On Thu, 2004-10-14 at 19:24 -0500, -ray wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Oct 2004, John Hebert wrote:
>
> > Hmmm. I can see that strong encryption is a better
> > method to hide your data. Then the problem becomes how
> > do you hide your identity when performing the monetary
> > transactions to pay for remote services? In other
> > words, how do you hide the money trail?
>
> Yes, it seems encryption is a better method, and you don't have to ship
> the data to Sealand to have good encryption. But i know a nice lady from
> Nigeria who might be able to help with the money trail.
>
> The HavenCo AUP forbids data that is illegal in the originating country,
> ie kiddie porn. So what would be a good legitmate use of HavenCo's
> services? I'd say research on anti-DRM technologies, but that might
> violate DMCA and strictly speaking is illegal in the US. Any other uses?
>
> ray
I think you've missed the point, Ray. I think you have also mis-
interpreted their AUP. HavenCo is not about hiding data. HavenCo is
about housing and sharing data for customers that can't house or share
that data, legally, in their own countries.
The key to HavenCo is co-location. Having a computer at a remote
location, performing functions for you (or as a web server, FTP server,
whatever). I'm sure you know what I mean.
A perfectly legitimate use would be a useful technology that your
country of origin doesn't care for you to distribute or share. If you
set up a server to share this data, you will get in trouble, possibly
put in jail, etc. BUT, if you use a service such as HavenCo, and you
have a co-located server, housed in Sealand, you can share or distribute
or sell this useful technology, without fear, because in Sealand, it's
not against the law to do so.
A couple of real-life examples would be; the De-CSS code, or PGP
encryption. De-CSS was illegal to distribute or even own, but was very
useful, for the purposes of legitimate backups. PGP was forbidden from
export. Another PERFECT example is the Beowulf/Mosix clustering code.
For a while, it looked as if our own government was going to make such
things illegal (supercomputer clusters), and were going to pass
legislation that forbid ownership of supercomputers by individuals.
And that's pretty damn useful code. And it could have been shared (or
even sold) out of HavenCo.
I point at this part of the AUP:
Unacceptable publications include, but are not limited to:
1. Material that is unlawful in the jurisdiction of the server. For
instance, if a customer's machine is hosted on Sealand by
HavenCo, content which is illegal in Sealand may not be
published or housed on that server. Sealand's laws prohibit
child pornography. Sealand currently has no regulations
regarding copyright, patents, libel, restrictions on political
speech, non-disclosure agreements, cryptography, restrictions on
maintaining customer records, tax or mandatory licensing, DMCA,
music sharing services, or other issues; child pornography is
the only content explicitly prohibited. At the present time,
child pornography is not precisely defined; HavenCo is obeying
rules similar to those of the United States, specifically a
prohibition on any depiction of those under 18 in a sexual
context.
This gives you the key to the co-location idea.
You can't put anything on the server that is unlawful in the
jurisdiction of the server. Well, if you co-locate your server, and let
Sealand house the server, then there aren't a lot of laws which govern
what you can publish (the notable one being child pornography).
It's a pretty neat idea. I'm all for it, and if I had a few million
socked away, I'd be behind such an idea myself.
I'll get into the usefulness of strong crypto to harden a networking
environment against remote attack another time.
David
