I remember this being discussed at length on various forums at the time (the legality, questions about what would happen if it all fell into the sea.) but as with so much of the Internet, it appears to have been largely lost. Luckily I was not imagining things this time and did find a couple of references.
Death of a data haven: cypherpunks, WikiLeaks, and the world’s smallest nation | Ars Technica
Sees a fun\interesting country boarder
Looks up reason
Finds new genocides\war crimes\colonialism was not previously aware of
Lay awake wondering how Jay Foreman is going to make jokes about this one