Napster Going Offshore?

BananaBoht writes: "According to this article, a Canadian named Matt Goyer plans to set up a Napster clone server off the shores of the UK on a sovreign island. Mr. Goyer is eyeing HavenCo Ltd. as a possible site for his cloned Napster computer server. The company rents computing power and Internet data storage space to those seeking to avoid government laws. It operates from an ocean platform called Sealand, which has operated for 30 years as a sovereign territory off the coast of England."

Re:Does these sealand hosting facilities really ex

We haven't moved www.havenco.com or www.sealandgov.com yet, and we set them up before we had service on Sealand. Since one of our investors runs a US ISP, we got a free box in colo there, so there's no real rush to move.

I've been working on some decent demo-services to host out of our space on Sealand, since most of our customers so far as pretty much internal-use-only.

It would take only very minimal checking to find servers on Sealand, but I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

It may just shift the problem.

How much time before the RIAA starts putting the pressure on the ISP linking Sealand to the shore?

Lawyer: international law and the Law of Nations

I am a laweyr, but you'd have to be pretty damned stupid or fancy yourself a sovereign nation (but I repeat myself) to take this as legal advice.

Warning: check your idealism at the door before reading this. It is *entirely* realpolitick/positive law, and not the world as it "should" be.

There certainly is "the Law of Nations," which is ancient. It's a basic and largely unwritten code of conduct between nations (don't kill the other guys diplomats, etc.).

Treaties such as the Geneva Convention have extended these standars.

"International Law" is a newer concept. and is largely wieleded as a buzzword by discontents within a country to achieve what they cannot through the legal process. It tends to be claims of authority for unratified treaties and the like, an attempts to give authority to UN proclamations.

Basically, international law is whatever the victor of the last war says it is, or is willing to abide by. As an example, a "naval salute" in the days of cannons consisted of each ship emptying it's cannons to show that they were no longer prepared to fire on one another. SHips alternated cannons until each was empty. The exception was the Royal Navy (Britain), which was entitled to have the other ship empty its entire battery before emptying its own. Why? Because Britain ruled the seas from the smashing of the Armada until surpassed by the U.S. this century. Today, if we still had such ships, it would be the U.S. receiving the salute from Britain first.

The bottom line is that "international law" means nothing if you don't have the military power to back your position. ANother way of putting it is that today it is whatever the U.S. says it is.

Treaties are another matter, but they are generally not at issue when folks cry "international law."

hawk, esq.

It'll end in fire

The most obvious ending for this is a military attack on Sealand. Egregious copyright violation like this will invite lots of pressure, up to the point where the right government officials are brought on board, money and power change hands, and eventually, a RAF Harrier drops a laser-guided bomb on the server room. The press, of course, trumpet it as a coordinated offensive against an international child pornography ring or something. (It's not like anyone will sort through the debris and prove otherwise.) Only the conspiracy nuts will say otherwise, and they're usually barking about reptilian aliens in the Royal Family and black helicopters and such, so the truth will be buried under crackpot ravings.

How it should work...

Second, he's actually in the clear from the moral point of view. As evidenced by him spending about $10,000 to set up Fairtunes, a site which allows fans to donate directly to artists, he cares about seeing that artists don't get ripped off. I've personally donated $25 through Fairtunes. To get the same amount of cash into artists' hands, I'd have to spend over $300 on CDs.

I originally was completely against the idea of a Napster clone that would be outside the RIAA's legeal reach because I am personally opposed to the fact that Napster prevents artists from making money of thier music and the thought of someone else making money of the work of artists either was distasteful to me. But now that I know that the creator of Fairtunes is behind it, some of my reservations have been removed and I have certain requests.

The main problem with Napster is that it does not give one an interface to pay the artist for their work. I've often downloaded songs off Napster and wished that I could click some link and send the artist a few bucks directly. Using Fairtunes and the like is rather inconvenient. Currently to use Fairtunes one has to

1. Add artists to your shopping cart as usual
2. Proceed to the checkout page
3. Note the total amount of your shopping cart
4. Click the PayPal button (to mail us the contents of your shopping cart)
5. Go to: www.paypal.com [paypal.com]
6. Send [e-mail] [mailto] the same amount of money as your shopping cart.

Now if the OpenNAP servers that will be on Sealand supported a protocol/client combo that integrated Fairtunes with Napster, I'd be very interested in using this service. Simply replace the ads and HTML crap that Napster streams with "Pay The Artist" links and add an encrypted layer for actually making payments to the artists via Fairtunes. Heck, I'd even work on it if it was Open Sourced(TM).

Re:Does these sealand hosting facilities really ex

> It's tolerable. The main problem was that it's rather cold in the winter; -2 to 5 degrees. Only some parts of the structure are heated; some rooms, like the kitchen, are pretty much the same temperature as outside, just without wind -- you can see your breath, the room is about as cold as the fridge, etc.
See the bright side of it. You can host overclocked servers easily.

Cheers,

--fred

Re:Does these sealand hosting facilities really ex

It's tolerable. The main problem was that it's rather cold in the winter; -2 to 5 degrees. Only some parts of the structure are heated; some rooms, like the kitchen, are pretty much the same temperature as outside, just without wind -- you can see your breath, the room is about as cold as the fridge, etc.

We have water and toilet and such; even a shower. The shower was rationed initially, but now we have a 10 ton capacity watermaker and a few large storage tanks, so it's ok. We're upgrading a lot of the residential features constantly; we don't have satellite TV or anything, although I do have a server with about 130 GB of mp3s, dvds, etc.
for local use. Due to generator and computer noise, I mainly just use headphones.

Everyone has a private room, although when we expand datacenter into a second tower, we might need to construct more accomodations up on deck. Initially we were thinking of housing servers in 20' containers on deck, vs. in the concrete towers, but having 12-24" reinforced concrete around machine rooms is much cooler.

We have onsite food preparation, although since the cooks are British, it's mainly meat-and-potatoes every day. If anyone else tries to copy the HavenCo/Sealand idea elsewhere, I suggest they have a sushi chef as member of the team.

Let me be pessimist...

All this sounds like a wonderful idea, I just hope it doesn't get hijacked into a moral justification for massive law-mandated Internet filtering.

I fear that the major labels probably have enough money for this...

[[ I admit I tried Napster for the first time a couple of days ago (even if I followed all the copyright discussion from the start), and it's really a killer. I'd be ready to pay a fee for unrestricted usage. Just throw in md5sums to verify file integrity and I'm ready to pay up to 50FF/month without even *thinking* about it. ]]

Sealand's History

Sealand isn't really much of an island. It's an old WW2 concrete artilery platform - completely man-made. It was abandoned for many years, before being settled on by Paddy Roy Bates, who has since been proclaimed 'king'

Their main claim to sovereignty is that the UK ignored them for many years, writing them off as a bunch of loonies. However, in the last few years they've been allowing HavenCo to situate their servers on the island, and the UK government have started laying claim to the island.

Note however, they get all their power and internet connection from nearby countries, who would be entirely within their rights to switch off the connection if Havenco start doing something they disagree with.

Useful Links:

• The Principility of Sealand's page [sealandgov.com]
• HavenCo's corperate page [havenco.com]

-Ciaran

Re:Watch the RIAA eat Sealand.

I'm not kidding.

No, you're not thinking.

Sealand has lasted thus far because there's been no good reason to take it over. The RIAA is not going to let Napster get away, though, and they'll hire government agents to destroy any Sealand operation that Napster might try to start.

Sealand is a fort. Manned by people who arguably have the right to retaliate with force (they've fired at English naval vessels before). Which means the RIAA would have to go in with force. Can you imagine what would happen if someone was killed and it was linked back to the RIAA? They'd get crucified.

The RIAA would have to fight in the courts, which could be a tricky business given Sealand's as undetermined status as a country. Their best bet would be to go after the Canadian who owns the server in Canada. Shut him down and their problem goes away.

It's about time Napster rolled over and admitted that they can't fight money.

I guess you didn't read the article either. This is some guy wanting to set up a clone server. It has nothing to do with Napster (the company) at all.

On the ISPs, plural.

Sealand has multiple connectivity into the UK and into Amsterdam.

Now, maybe all of those ISPs will capitulate. But supposing they don't? Supposing, say, one of the well-connected Amsterdam ISPs stands firm, and is backed up by the Amsterdam court? I don't think the RIAA are going to try and cut off Amsterdam, which is a major Internet hub for Europe, but maybe they'll demand that US ISPs fake the routing tables so you can't route to Sealand? Then another offshore alternative opens up, more routing frob...

Eventually the RIAA and MPAA will demand that the Internet as we know it be dismantled in favour of a networking protocol that is better at supporting censorship. Eventually they'll demand an Internet that has "providers", who are big companies that can afford legal fees and scrupulously provide only legal content, and "users" who can send email and read content provided by "providers" but who can't afford the legal fees needed to publish anything, and whose communication with each other is heavily mediated by the "providers" taking legal responsibility. They'll want changes to the law, backed by new international conventions, that make even Slashdot illegal, because Slashdot can't guarantee someone won't put DeCSS here.

They won't necessarily get what they demand, but they will eventually be forced to demand it if their position is to make any sense at all. And they're not the kind of people to say "OK, that would be too nasty, we'll concede defeat."
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Re:It may just shift the problem.

Not Insightful, Uninformed. Please read the previous stories about HavenCo/Sealand such as

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/02/1602 53 &mode=nested

(Or Click Here [slashdot.org])

The rules about upstream ISPs are different for countries. Just because an Internet connection to Canada travels across US soil does not give the US the right to censor it. HavenCo is counting on international treaties that govern communications carries to prevent any organization or entity (read RIAA or US Government) from saying "pull the plug". No one owns the Internet, so no one has a right to block another country's access to its content.

- JoeShmoe

A little more information...

Incase you're wondering about Sealand, here [sealandgov.com] is the official website. For pictures [demon.co.uk], look at their old website [demon.co.uk].
If you ask me, it looks like a raft on stilts rather than a sovereign territory, but hey. To each his own. {=)

Saddam to the rescue

Napster should appeal to Saddam for asylum (i think that's the word). I'm pretty sure he'd do anything to piss the west off and what better way than destroying a billion dollar industry and rewriting international copyright laws in the process... he could also download some cool songs inbetween signing execution orders.

Why it might work...

First of all, Matt Goyer is Canadian, so the RIAA will have a much harder time going after him personally. If he were American, they could probably just throw his ass in jail. If he were British, they'd force him to give up his login/pass, then ALL YOUR BASE... You get the picture.

Second, he's actually in the clear from the moral point of view. As evidenced by him spending about $10,000 to set up Fairtunes [fairtunes.com], a site which allows fans to donate directly to artists, he cares about seeing that artists don't get ripped off. I've personally donated $25 through Fairtunes. To get the same amount of cash into artists' hands, I'd have to spend over $300 on CDs.

Third, Sealand's independence has, to some extent, recognized by British courts. Sealand fired a warning shot at a boat that approached too closely, and Roy Bates was taken to court for some weapons violation. The court ruled something to the effect that the weapons laws didn't apply to Sealand since it is sovergn. Also, Sealand established its independence before Britain extended its teritorial waters, so Sealand is in the clear on that front, too.

Fourth, the Sealand guys seem to know what they're doing. They have generators and redundant internet connections. Their server room is filled with pure nitrogen for security and fire prevention. Cool shit. I'm sure they could handle Napster II.

Fifth, Sealand might take this on just for the publicity. With Napster in the news nearly every day, this could get Sealand some much-needed press.

napster is so very doomed...

I sometimes wish I could get my hands on the weed people smoke when they decide that napster can afford to spend a billion dollars to the record industry over five years.

Why would you invest in something like that? I do agree that millions of people would be willing to pay for mp3's on a subscription basis. But what's to differentiate napster from the hundreds of over clones that Canadian CS students set up in their dorm?

It's true, the Napster name brand has house hold recognition. But not the kind of recognition that's worth a billion dollars.

I really doubt napster will be around still by this Christmas.

Good way to force the Sealand sovereignty issue...

I can tell you one thing: this will let us know whether Sealand really is a sovereign nation or not. The jury is still out on that question, and it's one that has to be answered before anyone spends their cash on a colo setup there.

For example, let's say you set up a gambling operation there. You're running along happily, until one day the British Gov't comes calling because you've violated the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 [hmso.gov.uk], which was enacted so that MI5 can listen for bad guys by reading your email. Then some bigwig public official in Norwich happens to be gambling on a game of canasta with the Crown's money, and the Brits get all upset because they can't find out who he is, what he bet, when he plays, etc. So they sue, he sues, everyone sues everyone else. It becomes a big mess, and the anonymous email operation you set up six months prior is caught in the middle of it. How do you repel a DoS attack from the Home Office?

Later on, the providers of HavenCo's bandwidth get pressured from all sorts of people. See, Sealand might be independant, but the companies that give HavanCo their pipe are based in countries which most certainly are not. They can (and will) be pressured. They get leaned on, and then HavenCo gets leaned on. Shit runs downhill. (And don't give me that satellite rap; you know that's only an expensive worst-case backup of dubious technical merit.) The upshot here is that everyone who gave money to HavenCo is now officially S.O.L.

Which is why we need something "friviolous" like a Napster server to take up residence on Sealand. If it goes down because of the Strong Arm of the Law(TM), then it really isn't that big of a deal. It gets sorted out in court and we all wait to see what happens. In the meantime, we run our gambling and pr0n operations off some island like everyone else has been doing. We're listenign to stuff off FreeNet, and grabbign MP3s from OpenNap servers.

But the court will have to decide one way or the other. The RIAA -- for one -- will surely force the issue (like through the U.N., maybe?). And the decision will likely be binding; what's good for Mr. Napster Server Clone is good for you and me (please note: IANAL and I don't want to be one, either). If the verdict is for the Napsterites, then we can all put our servers on Sealand. If the verdict favors whatever government happened to bitch, then we lost no money setting precedent ourselves.

It's a good thing. I want to see it happen.

-B

HavenCo Status, Fairtunes, etc.

I woke up this morning to find about 500 messages in our trouble ticketing system about this. Heh.
(I'm one of the cofounders of HavenCo, and the CTO, if you didn't already know; I'm also an active slashdot reader (what else do you think we do for fun out in the middle of the north sea?))

First of all, www.fairtunes.com is hosted in Canada, is slashdotted, and isn't our fault!

Second, I can't comment on confidential discussions with customers w/o their permission, but yes, from looking at the fairtunes site, it looks like they're trying to raise money to pay for a year of service on one of our boxes with the goal being to host an offshore OpenNap server. I'm personally a user of napster (although I mainly use Mojonation [mojonation.net] now. We definitely would like to have them as a customer -- what they're doing doesn't violate our AUP, and we're happy to offer service to anyone who will pay. Of course, what they are doing is NOT being done by us; if they choose to host with us, it's still their responsibility.

We have network connectivity through multiple providers around the world, and can easily add more. We assign customers a /29, so if any government decides they must protect their citizens from human-rights information, music trading services, etc., they would need to block the customer's /29, affecting only that customer. I personally think the chances of IP blocking at the borders of a country are pretty slim in any marginally free country -- it's difficult from a technical perspective, would be widely opposed by users, and is generally not worthwhile.

As for HavenCo's service, we've been up since May 2000, and now that we have high-speed low-latency network, fully debugged power systems, etc. we're offering commercial service to anyone who is interested and obeys our AUP [havenco.com]. Our pricing is standardized, and is USD 1500/month for a 2U box with redundant power, cooling, 24x7 network monitoring, armed security, etc., and 256kbps of Internet bandwidth (local 100baseTX is free, so people can offer services to other HavenCo customers without paying for bandwidth). We charge a USD 1500 one-time setup fee, and USD 3500 for hardware (we can use any high-quality 1U or 2U box, and pricing is US cost; we don't try to make a profit off hardware, but we can't accept non-rackmount, low quality, etc. stuff). We have about 3-5 days lead time, from receipt of payment, before we can have a server up and running, and as long as you're not doing spam/spam support, child pornography, or hacking from our machines, we'd love to have you as a customer; contact [e-mail] [mailto] for more info.

We're in the middle of a web redesign, and have been trying to focus on getting services fully up, rather than getting more press, but we're about to begin a big sales and press push. This is a bit earlier than was planned, but now that people are getting slashdotted, might as well post. :)

US ignores French law. Other nations accept ours?

Any kind of pornography is illegal in Saudi Arabia. Yet no US court acts to shut down US based porn sites.

Selling Nazi artifacts and nazi related materials are illegal in Germany, France, Austra, etc. Yet no US court acts to shut down US based Nazi sites.

Trading copyrighted materials for free to people who didn't legitimately pay for them is illegal in the US. Why should other nations give a fuck about our laws. Especially in nations not signed onto the Berne treaty on intellectual property, like Brazil, China, Russia, Malaysia, and Taiwan.

Re:Good way to force the Sealand sovereignty issue

As for testing sovereignty, I'd say the armed invasion over a decade ago, and subsequent military recapture, where the Germans send diplomats directly to Sealand to negotiate the release of a private citizen being held as POW, is a stronger test of sovereignty than a Napster server!

But yes, we're always happy to have more legal experience and affirmation of Sealand's sovereign status.

And as for satellite bandwidth -- it's certainly not as good as other bandwidth, but even being connected only by high-quality satellite bandwidth during a legal challenge to the UK or Netherlands over terrestrial links wouldn't be the end of the world; since in the absolute worst case, security of servers is assured, even in the event of invasion, Sealand is still the best place to host data which truly needs the highest security.

Sure hope Lars can't swim

or he can't hack.

Erm... People are forgetting one thing...

That the RIAA are clueless bastards:) Do you think they honestly know anything about this routing shit? I mean honestly, they're with a hive mentality. Just like ants, someone has breached their defences and they're reacting the only way they can, by reacting without thinking. If anyone at the RIAA actually got a clue and pulled off this routing tables thing, I will gladly stand naked in Times Square on New Years Eve jumping up and down saying "I'm Mister Lizard" with the 10 top selling CD's of the time taped to my dick...

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This *does* protect the individual.

For a lawsuit to be brought, first the Canadian would have to be served with papers from a US court.

Guess what? You can only be served with US court papers... if you're in the United States. The US has no legal authority to go about co-opting citizens or residents of other countries in order to enforce its own laws. Even in the event that criminal charges were filed, extradition from a foreign country is never guaranteed.

So as long as the Canadian never sets foot in the US, he's totally immune to the United States civil-justice system.

Re:Sealand's History

The UK and the US do not recognise Sealand.

Well maybe someone should take a photo of it and give it to them to help jog their memory.

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