They just want to go home.

January 12, 2007 1:39 PM

I know you're all lining up to buy Sealand, but The Pirate Bay wants to beat you to the punch.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (33 comments total)

Wikipedia: Sealand | The Pirate Bay
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:40 PM on January 12, 2007

I hope they get it.
Not that sovereignty is all it's cracked up to be, (ask Saddam)
posted by Busithoth at 1:44 PM on January 12, 2007

Gah. 65 million poids.
posted by koeselitz at 1:44 PM on January 12, 2007

It's like a match made in heaven. Maybe if they buy Sealand they can stop sucking as bad as they have for a while now.

Regardless, let the drunken monkey knife fights begin!
posted by loquacious at 1:44 PM on January 12, 2007

What if the MPAA/RIAA bought it first? They have enough money to win that kind of battle.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:51 PM on January 12, 2007

Not really sure how an offshore platform is the best option for a massive-bandwidth arguably-illegal internet operation, especially since the entire argument over Sealand's "sovereignty" comes down to the British government being too bored to take down the damn thing.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 1:53 PM on January 12, 2007

What if the MPAA/RIAA bought it first? They have enough money to win that kind of battle.

Wouldn't that still be something of a victory for The Pirate Bay? Forcing the MPAA/RIAA to waste millions of dollars on a rusty oil platform?
posted by EnormousTalkingOnion at 1:54 PM on January 12, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Forcing the MPAA/RIAA to waste millions of dollars on a rusty oil platform?

What other territories have unclear sovereign status that are:

1. Up for sale; and can:
2. Support colocation

Call it a business expense and write it off on your tax return, maybe.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:00 PM on January 12, 2007

Try a billion dollars. Just how many donations do you think they will need to get there?
posted by hellphish at 2:00 PM on January 12, 2007

excellent--Pirate Bay rocks, and this actually might slow the RIAA down.
posted by amberglow at 2:11 PM on January 12, 2007

the entire argument over Sealand's "sovereignty" comes down to the British government being too bored to take down the damn thing.

That's actually a big point in favor of Sealand's actual sovereignty, i think. The country where it is didn't even do anything to stop it declaring independence, no?
posted by amberglow at 2:13 PM on January 12, 2007

How does Sealand support hosting? Surely satellite broadband is far, far too slow, and any kind of cable to the mainland could be cut off at will by the UK.
posted by matthewr at 2:14 PM on January 12, 2007

Yeah, amberglow, but the UK could take it back any time it felt like it, so this seems like a bit of a crazy pie-in-the-sky idea.
posted by matthewr at 2:15 PM on January 12, 2007

Didn't they host a whole fuckton of servers on the rig anyway? Filled with data I'm sure a lot of people would pay a lot of money to read...
posted by slimepuppy at 2:15 PM on January 12, 2007

Thanks for the post. I'd never heard of Sealand dispite being a Brit. Somehow the whole venture of Sealand strikes me as British whimsy, and that's no bad thing.
posted by ob at 2:22 PM on January 12, 2007

If COBRA can trick American special forces into using enough explosives to trigger an island generating undersea earthquake, then why can't a torrent site take over a rusty old oil platform?
posted by Burhanistan at 2:30 PM on January 12, 2007

You know, technically Pirate Bay isn't really high-bandwidth. They just deliver the torrent files, not the actual media. They probably get less hits per day than, say, boing boing, so big pipes (or is it tubes?) aren't necessarily a priority.
posted by fungible at 2:37 PM on January 12, 2007

Maybe I should get some of my drinking buddies together and see if we can take over one of the Aleutian islands with nothing but push brooms and moxie. We could hinge our economy on the export of bad weather, angry wildlife, and pirated AVIs of Three Men and a Baby.

The island nation of Doink. Our motto: "It's frigging cold! Who's idea was this anyway?"
posted by The Power Nap at 2:51 PM on January 12, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I doubt how effective an idea this would actually be. Unless they could figure out a way to lay fiber to several locations, they are still susceptible to being cut off.

Still, the idea of Pirates at Sealand? How awesome is that?

Although if the deal falls through, they should totally consider Starbuck island; a perfect haven for pirates.
posted by quin at 2:55 PM on January 12, 2007

Didn't they host a whole fuckton of servers on the rig anyway?

No, the whole HavenCo thing was vastly overhyped. In reality they had only a few servers, few clients, and one barely-working, low-bandwidth link to the mainland that could have been easily cut off at any time.

Suggested reading: HavenCo: What Really Happened.
posted by xil at 3:09 PM on January 12, 2007

That PDF was entertaining, xil.

I love that the 'Lessons Learned' slide is made up of things like 'Customers want single point of contact for advanced services' and so on.

Maybe 'don't spend $260,000 on harebrained schemes with as much chance of success as a chocolate datacentre staffed by voles' would be better.
posted by matthewr at 3:41 PM on January 12, 2007

They'll just get their connection cut at the ISP.
posted by delmoi at 3:52 PM on January 12, 2007

Wouldn't that still be something of a victory for The Pirate Bay? Forcing the MPAA/RIAA to waste millions of dollars on a rusty oil platform?

s/oil\ platform/sea\ fortress/

Maunsell Forts
posted by musicinmybrain at 3:56 PM on January 12, 2007

Wikipedia article on Micronations.
posted by darkripper at 4:01 PM on January 12, 2007

I hope their plan succeeds if only because an organization like The Pirate Bay becoming a sovereign country means that we are truly living in a deeply weird Gibsonian future.
posted by sparkletone at 4:01 PM on January 12, 2007

You might not get the dubious claim of micronation, but dollar for dollar, you'll get far more space and potential with a private island than you would with some skanky old WWII installation.
posted by Burhanistan at 4:07 PM on January 12, 2007

musicinmybrain, thanks for those links.
I'd never heard of these things.
brilliant!
posted by Busithoth at 4:51 PM on January 12, 2007

Starbuck Island? Haven't they been sued by you-know-who yet?
posted by QuietDesperation at 5:14 PM on January 12, 2007

QuietDesperation: I don't think so. The discoverer was named Valentine Starbuck, so it think it falls under fair use. But those big chains are crafty. I fully expect a franchise to appear there soon.

I discovered the island while playing with Google Earth. I was trying to find the most god-forsaken remote location on earth. This pretty much fit the bill.

Here is an idea of how in the middle of nowhere this place is. [hint, just keep zooming out till you see something recognizable. It's pretty high up before it happens.]
posted by quin at 5:30 PM on January 12, 2007

when you take the most well-organized torrent site out of a stable habitable country, suddenly you lose the ability to lobby for your interests and affect the filesharing world on a legal level. sure, you've got your fancypants no-laws island, but wouldn't it be nicer to build a set of laws protecting sites like this instead of having a few months to get your 0day w4r3z before the british gov't shuts them down?
posted by papier machine at 8:41 AM on January 13, 2007

This popped in my head last night so maybe I just heard it somewhere while I was doing something else but... Sealand doesn't make sense for Pirate Bay. You'd think someone like World of Warcraft or Second Life would buy it up. With the US government thinking about taxing income made in VR, some VR company would setup shop where at least there would be a possibility that the population playing might be able to somehow keep their winnings without being taxed on it. Maybe I'm just high.
posted by pwb503 at 9:28 AM on January 13, 2007

I hope their plan succeeds if only because an organization like The Pirate Bay becoming a sovereign country means that we are truly living in a deeply weird Gibsonian future.

This is exactly why I just sent them fifty bucks.
posted by Aquaman at 9:53 AM on January 13, 2007

I hope their plan succeeds if only because an organization like The Pirate Bay becoming a sovereign country means that we are truly living in a deeply weird Gibsonian future.

...and why I sent them $23.42 yesterday.
posted by sfslim at 10:37 AM on January 13, 2007