HavenCo

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HavenCo Limited is a data hosting services company founded in 2000 which operates from Sealand, an unrecognised self-declared 'sovereign principality' that occupies a man-made former World War II defensive facility originally known as Roughs Tower located approximately six miles from the coast of Suffolk, southeast England.

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On August 22, 2000, Michael Bates of Leigh-on-sea, Essex (who is also known as Prince Michael of Sealand), bought a dormant British company which was renamed HavenCo Limited. It was given the registration number of 04056934 by Companies House, an executive agency of the UK Department of Trade and Industry. The registered office of HavenCo Limited was recorded at 11 Kintyre House, Cold Harbour, London, E14 9NL England. The directors were listed as Michael Roy Bates, a citizen of the United Kingdom, who was named Chief Operating Officer, and Ryan Donald Lackey, a US citizen. Other founders included Sean and Jo Hastings and Avi Freedman. The company later relocated its registration to Cyprus.

HavenCo initially received broad coverage in the international media, appearing on the cover of Wired Magazine, in over 200 press articles, and in several television reports. In these reports, HavenCo claimed to have established a secure colocation facility on Sealand, and that it had commenced operations as a data haven. Detractors claim that these reports gave the impression that HavenCo was registered on Sealand itself, and that the company would issue domain names under the authority of that entity, when in fact it had no entitlement to do so.

The company announced that it had become operational in December 2000 and that its Acceptable Use Policy prohibited child pornography, spamming, and malicious hacking - but that all other content was acceptable. It claimed that it had no restrictions on copyright or intellectual property for data hosted on its servers, arguing that as Sealand was not a member of the World Trade Organization or WIPO, international intellectual property law did not apply. Other services available from HavenCo at the time included IT consulting, systems administration, offshore software development, and electronic mail services.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, HavenCo announced that the operation would block initiatives "contrary to international custom and practice". HavenCo claimed that it had experienced few difficulties with any foreign government or organization, although according to detractors, the British government "reacted quietly" by enforcing British laws concerning unlicensed data transmissions to and from Sealand, although it is unclear what is meant by this, and no evidence has been produced in support of these claims.

Ryan Lackey left HavenCo under acrimonious circumstances in 2002, citing disagreements with the Bates family over management of the company. HavenCo itself is still in operation, but the extent of its current business is unknown. Lackey claims that HavenCo owes him $220,000 of un-reimbursed expenses that went towards, among other things, paying other people's salaries.

HavenCo resembles Neal Stephenson's fictional datahaven in the novel Cryptonomicon, and various details match up as well — an investor named Avi, location on an island, affiliation with cypherpunks, use of cryptography, etc. However, HavenCo was already in operation before the book was in wide circulation, and the concept of a data haven is a far older idea. The use of small islands as tax havens and flags of convenience is perhaps a hundred years old, and data havens claim to be an extension of that same theme.