The bizarre story of Sealand and Havenco

If you have been kicking around the internet for a while, you have no doubt heard some version of the Havenco story. It was a data center that was set up in the Principality of Sealand that called to mind the fictional data haven from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. The idea was a data store that wouldn’t be subject to the laws of any of the governments in the world. It’s one that sounds good at first blush, but was rather troubled in actual practice. Really though, that is just one small piece of what is the rather amazing story of Sealand’s history.

James Grimmelmann has an article posted at ars technica that does a great job at telling the tale. It’s a companion to his 80 page article for the University of Illinois Law Review called ‘Sealand, HavenCo, and the Rule of Law’. That is available as a pdf, and is a fascinating story that is well worth a read. It calls to mind the old standard that truth is stranger than fiction. As James puts it:

“The story itself is fascinating enough: it includes pirate radio, shotguns, rampant copyright infringement, a Red Bull skateboarding special, perpetual motion machines, and the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of State.”

Failed installation disk? Make a copy.

This is a bit of an odd fix. And, honestly, kind of a long shot. That being said, when all else fails… Here’s the story. We had an OpenView storage management appliance III that came with the HP QuickRestore CD. If you’ve used any of these before, you know it’s a pretty simple procedure. Boot off the CD, a few clicks, and you have a fresh system all ready to configure.

This time though, not so much. Every time the restore would get to 99% there would be an error saying that the image was corrupt. Making it more puzzling, this was a new CD, fresh out of the packaging, with not a mark on it. After trying different hard drives, a different CD-ROM drive, and a host of other possibilities, it became clear that the new CD was junk.

Rather than track down a new one, I tried one last hail mary, simply making a copy of the bad CD. Fortunately, the stars aligned and, Tebow be praised, the error correction in the burning program fixed whatever was wrong with the original. Using the copy, the system installed as it should. Obviously, your mileage may vary, but it’s something to keep in mind.