“We may die rich, we may die poor. But we certainly shall not die of boredom.” (Prince Roy Bates, of the Principality of Sealand)
When the Bates family took over the WWII anti-aircraft platform called Roughs Tower in the 1960s it was still outside of the British territorial waters. Since its conception, both sides of the argument have been debated for: is Sealand a sovereign state, or does it belong to the UK. (Because it does not show up on a Google Earth search it must not be real, right?).
Bates’s initial interest in creating his own country stemmed from his resistance to the control of the established and governed state—and having his own country with his own rules was convenient for his pirate radio broadcasting.
Bates’s resistance to authority paired well with the vision of young entrepreneurs Sean Hastings and Ryan Lackey, who had a “cypherpunk” vision, believing in a government-free vision of the internet that would promise unfettered speech to the people while pissing off authority and the fight for censorship around the world.
Here in this age of the digital we see an unbreakable tie between technology and the government: Internet laws have grown and developed since the 70s, when countries saw the need to enforce strict privacy standards on stored information due to concerns for large databases of personal information, and companies sought to relocate their computers and storage media to countries with looser laws.
Lackey and Hastings’ data haven company called HavenCo took advantage of the immunities a place like Sealand had, as a nation established with many of the same principles as their own company. The Bates family admitted that Lackey and Hastings were the “first that seemed to be really suited to what we are”.
HavenCo failed in a short amount of time, partially because of poor business planning and partially because of poor relations with the Sealand royal family.
Plans are already surfacing for various companies who have desires to locate organizations in the ocean, designed for data havens, tax evasion, response to immigration policies and even as a mean to experiment with new governing and political techniques. A unit that responds to the political needs, digital needs and tangible space as an integrated system, and not perpetual resistance, could be the key to success for organizations like these.