On Monday June the 5th a new country was founded in Cyberspace and also, on the ground six miles off the coast of the UK. The location is in fact a long defunct World War 2 military outpost, which was previously used as the home of a UK pirate radio station of the 1960s. HavenCo, a company that intends to establish an independent (of all governments) colony in Cyberspace which could ultimately evolve into a real country. In 1968, Roy Bates a retired British Army officer landed on the abandoned fortress and declared it a sovereign nation with the name Sealand. It will probably be renamed Haven.

HavenCo appears to be a group of mainly US libertarians that deeply distrust all governments and wish to establish an area of the internet that is free from all government interference of any kind. It had established electricity generators on the fortress and both microwave and satellite links to the Internet. It will become an ISP and offer its services to clients who wish to place their data or computer operations or email beyond the reach of any government. Thus HavenCo's customers would be safe against subpoena. HavenCo will impose an acceptable use policy on its customers, which in practice will mean no extreme pornography, Spam activity or protected hacker activity. However beyond that it will make no attempt to impose or assist the imposition of national tax laws or laws on gambling.

It is doubtful whether HavenCo will go unchallenged. Even allowing for the fact that governments, including the UK government whose jurisdiction is a mere 3 miles away from Haven, might turn a blind eye to some violations of their laws, it is unlikely that tax violations and money laundering will be tolerated for very long. Haven will undoubtedly become a hub for such activities if it remains unchallenged for long. For its part, HavenCo hopes to establish multiple outposts in a number of different places - mainly small countries that are already tax havens of a kind. Tactically this would make it impossible to close the operation down in a single raid on one of its outposts. It could then happily mirror its data and services in a way that made its customers feel secure.

Haven is clearly an out-and-out challenge to the sovereignty of the International community and particularly the major economies. While we do not expect it to succeed, we believe that if governments fail to challenge it quickly then it could become a symbol of a political movement based entirely in cyberspace. It will be interesting to watch as events develop.