e-flux journal - Metahaven: Captives of the Cloud: Part II
Cyber-utopianism never translated into a policy outlook of sorts. But it is still associated with a set of practices and spatial forms: online anonymity, cryptography, Peer-To-Peer (P2P) file sharing, TOR (The Onion Router) bridges, bulletproof hosting, and offshore data havens, to name a few examples. Michael Froomkin, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, defined the data haven in 1996 as “the information equivalent to a tax haven.” This “place where data that cannot legally be kept can be stashed for later use; an offshore web host” appears omnipresent in the cyberlibertarian universe of thought, and is indeed an extreme form of keeping information away from antagonistically minded states, corporations or courts. The data haven is the spatial form that, at least theoretically, enables the evasion of sovereign power, while establishing an enclosed territory on the face of the earth. The data haven once provided a business model for the Principality of Sealand, an unrecognized ministate founded by a British family on a former war platform in the North Sea. A notorious example in internet law, Sealand was, in the early 2000s, home to the servers of HavenCo, a startup providing offshore data hosting beyond the reach of any jurisdiction. HavenCo joined the dotcom boom with angel investment from Joi Ito (among others), who declared himself, still in 2002, “a great fan of the concept.” Sealand’s fragile sense of half-tested nationhood would theoretically raise the bar for any opposing jurisdiction to physically invade the offshore host. It would, indeed, demonstrate that cyberlibertarian ideology could take full control of an experimental country, and reform the internet in its name.
