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Sealand, Havenco, and the Rule of Law James Grimmelmann*

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Sealand, Havenco, and the Rule of Law James Grimmelmann* Sealand, HavenCo, and the Rule of Law James Grimmelmann* Abstract: In 2000, a group of American entrepreneurs moved to a former World War II anti-aircraft platform in the North Sea, seven miles off the British coast, and launched HavenCo, one of the strangest start-ups in Internet history. A for- mer pirate radio broadcaster, Roy Bates, had occupied the platform in the 1960s, moved his family aboard, and declared it to be the sovereign Principality of Sealand. HavenCo’s founders were opposed to governmental censorship and con- trol of the Internet; by putting computer servers on Sealand, they planned to cre- ate a “data haven” for unpopular speech, safely beyond the reach of any other country. This article tells the full story of Sealand and HavenCo—and examines what they have to tell us about the nature of the rule of law in the age of the In- ternet. The story itself is fascinating enough: it includes pirate radio, shotguns and .50-caliber machine guns, rampant copyright infringement, a Red Bull skate- boarding special, perpetual motion machines, and the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of State. But its implications for the rule of law are even more remarkable. Previous scholars have seen HavenCo as a straightforward challenge to the rule of law: by threatening to undermine national authority, Ha- venCo was implacably opposed to all law. As the fuller history shows, however, this story is too simplistic. HavenCo also depended on international law to recog- nize and protect Sealand, and on Sealand law to protect it from Sealand itself. Where others have seen HavenCo’s failure as the triumph of traditional regula- tory authorities over HavenCo, the article argues that in a very real sense, Ha- venCo failed not from too much law but from too little. The “law” that was sup- posed to keep HavenCo safe was law only in a thin, formalistic sense, discon- nected from the human institutions that make and enforce law. But without those institutions, law does not work, as HavenCo discovered. * Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School. I presented earlier versions of this paper at the Bits Without Borders conference at Michigan State University, to the Information Society Pro- ject at Yale Law School, and to a faculty workshop at New York Law School. My thanks for their comments to the attendees there, and to Aislinn Black, Claude Aiken, Robert Blecker, Andrea Casillas, Michael Froomkin, Nathaniel Gleicher, Peter Hirtle, Jan Lewis, Molly Land, Dominic Mauro, David Post, Harry Surden, Berin Szoka, and Christopher Wong. William Mills at the NYLS library helped track down numerous sources, as did my research assistant, Geoffrey Weg. 2 SEALAND, HAVENCO, AND THE RULE OF LAW [Vol:No TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 2 I. SEALAND .............................................................................................................. 9 A. Roughs Tower................................................................................................ 9 B. Roy Bates...................................................................................................... 11 C. Founding ...................................................................................................... 15 D. Culture ......................................................................................................... 18 E. Business......................................................................................................... 23 F. Civil War....................................................................................................... 27 G. The German Sealand .................................................................................. 30 H. Themes ........................................................................................................ 33 II. HAVENCO ........................................................................................................ 35 A. “Data Haven “ ............................................................................................. 35 B. Rise ............................................................................................................... 39 C. Fall................................................................................................................ 43 III. THE RULE OF LAW.......................................................................................... 47 A. National Law................................................................................................ 49 1. HavenCo and National Law............................................................................... 50 2. The Rule of Law as Self-Governance ................................................................... 53 B. International Law......................................................................................... 54 1. Sealand and International Law ........................................................................... 55 2. The Rule of Law as Formal Legality ................................................................... 62 C. Sealand Law................................................................................................. 64 1. The Rule of Law as Restraint on Government ....................................................... 65 2. HavenCo and Sealand Law ................................................................................ 66 D. Connections ................................................................................................. 68 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 69 INTRODUCTION Sealand is stranger than fiction. A pair of concrete legs supporting a 120’ by 50’ platform, sixty feet above the North Sea, this “smallest country on earth” sits seven miles off the British coast. Built during World War II for anti-aircraft defense, it was occupied in the 1960s by Roy Bates, a former pirate radio operator who declared himself ruler of the new Principality of Sealand. Boosting his claim, a British court acquitted him in 1968 on firearms charges because Sealand stood outside of British territorial waters. He made Sealand into his family’s home: promulgating a constitution; issuing stamps, coins, and passports; and generally adopting the trappings of nationhood. Sealand has even had a coup and counter- coup: in 1978 a German lawyer seized control of the platform, only to be taken prisoner by Bates in a daring helicopter landing a few days later. Sealand’s moment of greatest fame came in 2000, when it offered the ul- 2011] SEALAND, HAVENCO, AND THE RULE OF LAW 3 timate in literally offshore data hosting. The internet startup HavenCo built out Sealand as a data center, moving in computer servers and connecting them to the Internet. The idea was that HavenCo would be a data haven, which would store content that was illegal in other countries. Online casinos, subpoena-proof corpo- rate records, good old-fashioned pornography—HavenCo would host it all, safely beyond the reach of any other country’s courts. The company launched to mas- sive press coverage (including a cover story in Wired1), promising unfettered free speech to the masses while extending a raised middle finger to censors and con- trol-freaks around the world.2 This much is familiar to scholars.3 Talk to any Internet-law scholar about 1 See Simson Garfinkel, Welcome to Sealand. Now Bugger Off, WIRED, July 2000. 2 See, e.g., Around the Globe, 27 COMPUTER L. & TAX REP. 16, 16 (2000); Mara D. Bellaby, An Internet ‘Mouse That Roars’ Pops up off Britain, HOUS. CHRON., June 25, 2000; Steve Boggan, Americans Turn a Tin-Pot State off the Essex Coast into World Capital of Computer Anarchy, INDEP. (London), June 5, 2000, at 3; David Canton, Creating a Country to Avoid Jurisdiction, LONDON FREE PRESS (Ontario), June 16, 2000, at D3; Anne Cornelius, Legal Issues On-Line Firms Set to Take Refuge in Offshore Fortress, SCOTS- MAN (Scot.), June 15, 2000, at 26; Europe Acts on Net Tax Loophole, ACCT. AGE, June 8, 2000, at 3; Peter Ford, Banned on Land, but Free at Sea?, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, June 23, 2000, (World), at 1; Dan Gillmor, Data Haven May Be a Step in the Right Direction, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, June 6, 2000; Carlos Grande, Island Fortress’s ‘Data Haven’ to Confront E-Trade Regulation, FIN. TIMES, June 6, 2000; Ann Harrison, Data Haven Says It Offers Freedom from Observation, COMPUTERWORLD, Nov. 13, 2000, at 50; Internet Exiles, NEW SCIENTIST, June 17, 2000, at 1717; Internet ‘Island’ Set Up in the North Sea, BIRMINGHAM EVENING MAIL (U.K.), June 6, 2000, at 17; Internet Secrets Safe at Sea, COVENTRY EVENING TELEGRAPH (U.K.), June 6, 2000, at 17; Bob Low, Techlife: Tiptoing Through the Web, DAILY REC. (Scot.), July 1, 2000, at 42; John Markoff, Rebel Outpost on the Fringes of Cyberspace, N.Y. TIMES, June 4, 2000, at 14; Declan McCullagh, A Data Sanctuary Is Born, WIRED, June 4, 2000, http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/06/36749; Declan McCullagh, Sealand: Come to Data, WIRED, June 5, 2000, http://www.wired.com/ politics/law/news/2000/06/36756; Wade O’Leary, Pirates Board the Net, DAILY TELEGRAPH (Austl.), June 7, 2010, (Finance), at 57; Rebel Sea Fortress Dreams of Being ‘Data Haven,’ WALL ST. J., June 26, 2000, at C21A; Safe Platform to Dock Your Data, AUSTRALIAN, June 13, 2000, at C2; Edward Sherwin, A Distant Sense of Data Security, WASH. POST, Sept. 20, 2000, at G8; Tiny Principality
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