On Fri, 2004-10-15 at 12:56 -0700, John Hebert wrote:

> > I don't think that there are any useful, completely
> > legitimate and
> > perfectly legal purposes; in my mind, that's the
> > whole point.  The data
> > haven allows you to skirt the law in your country of
> > origin.  That's all
> > it needs to do.
> 
> I disagree _very_ strongly with this point. There are
> many perferctly legal reasons that I can think for
> someone or some entity wanting to use HavenCo's
> services. What about government criticism and dissent,
> where that government's law enforcement feel it is
> entitled to censorship? I'm sure there are quite a few
> Chinese and Iranian dissidents who would like to host
> their websites in a datacenter that won't respond to a
> subpoena for upload logs.

John, I think you missed my point entirely, because I was saying exactly
what you are saying right now, just in a different way.

If a government makes dissent illegal, then take your dissent to where
it can be published without consequence; a data haven.  

I'm not going to piddle around with the definition of what is legal or
not.

> Aren't you aware of the story about some of
> Indymedia.org's servers getting seized?
> 
> http://indymedia.org/en/static/fbi

Yes, and I am also aware of Indymedia getting threatened for publishing
bad reports about the voting machines, but then plaintiff being denied
in court.

I AGREE WITH YOU JOHN. :)  I did from the beginning, you just aren't
seeing it.

> The question in my mind is: what if those servers were
> hosted at HavenCo? Besides Indymedia being out of lots
> of cash (HavenCo's business model/prices sucked),
> would they have still been seized?
> 
> John

There is no way that they could have been seized. It could have easily
been interpreted as an act of war on Sealand.  Sealand exists in that
nebulous grey area, of whether it's a sovereign nation or not, but even
in that light, they do sit in Britain's territorial waters, and it would
be a huge international incident to storm some ships up there and bust
the doors in.

David

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