Sealand Put Up For Sale

antic writes "The Principality of Sealand is up for sale. The 550 square meter steel platform boasts "uninterrupted sea views", complete privacy and has been mentioned on Slashdot in the past for its offers of hosting outside the jurisdiction of (some) traditional laws."

If only I could afford such a thing

Then I could hunt the most dangerous game of all...

Re:If only I could afford such a thing

You're going to hunt women in a jungle [imdb.com]?

Re:

For somebody willing to do the work, such a thing could actually PAY FOR ITSELF. It would make a great battery manufacturing and charging center- just surround it with Wave power generation bouys [wikipedia.org] and charge, ship, and sell the "green power" renewable batt

Yeah, but...

You should know that the commute is a bitch.

I should also add

It's not actually for sale, the owners are just offering a tenancy. [eveningstar.co.uk] Which makes it not such a sweet deal.

Re:I should also add

Yeah, but if they're not living there, and you are, you can just declare a coup and that you are now president-for-life, then fight them off when they attempt to come back. I'm sure it would be pretty easy to smuggle weapons onto the platform, considering there's probably not even room for a port authority.

Considering the traditional way of determining the actual 'government' is 'who is in physical control of the country', you are now the ruler of Sealand. They are the 'government in exile'.

Coup de Nowhere

Well, the Principality Army could stay on site to prevent a coup. What? There is no army? Well then, the citizens can form a militia... You say there are no citizens either? So what does "Prince" Michael rule over?

This notion that an abandoned radar platform has somehow achieved sovereign nation status just because its squatters say it is has always been a bad joke. They've only gotten away with it because nobody gives a shit. They claim to have a legal decision, but what they really have is a court case the the UK crown won't appeal out of bureaucratic inertia. The very first time they'd done something to really piss people off, a platoon of Scotland Yard bobbies would have landed, sent the "Prince" back to his sheep, and that would have been the end of it.

Re:I should also add

Don't be too silly. International Law? No country has ever even officially recognized Sealand, it just puts up with it because it is kinda funny and they don't cause much trouble if they are left alone. To the UK it is just a bunch of local squatters in an abandoned sea platform, you have to believe that they would be thrown out if they discovered oil under it or needed to clear it to make way for a sea lane or something. The only reason you couldn't just show up and start fighting over it would be because the UK would finally move in with force and demolish it. Oh just try to open up a luxury casino or something and see if the UK doesn't step in to collect taxes.

Theories of international law are all well and good, but the only reason indefensible small island nations remain independent is because they usually aren't worth the trouble of taking them over or the cost of supporting them, and not because of any deeply held convictions over international law.

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Which would be pretty incredibly stupid to pay £65mil for, considering what the "Royal Family" did to HavenCo.
http://havenco.venona.com/ [venona.com]

How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

1. Buy Sealand on credit, you can get a loan anywhere these days.
2. Apply for your own TLD.
3. Open up for a new domain rush, demand ridicilous prices for certain domains
4. Release the loan using the income from domain sales.
5. You own Sealand, you are king.

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

Well, I think that's not all that different from what they did... except step 2 is a little more iffy than you might think.

Last time there was a slashdot story on them, they had the business model of providing a place where folks could store sensitive data without fear of subpeona -- they wanted to be, for data storage, what Switzerland used to be for bank accounts. Guess it didn't work. They don't really have as much independence as they thought... it's tough to hold your ground when your entire country is one "accident" (or torpedo) from oblivion at worst, or a few weeks of blockade away from starvation at best.

item you missed

starvation? it's called fishing

Re:

You never learned how to purify water using solar power?

Here's the short version:
Take a large vat full of salt water, place a recepticle in the middle to catch the fresh water, cover over with clear object (preferably concave so the curvature can direct th

Sun? In ENGLAND?

bladesjester: the sun do its work

Off the coast of Essex, England, UK? In the North Sea?

I'm guessing you've never been to the east coast of England. It is sunny for approximately half an hour in the afternoon only of the third Wednesday after Pentecost.

A far, far faster method of obtaining fresh water in the North Sea would be to simply open your mouth and tilt your head skywards. It'll fill with fresh rainwater - no desalination required - in about six seconds.

Re:

On avarage, London has more days of sunshine than Paris.

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

Last time there was a slashdot story on them, they had the business model of providing a place where folks could store sensitive data without fear of subpeona

Such confidence would be misplaced.

Either the platform is British Soveriegn territory or it isn't.

The most likely case is that the British courts consider the platform to be under UK jurisdiction following the expansion of the teritorial limits. International law does not recognize teritorial claims based on man made structures. Contrary to claims made British court has ever recognized sovereignty claims by any other party over the platform.

Ergo if the UK courts choose to issue a subpoena the subpoena can be served and enforced. Moreover since the Bates family are the directors of HavenCo and they live in the UK they can be arrested and imprisoned on contempt charges if they refuse to comply regardless of the sovereign status of the platform.

If the British courts did choose to recognize the sovereignty of the platform they or anyone else can declare war on it and blow the thing to smitherines if they make a nuisance of themselves.

The main reason that this has not happened to date seems to be that HavenCo does not have any customers worth the trouble.

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

Or:

1) get together with other geeks
2) make a joint offer for sealand ownership, each one pays a little share.
3) get sealand
4) enact legislation which is impossible anywhere else because of WTO, like: no patent on software, only copyright. No stupid patents on anything. There is something that can be done for censorship, to free scientific research hampered by stupid lawsuits, lots of possibilities.
5) Open embassies wherever a geek need a safe place to develop his ideas without fears of lawsuits. An embassy is territory of sealand too. SSH provides no data sent to sealand and other embassies violates any international law as it's just encrypted blobs there.
6) Profit for all humanity.

What do you think?

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

You forgot "4a) Actually get recognised by at least one other country". Best of luck with that.

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

An embassy is territory of sealand too.

Nitpick: embassies are not the territory of the foreign country. They are under the jurisdiction of the foreign country. So embassies in the United States are still United States territory, but they are under foreign jurisdiction, not the jurisdiction of the United States.

Re:

No longer possible. After Sealand, one of the first things that happened was a change of international jurisdiction concerning such renegade actions.

You don't think countries enjoy the idea of their subjects declaring independence, do you?

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

Here's an easier way:
1. Buy Sealand on credit, you can get a loan anywhere these days.
2. You own Sealand, you are king.
3. Create a law that forbids the King of Sealand to release loans ;-)

Re:How to buy Sealand for free in just 5 steps

5. You own Sealand, you are king.

It is good to be the king!

The Original Haven CO concept there was good

However its hard to see it working out long term, otherwise it would actually be a decent way around the cyberspace annoyances. However the problem boils down to you have to get the bandwidth from somewhere. Most likely the UK due to its proximity. If you ISP is someplace with draconian IP laws then you always have the potential to be cut off.

Territorial Waters

Sealand exists because in 1967, Britian's territorial waters extended only 3 miles out from the shore.

Therefore, they could legitimately claim the fort as theirs. If they had tried to do that after 1987... it wouldn't have worked, because the 3-mile limit was changed to 12 miles.

Uninterrupted sea views?

Sealand is a bit of a running joke for the people of Harwich. I would contest their "uninterrupted sea views" as I'm fairly sure that the very brightly coloured (luminous yellow!) Hotel Continental situated on the cliffs of Harwich can be seen from it, hell... they can probably see it from Holland! It's also probably quite fire damaged at the moment having suffered a fire http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/5110244.stm [bbc.co.uk] last year, and not having its own fire brigade or hospital services had to make use of the British ones.

Oblig.

Hesh wants sex!

Re:

I think you mean: Hesh wants jalapeno poppers!

I'm open to the idea, as long as ...

As long as the new owners don't change the current statutes on Monkey Knife-fighting, I don't see this as a problem.

I also hope they clear up the inconsistencies in the human-bovine marriage laws.

Headquarters

Sounds like it would make a great superhero headquarters.

Re:Headquarters

...or supervillian headquarters.

Sealand is all but destroyed

According to Sealand's official website [sealandgov.org], the platform sustained heavy damage by fire last summer. From the desperate tone of the account, I gather that Sealand might be very close to uninhabitable by now. That might explain the decision to sell it off, more than the old age of the founder.

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My impression from the before and after photos (see http://www.bobleroi.co.uk/ScrapBook/Sealand_Fire/ S ealand_Fire.html [bobleroi.co.uk]) is that the entire site was feeling its age and was in rather poor repair all around. It strikes me that the most cost-effective method

Guns are the assembly code of politics.

Nations are sovereign only because they have enough firepower to keep other nations from claiming them. What does it matter what the laws of Sealand are, if you own it and you have no army? Is the army included, or do you have to put it together yourself?

Re:

I really don't know what people are expecting out of this place. But bear in mind that the only reason that Britain leaves it alone is the fact that it's not worth the hassle. The second the place actually started to make money (or did something really ill

Re:Guns are the assembly code of politics.

Yes is it only the 450 strong Luxembourg army and their enormous firepower that stops Belgium, France or Germany from relieving them of their soverignty (pick other examples to suit).

Re:

And if Luxembourg became a thorn in the side of any of those countries, I suspect they'd find themselves invaded right quick. If Luxembourg were to start hosting child pornography or harboring criminals, its 450-strong army would be little comfort.

Whenever

Re:Guns are the assembly code of politics.

Willful ignorance of international law and diplomacy is frighteningly abundant in the US these days.

You talk about "international law" as though it exists beyond fictional agreements between the big boys with the most guns.

As for the counterexample of neutral states, they just happen to benefit from those "let's not kill each other" agreements as a side effect; When wars spread across Europe, they have a long history of making relatively safe corridors through which to move troops to the real action.

As a simple example, tell Belgium how much better international treaties protected it than guns, when Germany invaded it in 1914 - Sure, the UK had an obligation to respond, but had the UK lost, see the GGP's argument about what actually defines "right" and "wrong" on the international scale.

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No, the US would protect Canada from other potential invaders because if the invaders took over Canada, the only thing between the US and said foreign invader would be the largest non-militarized border in the world. There's no way in hell the US would to

Re:Guns are the assembly code of politics.

"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing... After they have exhausted all other possibilities."
--Winston Churchill

Cheaper to invade.

I believe It's empty right now. Sail up there with a paper knife. occupy the terriroty. Kill all zero people who resist. Declare yourself the revolutionary government.

Of course, the declaration of what makes for statehood is a little arbitrary. So rather than go to the effort, I declare myself King of Antarctica.

Re:Cheaper to invade.

What the hell?

I look away for five seconds and someone steals Antarctica from me.

I'd watch your back if I were you, 91degrees!

Re:Cheaper to invade.

You'll have a tough time taking it back since it can only be attacked from the north.

"Land" is stretching it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sealand_fortres s.jpg [wikipedia.org]

More like "Seaplatform". though it doesn't have that ring to it.


If anyone is interested in it, move along. Not only is it in the middle of nowhere, you face invasion by several post - industrialized nations. You're better off buying an island in the keys. At least then you're lucky to have something called coconuts and White Sandy beaches.

Stating the obvious.

For far less than 65m you can build your own damn platform and anchor it in the channel or north sea.

Re:Stating the obvious.

The problem is that in 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea changed international law so that no new artificial platform could claim nation status. While no country explicitly recognizes Sealand, since its claims to independence predates 1982, it is exempt from this convention.

Although it's a bit damaged at the present...

...the architect's design for the refurbishment is quite nice:

http://shatterhand007.com/Formula/FORMULAAtlantis. jpg [shatterhand007.com]

Wow

One of my teachers in high school taught us about Sealand because his son was one of the co-founders. Didn't think I'd see it come up on slashdot. Funny story about the country: after it was founded, many of the world's nations extended their borders into sea from (I think about) 5 miles to 10 miles. Sealand viewed this as an aggressive action by the UK since Sealand was now entirely within UK borders and was considered by the British to be UK soil. Sealands response was to extend their borders to 10 miles as well and claim the respective British coastal areas as Sealand soil.

Re:Why not

The last time they were "invaded" by armed people, they retook the platform with force and held the "invaders" hostage. They've also in the past shot the the British navy... So I do suspect you might need to be armed with a bit more than beer and a hamburger.

Re:

Besides, he could afford to buy an *actual* country.

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If you're spending eight digits on your boat, you can afford to spend a couple million bucks to buy some SS-N-25 and P-800 surplus russian anti-ship missiles. Anything that's not an aircraft carrier battlegroup will be toast, and even some of those won't