Quote :

"Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is planning to buy its own nation in an attempt to circumvent international copyright laws."

Quote :

"According to a website set up to secure the purchase of Sealand, The Pirate Bay plans to give citizenship of the micronation to anyone willing to put money towards the purchase."

http://www.thelocal.se/6076/20070112/

Quote :

"ACFI is a group of people working for the peoples right to it’s Internets. We have made progress in Ladonia and are now working on the Micronation of Sealand. Recently it was made clear that this country is for sale. To make sure the owners will be kopimistic and that the country won’t be governed by people that do not care about it’s future, we have come up with a plan. With the help of all the kopimists on Internets, we want to buy Sealand. Donate money and you will become a citizien. We’ve set up a forum to discuss how the country is supposed to function. It should be a great place for everybody, with high-speed Internets access, no copyright laws and vip accounts to The Pirate Bay."

http://www.buysealand.com/



i don't think i'd want to live there...looks depressing

1/12/2007 10:39:04 AM

http://kim.nyclondon.com/main.php/v/sealand/

1/12/2007 11:12:33 AM

dude... tww needs a land

1/12/2007 11:39:37 AM

how have I never heard of this place?? I seriously just spent like half an hour here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

this place is awesome

1/12/2007 11:48:22 AM

its harder to tell in pictures without any people in it, but looking at http://kim.nyclondon.com/main.php/v/sealand/sealands_helicap.html the thing is downright tiny. For a price tag of "between £65,000,000 and £504,000,000 ($977 million, €750,000,000)" [wikipedia] you could buy a small -real- island. 'course, then you have the problem of trying to declare said island as an independent nation.
but from the wikipedia article US and Germany say Sealand isn't a real country anyways. Brittan just says its outside their territory

1/12/2007 12:32:17 PM

The problem is that it's status as its own nation is in question, so they could still get busted for copyright violation.

1/12/2007 12:34:01 PM

And if you pissed off any legitimate nations, which Pirate Bay very easily could, pretty much a single Navy Seal or any other country's special forces could singlehandedly conquer the entire 'nation' of Sealand and shut it down.

1/12/2007 1:27:25 PM

but they wouldn't...i don't think any "legitimate" countries who care about file sharing would use their military to bother with them...fuck the riaa/mpaa, 10 years from now will see them completely powerless

1/12/2007 1:31:33 PM

Quote :

""between £65,000,000 and £504,000,000 ($977 million, €750,000,000)" [wikipedia]"

For a couple of million a year (less than the interest you'd get investing the purchase price of sealand) you could bribe the right officials of some 3rd world country that doesn't enforce copyrights.

1/12/2007 1:34:22 PM

for 977 million, i would imagine they could BUILD their own island base thing wherever they wanted to

1/12/2007 1:39:20 PM

^^ true but it would not be the same status as sealand. It's close to land, but not under governmental control which means,

1) no taxes
2) no laws but international ones (thought you don't HAVE to follow them)

getting the idea?

1/12/2007 1:44:57 PM

Wait until the RIAA and the MPAA declare war on sea land and invade with real troops.

1/12/2007 1:57:55 PM

who will there troops be... metallica and 200 pencil pushers?

1/12/2007 2:00:30 PM

I'm sure they could afford mercenaries.

1/12/2007 2:18:01 PM

^^If that's the case, load sealand up with explosives... detonate when they arrive.

1/12/2007 2:23:25 PM

but what happens when the RIAA or other organizations pressure britain or whoever would have to provide some of their infrastructure/ISP to support as much bandwidth as a safe haven for piracy would attract? is sealand large enough to house all the facilities a venture like that would require?

1/12/2007 2:39:24 PM

i think you can go down in to those towers right?

[Edited on January 12, 2007 at 3:29 PM. Reason : 3]

1/12/2007 3:15:36 PM

1/12/2007 3:16:38 PM

Quote :

"but what happens when the RIAA or other organizations pressure britain or whoever would have to provide some of their infrastructure/ISP to support as much bandwidth as a safe haven for piracy would attract? is sealand large enough to house all the facilities a venture like that would require?"

how are they going to pressure them into anything? cut off their music? i'm sure pirate bay would/could use an ISP whose stance is "it's not our problem or our responsibility to govern our customers...they take responsibility for their own actions"

1/12/2007 3:40:11 PM

that isp will probably have to run wire out there and then figure out a plan on what to hook the other end to.

1/12/2007 3:41:52 PM

i was referencing the ability for the RIAA to have influence over the policies of a business breaking no laws in another country

1/12/2007 3:47:29 PM

^if you think that kind of power doesn't exist in business, look at allofmp3.com and how various organizations and governments have put pressure on russia to shut it down or severely restrict it. true, the situation wouldn't be the same because Sealand isn't exactly clamoring to join the WTO or anything, but my thinking was more along the lines of sumfoo1's comment--they've got to run pipe to somewhere, and chances are pretty damn good that it would be someone in the EU.

1/12/2007 4:26:57 PM

see, i think the WTO part was the clencher...i really don't think the EU cares all that much about the RIAA/MPAA, and i don't think those organizations have all that much sway over there

*shrug*

1/12/2007 4:50:17 PM

they don't have too much sway, but there are equivalent organizations in europe that exist for the same purpose that are slowly cribbing from the RIAA's notebook and taking aim at illegal copyright violations. they're a couple years behind the curve set by the USA, but things like lawsuits for file-sharing are ramping up, and they're taking a lot of steps to prevent bootlegging of movies in cinemas.

they'll never be quite as drastic in their tactics as the RIAA or MPAA, simply because as long as most of their movies and a large chunk of their music in the EU is produced in the US, they don't have as much at stake. but at the same time, the threat of action plus the logistical issues involved with Sealand would seem to me to make the proposed price tag prohibitive when doing a risk assessment of a venture like this, even for a site as determined as The Pirate Bay.

if they have that kind of money to spend, it might be a better strategy to create their own micronation in a locale more amenable to providing the bandwidth, and save the rest of the money for the inevitable legal defense and disputes over international law that would ensue.

1/12/2007 5:14:37 PM

SEALAND BE WARNED, LARS IS COMING FOR YOU!

1/12/2007 10:57:24 PM

lol

1/12/2007 11:11:01 PM

That's fucking retarded.

There are dozens of freeholder islands for sale for less than $50 million that can be purchased and become their own micronation.

The only reason I could see Sealand being a viable option is because it's been through all the bullshit of becoming it's own sovreign entity so they would avoid a lot of that. But damn, you gotta know a lot of that billion dollars would be going into the Pirate Bay's pockets.

1/13/2007 2:14:44 PM

no, what's retarded is this thread, and everyone who has posted in it

you should be ashamed of yourselves

1/13/2007 3:47:02 PM

i'm quite sure you can kiss my ass

[Edited on January 13, 2007 at 9:17 PM. Reason : .]

1/13/2007 9:16:54 PM