4 ms·

Putting your datacenter in international waters, without laws or regulations, hidden from the world. Such a great way to do things without people knowing, or ha

Putting your datacenter in international waters, without laws or regulations, hidden from the world. Such a great way to do things without people knowing, or having people do things about it. Power it with offshore windmills, and you really only need a network connection. Great idea though, using water to cool your datacenter and leaving all the oxygen out.

dogma1138 8y ago
Maritime law; there is no such thing as international waters for “stuff” each vessel has to fly under a flag. The MSFT Datacenter is a vessel under law, if they don’t want to fly it under a flag they’ll have to essentially abandon it and then salvage laws come into play.
- freeflight 8y ago
  In that context, the Internets fascination with pirates makes a whole new level of sense. Servers, classified as marine vessels, admins being literal captains sailing under flags. In a more fun world, one of those vessels would fly the Jolly Rogers and host a certain infamous Swedish bay.
talltimtom 8y ago
Why would the physical location of the server matter with respect to people knowing what you are doing? I have no idear where googles servers are when I fire off a search for cute cats in boxes, yet I still know what it’s doing. As for “without laws” google still follows European laws even if my search happens to be handled on an American or British machine. You obey the laws where you operate not where your server is located.
- cinquemb 8y ago
  For companies who are already complying with laws in whatever jurisdiction I'd have to agree with what you are saying. But if the economics in the future make sense on some level, I could see criminal enterprises interested in exploring things like this. If narco's are building/using submarines now, I could see them managing/tracking/monitoring a global logistics from their sunken data centers (they'll need to find other ways to power and transmit/receive, because I doubt they could just hook up their cables directly onshore anywhere, setting aside being an easy choke-point to cut access). Maybe future narcos, illegal EU personal data miners/brokers, pirates or who else for whatever could be interested, esp if the fixed cost of operating stuff now/future > operating/ future sunken data centers and probability/cost of seizure now/future > probability/cost with future sunken datacenters?
qz3 8y ago
Let's hope this takes off and leads to regulating the oceans. For example: industrial, unregulated fishing destroys coral reefs every day. They are thousands of years old and won't come back.
kryptiskt 8y ago
If your data center isn't registered and flying a flag, won't it be salvage and belong to whoever recovers it?
- Double_a_92 8y ago
  Yeah but what are the odds of somebody finding it?
  - trillic 8y ago
    Just follow the cables!

dogma1138 8y ago

Maritime law; there is no such thing as international waters for “stuff” each vessel has to fly under a flag. The MSFT Datacenter is a vessel under law, if they don’t want to fly it under a flag they’ll have to essentially abandon it and then salvage laws come into play.

freeflight 8y ago
In that context, the Internets fascination with pirates makes a whole new level of sense. Servers, classified as marine vessels, admins being literal captains sailing under flags. In a more fun world, one of those vessels would fly the Jolly Rogers and host a certain infamous Swedish bay.

talltimtom 8y ago

Why would the physical location of the server matter with respect to people knowing what you are doing? I have no idear where googles servers are when I fire off a search for cute cats in boxes, yet I still know what it’s doing. As for “without laws” google still follows European laws even if my search happens to be handled on an American or British machine. You obey the laws where you operate not where your server is located.

cinquemb 8y ago
For companies who are already complying with laws in whatever jurisdiction I'd have to agree with what you are saying. But if the economics in the future make sense on some level, I could see criminal enterprises interested in exploring things like this. If narco's are building/using submarines now, I could see them managing/tracking/monitoring a global logistics from their sunken data centers (they'll need to find other ways to power and transmit/receive, because I doubt they could just hook up their cables directly onshore anywhere, setting aside being an easy choke-point to cut access). Maybe future narcos, illegal EU personal data miners/brokers, pirates or who else for whatever could be interested, esp if the fixed cost of operating stuff now/future > operating/ future sunken data centers and probability/cost of seizure now/future > probability/cost with future sunken datacenters?

qz3 8y ago

Let's hope this takes off and leads to regulating the oceans. For example: industrial, unregulated fishing destroys coral reefs every day. They are thousands of years old and won't come back.

kryptiskt 8y ago

If your data center isn't registered and flying a flag, won't it be salvage and belong to whoever recovers it?

Double_a_92 8y ago
Yeah but what are the odds of somebody finding it?
- trillic 8y ago
  Just follow the cables!