Pirates in Sealand.

Even if you’re against file sharing, it’s hard not to like The Pirate Bay. An unapologetic host for a ton of copyrighted material, they keep their servers in Sweden, which has no laws prohibiting BitTorrent trackers. They publish any legal threats they get from protesting corporations and publicly ridicule them. They’ve even started a political party — the Pirate Party, naturally — to reform intellectual property law.

Now, they want to buy their own country. (Well, of course they do. It’s the logical next step, isn’t it?) Their target is Sealand, which, to all appearances, is an abandoned oil rig off the coast of England that pretends to be a sovereign nation for its own amusement. Anyone who donates will be made an honorary citizen. No word yet on whether they plan to have free wifi.

Will the Pirates be able to raise enough money to buy an island nation? Can they convince anyone to recognize Sealand’s claim to legitimacy? Will the MPAA just buy an F-16 and nip all this in the bud? Only time will tell.