Like many other real countries, Independent Long Island also possesses something akin to an Overseas Territory, and its territory is called the United Micronations Multi-Oceanic Archipelago (UMMOA).
The UMMOA is a multi-oceanic archipelago governed by a kind of federation of Fourth, Fifth and Sixth World nations, and the world’s first supermicronation. The UMMOA’s 11 insular possessions have no indigenous population, an inhabitable area of 13.3 square miles (34.3 square kilometres), and was once known as the United States Minor Outlying Islands (USMOI).
How did the UMMOA become an Overseas Territory of Independent Long Island? Has Independent Long Island actually annexed US territory?
In January 2007, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) reportedly dropped the .UM country code top-level domain (ccTLD) from the master list of domain names in response to the domain being unused, and the desire of the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (ISI) to divest itself of responsibility for the domain.
Since the US still legally assumes that Roman law extends to the Internet (false assumption, because it can be demonstrated that Cesidian law really governs the Internet); since the .UM ccTLD legally represented the United States Minor Outlying Islands, a statistical designation defined by ISO 3166-1, and consisting of 11 insular United States possessions; officers of the Cesidian Root, an intercontinental Internet independent of the ICANN, were prepared to legally occupy the .UM ccTLD as soon as the ICANN and ISI abandoned it. Like any seaworthy ship abandoned in international waters, anyone could have legally occupied the .UM ccTLD.
Once the .UM ccTLD was legally occupied, the President of the Cesidian Root would have used the legally occupied .UM ccTLD to legally annex the United States Minor Outlying Islands (if the US can occupy the Internet based on territorial claims, then the reverse should also be kosher from a legal standpoint), and would have renamed the islands the United Micronations Multi-Oceanic Archipelago or UMMOA.
The .UM ccTLD was not abandoned immediately, however. According to a Wikipedia article, in November 2007 at the registry website of http://www.nic.um a message stated “Registration is CLOSED at this time. We are only accepting Registrar Accounts.” In December 2007, registration was opened on an experimental basis with an “Annual Account Maintenance” fee of $1,200 and a $30 annual domain registration. Since the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (ISI) divested itself of this registry, EP.NET hosted it for an independent company, USMIR, and continued to administer it. Some .UM websites like hotel.um sprung up after the ccTLD opened.
On 19 January 2008 the http://www.ummoa and http://www.amomu domains came alive in the Cesidian Root. The Hon. Most Rev. Dr. Cesidio Tallini, who was already Governor of Independent Long Island, Founding Member of the Commonwealth Nations Research Society, President and Founder of the Cesidian Root, and Bishop of the Cesidian Church, started a first Independent Long Island-registered organisation called the United Micronations Multi-Oceanic Archipelago (or UMMOA) for the expressed purpose of providing each macro- and micronational member of the organisation an UMMOA-based embassy, so any micronation can stand on legal ground in Montevideo Convention terms.
The UMMOA was to exist on the legal foundation called jus cerebri humani, since it is, in essence, the intellectual creation of Tallini, as much as a new and distinct territorial claim. Since Tallini was born in Independent Long Island, but not on any of the islands of the UMMOA; since the UMMOA has no indigenous population; Tallini, and any national of the UMMOA federation, would become a citizen of that country by naturalisation (jus via naturalisation).
Some time on Monday, 21 April 2008, the .UM ccTLD was suddenly removed from the ICANN’s root zone file. At the Cesidian Root, IASON records of 20 April 2008 still show .UM as part of the ICANN root zone.
On Saturday, 26 April 2008, however, IASON, a Star Wars-like root server defence system, showed for the first time a missing top-level domain in the ICANN root: the .UM ccTLD. In other words, the .UM ccTLD was behaving like it was part of the Cesidian Root, but not part of the ICANN root.
Any .UM second-level domain that was still visible in the Cesidian Root after that date, was still visible only because the .UM had not been deleted from the Cesidian Root, so domains like the old copy of the gov.um were still visible. These domains are no longer visible in the ICANN root, since the .UM country code top-level domain is missing entirely from the root zone file.
On 6 May 2008, at 4.53 GMT exactly, the new, UMMOA-controlled gov.um domain became visible in the Cesidian Root for the first time, and all these other new .UM domains were already visible at the time:
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wi.um [Wake Island, UMMOA]
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jn.um [Johnston Atoll, UMMOA]
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ma.um [Midway Atoll, UMMOA]
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kr.um [Kingman Reef, UMMOA]
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pa.um [Palmyra Atoll, UMMOA]
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jv.um [Jarvis Island, UMMOA]
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bk.um [Baker Island, UMMOA]
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hi.um [Howland Island, UMMOA]
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ni.um [Navassa Island, UMMOA]
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bj.um [Bajo Nuevo Bank, UMMOA]
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sb.um [Serranilla Bank, UMMOA]
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yahoo.um [Yahoo Islet, Serranilla Bank, UMMOA]
In an email in the early hours of the morning of Tuesday, 6 May 2008 (‘Jeuday 23 Edison 2008’ in the Cesidian calendar), the President and Founder of the Cesidian Root made the official announcement to Cesidian Root operators worldwide as follows:
Cesidian Root officers, Nürnberg, Germany 78.47.115.194 IPv4 address here. The Red-footed Booby has landed.
The Red-footed Booby had landed indeed! Not even during the Normandy Invasion in World War II have 12 islands, atolls, reefs, banks, or islets been invaded on a single day! This was the first time in history that an alternative DNS root like the Cesidian Root had successfully taken away a TLD like the .UM from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Other racines libres, other free alternative DNS root server systems have faced the very opposite scenario. For example, the Wikipedia states that “Before ICANN approved of .biz as a top-level domain it was already in use by one or more alternative DNS root(s).” The .BIZ TLD was illegally taken by the ICANN from alternative DNS roots in the past.
The ICANN, a California non-profit corporation that was itself illegally created on 18 September 1998 by the US Department of Commerce, assumes that Roman law legally extends to the Internet, and acts as if this were a legal fact. Since the United States holds large territories, and military bases in 153 countries, the ICANN assumes that the US also has the right to hold a global Internet, and a virtual global monopoly over DNS business. The principle of “might makes right.” By the same principle, the US believes that since it holds 11 islands and atolls, a most irregular claim under international legal convention even if it were just a territory, the US government also has the right to hold a .UM ccTLD. Well, if this is legally true, if it is legally true that the US can occupy the Internet based on territorial claims, then the reverse should also be kosher from a legal standpoint: once a ccTLD is occupied, and according to previously published RFCs, cannot be reoccupied by another root or party in order to avoid any possible collisions, any land or territory legally associated with such ccTLD is also the property of the new ccTLD operators.
Thus on 6 May 2008 Independent Long Island legally annexed the 11 islands and atolls previously known to belong to the United States Minor Outlying Islands, and renamed them the United Micronations Multi-Oceanic Archipelago (UMMOA).
Reference
- Tallini, C. (2008). A history of the future: Independent Long Island, pp. 15-20. Brooklyn: Long Dash Publishing.
UMMOA News 