960s, moved his family\u00a0aboard, and declared it to be the sovereign Principality of Sealand. \u00a0HavenCo\u2019s founders were opposed to governmental censorship and\u00a0control of the Internet; by putting computer servers on Sealand, they\u00a0planned to create a \u201cdata haven\u201d for unpopular speech, safely beyond\u00a0the reach of any other country. \u00a0This Article tells the full story of\u00a0Sealand and HavenCo\u2014and examines what they have to tell us about\u00a0the nature of the rule of law in the age of the Internet.\u00a0The story itself is fascinating enough: it includes pirate radio,\u00a0shotguns, rampant copyright infringement, a Red Bull skateboarding\u00a0special, perpetual motion machines, and the Montevideo Convention\u00a0on the Rights and Duties of State. \u00a0But its implications for the rule of\u00a0law are even more remarkable. \u00a0Previous scholars have seen\u00a0HavenCo as a straightforward challenge to the rule of law: by threatening to undermine national authority, HavenCo was opposed to all\u00a0law. \u00a0As the fuller history shows, this story is too simplistic. \u00a0HavenCo\u00a0also depended on international law to recognize and protect Sealand,\u00a0and on Sealand law to protect it from Sealand itself. \u00a0Where others\u00a0have seen HavenCo\u2019s failure as the triumph of traditional regulatory\u00a0authorities over HavenCo, this Article argues that in a very real sense,\u00a0HavenCo failed not from too much law but from too little. \u00a0The \u201claw\u201d\u00a0that was supposed to keep HavenCo safe was law only in a thin, formalistic sense, disconnected from the human institutions that make\u00a0and enforce law. \u00a0But without those institutions, law does not work, as\u00a0HavenCo discovered.<\/p>\n

Death of a data haven: cypherpunks, WikiLeaks, and the world’s smallest nation<\/a><\/p>\n

How to Start Your Own Country<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.sealandgov.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SEALAND, HAVENCO, AND THE\u00a0RULE OF LAW In 2000, a group of American entrepreneurs moved to a former\u00a0World War II antiaircraft platform in the North Sea, seven miles off\u00a0the British coast. \u00a0There, they launched HavenCo, one of the strangest\u00a0start-ups in Internet … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neeleshgokhale.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}