[Nettime-bold] Napster offshore?

[Felix Stalder <stalder@fis.utoronto.ca>]

[Offshore data havens have long figured prominently in the dreams of
cypherpunks as a base of a truly unregulated financial system that could
evade the presumed evils of governments. Not much happened so far, partly
because there are issues of trust involved. Would you give your money to a
company that is truly unaccountable?

Napster would be an ideal service to host offshore. It requires relatively
little infrastructure to run and there are no issues of trust involved. It
will be interesting to see if they can pull it off and what that means to
the existence of these data havens. I have some difficulties imaging the
record companies simply accepting that something essential to them happens
outside of jurisdiction.

Even if it were impossible to outlaw a service that operates from a data
haven, I wonder how many people are willing to spend the rest of their
lives of an old oil-plattform because there is a warrant out on them every
other country. Felix]


Napster clone may set up shop offshore
By STEVEN CHASE