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Two years later, the site has registered some 17,000 names, including such flagrantly poached brand names as Rolex, Coke and Scientology. These aren't big numbers by Internet standards, but they aren't bad either--especially for a firm whose two employees spent about $3,000 to get things rolling and, because the entire operation is run automatically by computers, now have roughly zero overhead. "I collect the names and make sure the servers are running," says Lyons with a Cheshire-cat grin, "and spend the rest of the time fixing my boat."
This business model may be contagious; a few weeks after Tonic's first press release, William Semich, executive editor of the industry trade publication WebWeek (now Internet World), announced his own ".nu" domain registry, based on the even tinier (pop. 2,000) South Pacific island of Niue. (Semich says he started his venture months earlier.)
But Gullichsen isn't sweating the competition. Instead he's readying his next company, MetaCorp, due for launch this summer. It will allow customers to license their own offshore companies, complete with online banking, all dispensed via another self-run website based, like Tonic, in Gullichsen's Tonga fiefdom.
And with the cash these virtual companies siphon out of the old world order, Gullichsen plans to build a new one. The crown prince has given him the run of a tiny Tongan outrider island, which Gullichsen hopes to turn into a prototype sustainable environment. "I'm setting up an ecologically closed community," he says. "I'll have a wind generator, solar panels, a geodesic dome and hydroponics. I want to live off the grid but still be online--be connected to the global fabric but from a venue that is free from regulation and in harmony with the environment." It's no Pakistani bathroom, but the principle is pretty much the same.