You probably know this already but let me reiterate this for you: The Pirate Bay – a group of Swedish torrent tracker operators, webmasters, and the founders of the first Pirate Party in the world want to buy Sealand – a small WWII gun platform off the cost of Englad which declared independence and became a sovereign nation.
My reaction to this: holly fucking shit awesome!
Ever since the Sealand story surfaced on the internet we have been talking about this sort of thing. Every geek out there dreams of a nation with no copyright law, no patents and no rules that would constrain creativity and free exchange of ideas. A place in the world where you can put your torrent website, and host some trackers without fearing of being raided by the police. A place where the technologically minded elites would make the rules. If TPB manages to scrape enough cash, and buy this old platform this dream of our own little safe heaven nation may come true.
Of course some people claim that Sealand survives only because so far it has been flying under the radar, and Great Britain simply had no reasons to enforce their territorial rights. TPB creating a file sharing hub right of the coast is high profile though, and may turn out to be a thorn in the side of all the copyright natzis out there. The pressure from American entertainment industry and their lapdogs (the US government) may actually be a good enough excuse to send bunch of armed marines to the platform and retake it.
Would the world care about England wiping a file sharing enclave off the map? I don’t know. So far the status of Sealand is not certain as it has not been officially recognized by any nations. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.
Whether they succeed in buying Sealand or not, this seems to be a great PR move for Piratebay and their budding political party, and a nice way to make some extra cash from advertising and donations.
[tags]copyright, copyfight, the pirate bay, pirate bay, sealand, buy sealand, pirate party[/tags]
freakin awesome!
I hadnt heard about this but I love it – not just because of the copyright sidestepping stuff but the idea of buying yourself a nation… I gotta do that, whats the going rate on Pacific Islands these days? :lol:
Actually, scratch that – I doubt Pacific Islands get much bandwidth… whats the going rate on islands that are near to the coasts of large rich countries?
They say that anyone who contributes to project Sealand will become respective citizens.
Hmmm… So if I paypal them $1 I can be citizen when they actually buy it? Awesome!
hmm.. Sealand citizenship.. tempting but I’d still rather buy my own island
is there any estimate of how much this is going to cost them?
I think it’s $500 million. My question is what they would do with the money if they ended up not buying the island. Smells like a scam to me. Who’s to say that someone else doesn’t buy the island before them?!
Well, it’s not like they are tricking you into giving them money. I think they are pretty straightforward about their intentions. I doubt that anyone will actually donate any large sums to them just because they want a citizenship. Rather, I think people will give them money because they like The Pirate Bay.
So I wouldn’t say a scam – just a PR stunt.
I know the money is for that, but I don’t think they can just grant citizenship like that. Would the United States allow duel citizenship? Are there majestic unicorns on this island? And most importantly, will there be WiFi?????
I don’t think US has any rules about dual citizenship. Both my aunt and my cousin are naturalized citizens so they in fact have two citizenships.
When I get my US citizenship, I do not loose my Polish one so I think it would be fine.
The place is a WW II gun platform, so I think 1 wifi access point will cover the whole place, and some sea around it in case you want to go fishing.
I don’t think there are any Unicorns there though – unless they naturally breed on man made sea platforms out of steel and concrete.
I think the native fauna consists of 4 inbred rats, a janitor, some fleas, flies and lots of bird poop.
Found a news article saying its £65 million ($127 million)
so not so much as $500M :P
still a fucklot of money though
buying an own nation to avoid copyright laws is surely a special idea. a bit a surprise that the mainstream media here in sweden hasn’t really reported that news although the pirate bay has been a very political question here.