At 01:10 PM 6/12/00 -0400, David Honig wrote:
>My suggestion is that disk farms like Sealand must make themselves too
>useful to nuke, and must mix the useful (shielding) stuff unseparably from
>the rest. Because sovereignty/rifle-shot-across-the-bow games won't last,
but
><some fascist jihad> won't be allowed to nuke (or disconnect) NASDAQ's
>computers to close a kiddy prawn|DeCSS|Shayler|Satanic Verses site...
>
>A distributed system is certainly harder to nuke but may not be
>so useful to businesses. That may be Havenco's strategy?
A major strategy question for Havenco is how much they're doing
their own content, how much they're doing hosting for customers,
and how much they're doing colo for people who do hosting or content.
The more indirect they can stay, the better, though one could speculate
on whether an Anguillan corporation hosting at Havenco is _really_
independent.
Sometimes you want to run casinos, but sometimes you want to be in
the business of renting back rooms to catering services that run
private parties and are willing to pay a lot for peace and quiet....
In HavenCo's case, the bigger money is probably from renting space,
partly because it makes it easier to manage the risk of avoiding
interference from neighboring governments and partly because it
lets them focus on the business of being a sovereign hosting center
and not have to mess with the operational details of the casino or credit
bureau
or financial transaction privacy businesses. In particular,
it makes it easier to discourage governments in neighboring areas
from cutting their telecom feeds, because the governments' cases are against
some of their customers, not against them.
To me the interesting follow-on business question is whether HavenCo or
Sealand will get into the business of chartering corporations, banks, etc.
It's not clear that it's necessary - to some extent those things are artifacts
of the Book Entry Business world, and capitalisms emergence from feudalism,
and they may be less necessary in a Hettinga-esque transaction-oriented
world -
for which a hosting center is more than adequate.
>It will be interesting to see how Havenco differentiates itself
>from the missile-bunker folks... their only edge wrt hardened locations is
>sovereignty, and judicial flatulence being what it is...
The missile-bunker folks aren't doing anything different than the
hosting/colo people in the City of London; they just have a cool-looking site,
and maybe lower rent or airconditioning bills or a good power system.
A used missile bunker might be directly useful in Kansas, where there are
tornado problems, but if being hardened against nuclear attacks is directly
relevant
to your business model, you've got a rather nichey customer base...
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
