An Island of Opportunity for Seekers of Free Web Speech.

As countries go, Sealand isn't much.

It's cold, cramped and utterly devoid of natural resources. In fact, the entire nation state is confined to a 6,000-square-foot steel deck and a pair of hollow concrete towers that anchor it to the floor of the North Sea, six miles off the coast of England. So as you might imagine, it lacks many things -- like soil, for example -- that most countries take for granted.

What Sealand does have, however, is the world's most secure Web server.

It's got a bunch of them, actually, crammed into those concrete towers and connected to the Net by high-speed satellite and wireless links. They were put there by a company called HavenCo, giving this manmade nation its first gross national product: privacy.

HavenCo was founded by American programmers who wanted to start a "data haven" -- a place where companies and individuals could serve Web pages, send e-mail and conduct other online business without threat of interference from competitors, government officials or anyone else.

They started out in Antigua, a Caribbean island where many online casinos make their home. But they weren't satisfied with the infrastructure, so they set out in search of a country where they could find both fast Net connections and a lax government that would allow them to harbor tax cheats, copyright thieves and others who might pay to avoid oversight of their online activities.

Enter Sealand. The odd-looking platform was one of several such structures built by Britain in 1940 as anti-aircraft stations during World War II. This particular fort was abandoned after the war and later occupied by a retired British Army major named Roy Bates. Since the platform was built outside England's territorial waters, Bates christened it the Principality of Sealand and began treating it like his own private country.