http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealand it should be noted that thepiratebay.org was intending to buy this island, in order to establish it self fully rejecting copyright laws.
10 is sure not a lot of people, but I was doing research on other really small countries in Europe and saw there was one 5 square mile country with 1 tiny village and an old castle there. I bet there are more like that, too. EDIT: I don't understand the part about Piratebay buying it. Piracy is an international offense, right?
only if the country is part of the Berne Convention or a part of this one world organization thing. can't remember the name. but the world organization one kind of replaces the Berne Convention
there's no such thing as a literal international law. Laws bind those who are members and have signed the relative treaties. For example the US is not a signee to the Human Rights charter - They argue that the constitution is more than enough to protect those interests ( I m not debating this, that's what they say anyway). In the same manner, this place has been known to be a HavenCo. A data haven. there's no such thing broadly defined as Piracy by the way. It's a relative term. Infringment of copyright is not seen as piracy by supporters of anti-copyright laws. Just because me and you were brough up in a copyright-aware society, doesn't make it right for it to be in place (At all, or in the form it is now, generating vast profits out of a 3 minute song for example vs. what an engineer makes working his ass off to design a new processor). It's a free globe, or so I d like to think, so best of luck to piratebay with whatever island they want to base themselves, although I don't support piracy, I want diversity of opinions.
I am sure there was a guy in the UK that did a program on setting up his own country with him as the only national Didn`t watch it, so don`t know what the outcome was http://www.citizensrequired.com/unit/site/index.shtml
I don't think they should allow artificial platforms to be called a country/nation. I guess if they made laws to this end though, we wouldn't be able to make super space stations (or castles in the sky).
As it the law stands now something like Sealand could never happen. Its only because it happened before 1982 nothing been done about it. Personally I like it, shame the guy is selling up. Hell Id live there if I had the cash.
They wan't close to 1 billion USD for a suspended hunk of metal about the size of a couple of football fields in the ocean that no body but the inhabitants consider a country. If I had that type of cash, and even if I was *forced* to spend it on something frivolous, I could probably come up with something alot better than this. Hell, with only 10 citizens, it seems to me like it would be rather trivial to just bring an army (i.e. a bunch of drinking buddys with guns), anex the "land", then launch a coup claiming Sealand for your own. On a funnier note, I like how the currency is the "Sealand Dollar". I'm sure it must have a bustling economy over there. This whole thing kind of reminds me of the Mr. Show sketch about New Freeland.
from a business stand point it makes a lot fo sense to buy such a piece of land for commercial activities. First, you don't need to conform with 'national' safety regulations, Human Rights, or anything else. Hell, you could start bio-engineering humans there and no one could tell u a damn thing The most realistic scenario though, is using that place as a lawless data center.
Let's all meet there and claim it for AssemblerGames. It could be some kind of haven for white market game related goods.
