B.Y.O. Life Jacket

Freedom is getting harder to find. So is waterfront property. Sensing a gap in the market, entrepreneurs are now selling the concept of nations-at-sea. In Honduras, an American engineer is about to start building a huge steel float called Freedom Ship, intended as a home for 50,000 people who will make their own laws and form a country unto themselves. In Britain's North Sea, an old gunnery fort called the Principality of Sealand is attracting investors who hope to make it a digital utopia, storing people's electronic secrets free from any government interference. How do these brave new seaworlds stack up?

FREEDOM SHIP

LIVING QUARTERS Windowless apartments

PERMANENT POPULATION 50,000 frontier-minded folk

PRICE TAG $8 billion (being raised by preselling apartments)

ALREADY APPEALS TO Anarchists, conspiracy theorists, water-loving misfits

WHAT WON'T FLOAT Brothels

SEALAND

[LIVING QUARTERS] Windowless computer servers

[PERMANENT POPULATION] Billions of bytes of data, a few techies and a security force

[PRICE TAG] $3 million-plus (being raised from Internet libertarians)

[ALREADY APPEALS TO] Adult-porn purveyors, tax evaders

[WHAT WON'T FLOAT] Kiddie porn, drug money