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DATAHAVEN
Chapter 1 - The Idea Anguilla The HavenCo project began as an outgrowth of conversations with my wife Jo, and Vince Cate over the period of time that I lived in the caribbean on the island nation of Anguilla, 1997 - 1998. I had come to live in Anguilla while working on computer systems for Internet casinos and sports books run from various caribbean and latin american countries. My wife and I had chosen Anguilla in part because Vince was living there, and he said that it was a good place to go to get away from government interferance. Vince and I had started working together on an electronic currency system which I had named SAXAS (Secure Account eXchange Arbitration System). The idea behind SAXAS was to create open source software that would allow people to easily create and exchange online currencies. The idea was interesting, and we thought it could pave the way to a more free market society - but were afraid that without anyplace to put servers outside of the hands of those who would attempt to use their power to control the financial system, it might never work. During this time period, Vince, Jo and I talked a lot about the possibility of creating a data haven where no laws would ever exist concerning information systems. We talked about the idea of doing business from a boat in International waters, setting up a free zone agreement within a small country or an aborigional territory. We even considered starting our own country on land created from shallow sea bottom outside any country's area of claim. Vince had a book called "How to Start Your Own Country" by Erwin Strauss. It detailed a bunch of known new country projects, the most sucessful of which was a small nation called the Pricipality of Sealand. We talked about contacting the Royal Family of Sealand with a proposition, but were unable to find a contact number for them. Toxic Barge At the FC (Financial Cryptography) conference held in Anguilla in 1998, I met Sameer Parekh, Ryan Lackey, John Gilmore and many other notable figures in fighting the war for Freedom and Privacy online. I amused many of them with my most off the wall idea for a datahaven. My idea got labeled the Toxic Barge Project. The idea was simple. Buy a large barge and anchor it in international waters off the coast of a major city in a major world power (I picked Los Angeles, California, USA). Conduct your colocation business via satalite and microwave links. In order to insure that the marines arn't sent in, or you arn't simply blown up, you fill the bottom of the barge with the nastiest toxic waste you can find. This forces the large miltary power to protect you from outside threats, while being very hesitent to attempt to board your vessel. The Beauty of the idea is that your defense system actually earns you cash. The people producing this nasty toxic waste will pay you to take it off their hands and store it at your facility. The drawback, as Jo explained to me, is that Toxic Waste isn't very popular, and it is hard to market something called Toxic Barge to the general population. Everyone at the conference, whom I discussed the Toxic Barge concept, loved it. Sameer Parekh thought the idea was so funny that he ended up registering the domain name "toxicbarge.com". Only John Gilmore didn't seem amused. Either he thought it was a serious proposition, and he had some pro-environmental sentiment, or it was the fact that he had just vomited over the side of the boat we were all in when I first struck up a conversation with him. (I had first brought him some water and asked if he was ok. Its not like I just walked up to a sick man I didn't know and immediately launched into a toxic barge shpeil or anything... :-) After the FC conference, Jo and I were becoming increasingly displeased with Anguilla, and with Vince. Anguilla was still refusing to give us a work permit, and Vince was not living up to his promisses concerning the work we were doing together. We talked to the chief Minister of Anguilla who wanted us to rent and office (He owned an office building) so that they would have a place to forbid us from going until they approved our work permit. The country was hardly the libertarian mecca that Vince had told us it was. Vince was putting in zero work time on SAXAS - and his only contribution to the project was making me argue for hours with him about the architecture (For example: he had no knowledge of accounting - and was adament that our system should never have negative account ballances) Our origional agreement had only called for him to work half as much as I did, but he was not comming anywhere close to even doing that. In fact from day 1 - he did not put in the work time he said he would. So Jo and I decided to pack it in and head back to the states. Going Back to Cali By the next winter (Early 1999) I was in california again.I was still in search of an info-paradise, and began looking at the Pacific ocean. Ryan Lackey did a stint in Anguilla shortly after Jo and I left, and then excepted my invitation to come crash at my place in Cali. We started working together on a domain registration system for a TLD in the pacific, and we considered the posibilities of several pacific islands. We also re-considered the ideas that Vince and I had discussed, including building new land on the Cortez bank (a sea mount off the coast of Mexico/California). We ordered a copy of the book "How to start your Own Country" to re-examine some of the previous projects along these lines. Of Course Sealand still looked like the best shot, and this time we were able to find a web site about it. The first web sit turned out to be a fake, run by people involved in a take over attempt of sealand in 1975. But We eventually (Summer 1999) came across the genuine article. A site set up by Michael Bates, the son of Price Roy - Founder of Sealand. I communicated with Michael by email, and I sounded like we might be able to do something so I started to put together information about Sealand to show potential investors. This early work took the form of a web site which I set up with all the info about Sealand I was able to find. Potential Investors Ryan and I began to look arround for potetnial investors. Almost immediately we found a couple of people who had similar ideals and a lot more money than we did. Ryan knew Avi Freedman, a then employee of Above Net, and the founder of NetAxs, an ISP in Philly. He was a computer geek, a science fiction fan, and rich - just our sort of people. Right about the time we were first broaching the subject to Avi, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon came out in hard cover. Avi read it, and became very interested in the datahaven concept. As luck would have it, there is a character named Avi in Cryptonomicon. People have asked me since if I stole the idea of a datahaven from Neal Stephenson, or if he stole it from me. The truth is of course neither. The idea is older than both of us (See article The First Data Haven), and we were already walking down that path when the book was published, but the timing was good for getting Avi involved. Whether that helped or hurt the project, I still don't know, but I was happy about it at the time. Joichi Ito was a Japanese cypherpunk who made some money in Internet ventures, and who knew all sorts of people in business and government. He is a libertarian, free thinker, and all arround nice guy. He works constantly, and is always doing something he enjoys. If I ever have a child, I want him or her to grow up to be just like Joichi - it's far to late for me, but he is the kind of role model I wish I had when I was young. (Joey would tell me that I am young enough, and that I will never stop being in my formative years. One of his companies is called Neotony - A word that means "to retain youthful characteristics".) Anyway, both Avi and Joi seemed to be on board, and they had been so easy that I was sure that many more would follow. Now I just had to pull together a deal with Sealand, so even though I was almost broke, I laid out the dough to fly to england and then by Helicopter to Sealand. I also bought a digital camera to take pictures of the structure. This was a lucky break for you because it means that the next chapter has pictures to look at! |
