Pirate island attracts more than 100 startup tenants Over 100 international tech companies have registered their interest in the floating geek city, Blueseed, which will be launched next year in international waters outside of Silicon Valley. The visa-free, start-up friendly concept launched late last year aims to create a fully commercial technology incubator where global …
Considering that the U.S. considers all oceans everywhere as being under U.S. control, the "geekship" presence just off the continental U.S. will probably be labeled a floating drug smuggling enterprise, and will be boarded by U.S. forces and taken under tow to a U.S. port for a thorough search. Confiscation of ship and impoundment of crew to follow.
Tidal waves (tsunamis) aren't much bother in international waters, usually. They only gain height when they enter inshore waters and the leading edge of the surge slows, causing the rushing water to pile up.
Whether the shelf outside the SF bay is shallow enough to be a tsunami risk, I don't know. However, while much of the shelf is in international waters, it's mostly still within the US contiguous zone, so the US would have some legal grounds to challenge them if residents do anything that isn't legal in the US, or if they consider it a tax-dodge...
..................is an unfortunate example of tautology. However, upon examining the content of your post and taking into account your use of caps lock I am forced to conclude that you probably have never heard of the word and wouldn't understand if you had.
Step 1) Build floating barge, launch NOT under the flag of any country.
Step 2) Get people to pay you to live there permanently
Step 3) Get recognised by UN as an independent nation
Step 4) Cost the US taxman lots of money.
Step 5) Get labeled as a terrorist training ground and get blown out of the water by the USA,
The basics:
MARITIME ZONES AND BOUNDARIES
"Each coastal State may claim a territorial sea that extends seaward up to 12 nautical miles (nm) from its baselines. The coastal State exercises sovereignty over its territorial sea, the air space above it, and the seabed and subsoil beneath it. Foreign flag ships enjoy the right of innocent passage while transiting the territorial sea....
Each coastal State may claim a contiguous zone adjacent to and beyond its territorial sea that extends seaward up to 24 nm from its baselines. In its contiguous zone, a coastal State may exercise the control necessary to prevent the infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea, and punish infringement of those laws and regulations committed within its territory or territorial sea.
In 1999, eleven years after President Reagan extended the U.S. territorial sea to 12 miles, President Clinton proclaimed contiguous zone extending from 12 to 24 nm offshore.
Each coastal State may claim an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) beyond and adjacent to its territorial sea that extends seaward up to 200 nm from its baselines... Within its EEZ, a coastal State has: (a) sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring, exploiting, conserving and managing natural resources, whether living or nonliving, of the seabed and subsoil and the superjacent waters and with regard to other activities for the economic exploitation and exploration of the zone, such as the production of energy from the water, currents and winds; (b) jurisdiction as provided for in international law with regard to the establishment and use of artificial islands, installations, and structures, marine scientific research, and the protection and preservation of the marine environment, and (c) other rights and duties provided for under international law.
The U.S. claimed a 200 nm EEZ in 1983 (Presidential Proclamation No. 5030 of March 10, 1983..."
http://www.gc.noaa.gov/gcil_maritime.html
Come hell or high water, your floating Utopia needs to remail on station or anchored at least 25 nm out and quite probably more than 200 nm out
That makes it a very risky and very expensive proposition.
Unless I'm mistaken, this means from the lowest low-tide mark (sometimes slightly straightened out to prevent silly shapes.)
I love the idea of this sort of venture and I object to countries making sovereign claims over every damn bit of the world; there needs to be some room left for new settlements or some of the adventure is gone from life.
Very romantic, but if you read the history of SeaWorld, you'll see that such "adventurers" end up relying on the mainland for a great many things, especially food, water, and emergency search & rescue if anything goes wrong. The idea of being self-sufficient, at sea, outside the aegis of a state, is half-baked. If you're relying on the services of the mainland, avoiding obeying their laws on a technicality is an untenable position. It would be trivial for anyone - governmental or otherwise - to blockade these idiots to enforce compliance with pretty much anything they liked. Who's going to protect them? It's not like they have a navy.
Unlike Seaworld they are not trying to get around laws sponsored by large lobbying groups. They want to bypass the immigration laws that tech companies are lobbying to change anyway. I don't think they have any intention of being self sufficient either. They'll have no problem finding US citizens to transport supplies to them. I remember when this was first being discussed they expected residents to be able to get day trip visas, and of course they are close enough for company employees to travel to them when necessary. And it gets everyone in the same timezone.
I do have to wonder if they have given much thought to security though. If they are outside US territorial waters then the Coast Guard has no obligation, or authority, to provide protection for them from people who might want some of that tech that will necessarily be installed.
This is a disaster waiting to happen. I imagine the IT version of a sex trafficking ring, with no recourse for workers over pay and overtime disputes, the levying of unfair transport occupation charges, etc. Without the possibility of competition or regulation, they can charge whatever they want for food, water, clothing, and utilities. There will be no legal recourse, and no legal protections. It makes Foxconn sound like Disneyland. Not to mention, who is supposed to defend these tax dodgers from piracy or foul weather? To what port can you bring 3,000 illegal aliens in a literal storm?
Why does it have to be expensive? Cruise ships operate out at sea most of their lifetime. All the venture caps need to do is price in the operating costs into the tennancy. It's till cheaper than the cost of the visa process. The one additional item of capex would be a seaplane to bring in tennants direct to the island. Even buying dedicated satellite transponders for comms is not that expensive these days.
We have foreign flagged ships running through our waters all the time.
Not all of them actually stop in the US, but continue on their way to Canada or Mexico, etc.
Kind of an odd way to do things, but I doubt most of the US would care as it is little different
than if someone were doing it in another country and use telephony or the like.
Frankly, most people won't care. The US is mainly concerned about drug smuggling,
diseases, and people coming here and using the public services without the ability
to pay the costs involved.
I'm sure that since they are in economic zone that eventually someone will want to collect
taxes and the like, but other than that...
The US is mainly concerned about drug smuggling, diseases, and people coming here and using the public services without the ability to pay the costs involved.
I suspect that the IP and security industries disagree with that and will be lobbying the government to consider their issues to be more important. My guess is that we'll see problems once the first little bit of friction develops with big media.
>>We have foreign flagged ships running through our waters all the time.
Not all of them actually stop in the US, but continue on their way to Canada or Mexico, etc.<<
This is the right of "innocent passage."
But the key words here are "innocent" and "passage." These are ships with a clearly defined destination. They are not permently stationed off-shore.
They are not trying to evade US labor laws.
>> Frankly, most people won't care. The US is mainly concerned about drug smuggling, diseases...
If the people working there don't need green cards, etc., it doesn't sound like they're going to have employment taxes (Federal income tax and Social Security) deducted from their paychecks and sent to the Internal Revenue Service. That's what's going to bring the Feds down on them if nothing else does. In the U.S., laws against illegal drug imports and (especially) illegal immigration are enforced far less rigorously than is the collection of taxes from employees. The IRS is a jealous god, effectively unrestrained by law or politics--the officials whose pay and patronage depend on tax collection are the last people to challenge it.
... see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HavsOq3RzQ&feature=related
but as previous posts have indicated, the loopholes have been closed.
I'm curious to know how that 10 GB/S* laser link is supposed to work. Wave action would make staying on target difficult, I think. Are they using a computer-controlled, servo-aimed transceiver mounting platform?
*Per Comcast T&Cs, that's "up to" 10 GB/S.
"Wave action would make staying on target difficult, I think."
I thought gyro-stabilised satellite dishes on boats were tried tested and proven commercially available products?
Try searching for "gyro stabilised satellite tv antenna", for example.
Using similar technology for a one off application using laser instead of satellite won't be trivial but it's not rocket science either.
Then hope that the timeouts and retries in TCP/IP are good enough to handle the times when the laser is inevitably off target for a short while, or a big bird/microlight flies through the beam, or...
Regarding TCP timeouts.
Mobile (cellular) data traffic doesn't leave all the reliability issues to be handled by the upper transport protocol (e.g. TCP). The link layer (whether WCDMA or LTE) implements different levels of quality of service and performs automatic retransmission when necessary (see ARQ and HARQ).
If they're using a laser to a shore station, they have to be in line-of-sight. The horizon would be about 17 miles from the ship. The shore station wouldn't be on-shore, but would have more height. You're not going to get clear of the 200nm economic zone. That would need a 20,000 foot tower.
About the only advantage I can see is the possibility of in-person visits by US nationals to external programming teams. And getting the non-US personnel to the ship looks tricky.
As far as pay and tax collection go, I suppose that there are precedents for the crew of ships.
It all sounds a bit far-fetched. I wonder how much money will be spent on the "planning" before the investors in the company notice nothing is happening.
Yeah, those are the VIP lifeboats.
So while the VIPs are all fighting over each other and trying to figure out how to get those things launched, I'd be heading to one of the inflatable rafts (which you can't see on the picture). All those barrel canisters on ships- they all hold self-inflating rafts. Pop it open, let it fall into the sea, then dive in after it.
You'll be in the inflatable raft before the VIPs have finished arguing about who should remove the cover of the boat.
Modern lifeboats take quite a lot of people.
100-man boats are easily available, so that's a possible 1800 lifeboat capacity - before you even start to consider the liferafts.
Of course, you've forgotten to include the crew. There are probably going to be 1000 crew members to run the vessel - it's not just serviced apartments attached to office premises.
They have to generate their electricity, maintain the propulsion (you can't just anchor that far out), plus all the general maintenance of a steel vessel in an ocean and the sailing.
I think there are two real killers of this project though. Latency and fuel.
Latency of satellite internet links can easily top 500ms. Laser is only viable in good visibility and within sight of shore, so any laser link is going to fail much of the time.
Then there's the fuel - they are going to have to bunker a lot of fuel simply to run the ship.
Specifically with Dan Dascalescu (the CIO) and I've seen the investor pitch. A couple of things:
1. They have quite a lot of funding and support (part. Peter Thiel)
2. An ocean going barge is the first conversion (already under way, apparently)
3. OPEX is around ~$15 million/year IRC (with ~$38 billion in venture in SV, it's a rounding error)
4. Contrary to what Jake things, people are NOT commuting from BlueSeed (and far more that 1000 people commute from Half Moon Bay every day...). Only about two dozen people will likely go out a day, if that, mostly investors and other team members that need a physical meeting (sic)* And the Half Moon Bay harbor is very underutilized at the moment, so is the airport.
Their biggest problem is actually the revenue model. They are functioning like an incubator and hoping to make the majority of their returns through equity stakes in the startups they host. This is completely untenable as they cannot predict exits, which means they will have to have at least 5 years of funding to live through early no exit years. Even if they can get some successful exits, their own IRR numbers are not that good compared to other investments.
In the end, I'll bet they get money from strategic funds rather than venture. People with a vested interest in having such a thing offshore and for whom returns are not so critical.
All that said, if this catches on, it's likely the US gov't will take an interest. Whether that's a good or bad interest depends, no one knows.
* in fact, the Half Moon Bay business community is cautiously supportive - http://www.hmbreview.com/news/startup-blueseed-promises-sea-change/article_c9882d10-3c97-11e1-971b-0019bb2963f4.html
"Contrary to what Jake things, people are NOT commuting from BlueSeed"
I'm not wrong. Because Blueseed doesn't exist.
"(and far more that 1000 people commute from Half Moon Bay every day...).
I no-longer live in Half Moon Bay for a reason. The commute is a bitch.
"Only about two dozen people will likely go out a day, if that,"
Post proof or shut the fuck up. If they don't need to leave the boat, why do they have to leave wherever it is that they are living now to do the same work?
"mostly investors and other team members that need a physical meeting (sic)*"
::snickers:: "We're going on a boat-ride & suckering people ... want in?"
"And the Half Moon Bay harbor is very underutilized at the moment"
Questionable statement. Harbors are almost as utilized as they need to be.
"so is the airport."
::snort:: You've never flown in to (K)HAF, have you?
Hi, JustaKOS,
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If you can adjust and steer the path of reality, by virtual remote control of command with creative communication and steganographic messaging, is the manner and substance of reality decidedly virtual and surreal in Live Operational Virtual Environment Fields of Great Games in Full Swing and and at Intelligence Work, Resting in Play. .... and Parading Bold Semantic Moves to Guarantee Power Input for Guaranteed Clean Joint Mutual Power Output.
Ye Olde, Have Cake and Eat it, Magic Trick. A Firm Knights Templar Favourite to Graciously Perform and Deliver Free Gratis ........ just for the Satisfaction of Pleasure and Desire, Raw Sex and Passionate Love and for Release of more Heavy Fuel to that Raging Fire Storm/Sweet Sticky TEMPEST Capture.
FlorID AI Script is just so Delightfully Accommodating.
I reckon a few thousand containers held together with hydraulic generators would make a nice floating island. The ones on the outside would help damp the waves for the old hacks in the middle. You'd get a four bedroomed house for about 10 grand and you could could even focus focus groups together and accidentally cut them loose.
The US is not short of space. Seems to me if they were really serious about this sort of thing they would simply hive off a small chunk of California as a special economic area, like what Hong Kong or Macau is to mainland China.
A thousand CS grads cooped up in an enclosed space in a hot climate sounds like hell in the Pacific to me.
"The US is not short of space. Seems to me if they were really serious..."
That all depends on who they are. The people talking about this probably want to do it without interference from the US gov authorities (taxes, who can do what, what nationality you are, etc.). However, they don't have sovreign rights to carve up a piece of California to be a lawless sub-state. Hence saying that they will do it in international waters, nothing to do with the gov.
The other they is the government, and they are more than happy with the laws they have about taxes and who is allowed visit / work there, etc. They probably don't want to relax their laws anywhere, and would probably rather extend them over the entire planet, thank you.
Well, the proliferation of city states around the world would indicate the idea has been successfully sold many times in the past to all sorts of at their time powerful nations. Don't see why it couldn't be done again.
Creating an artificial island just for immigration and tax reasons is mental, especially when in this age a decent internet connection means as much virtual contact as anyone could care for. Besides, if the bay area is downwind of it too many days of the year it's likely to get torpedoed.
The roof gardens are like those pictures you see of every new 'largest' airliner, with a bar, tasteful neon lighting, and a spiral staircase. What you actually get is another 45 economy seats and a stainless steel galley full of miniature coke cans, trays of flabby vegetables, and $9 beers.
In this case, I imagine the outcome will, if anything, be 18 acres of tar paper and those aluminum bendy straw vent things. And while the renders will show an interior lined with glass walls, thick carpet, and 15 foot ceilings sparkling with LED lighting, reality will find row upon row of off-white hallways, off-white offices, off-white suspended ceilings, and (to satisfy the rental agreement requirements) a half-broken foosball table, on its side, next to the ice machine on level C3.
Oh, and that dark brown / red speckle hard-nodule carpet that costs .35 cents per square foot and hurts if you walk on it without socks.
The US will simply harass this project out of existence even assuming it is technically and economically viable enough to happen. US authorities will raid the ship, disrupt data / voice communications with the shore, harass customers doing business with it, freeze US bank accounts of anybody onboard and generally life miserable as possible. It only takes one rotten apple tenant on the whole ship to give them any excuse they like to do any or all of this. It can't succeed.
It was intended to have tech workers who couldn't get US residency close enough to be able to make face-face meetings in Ca.
Since the US can stop any of them visiting the US from the boat, and VCs who were interested can just as easily travel to Europe/S.America etc then it's not clear that it makes sense.
It could be used by US citizens to 'live' there 6months of the year to be non-resident for tax - like London bankers. But the US is a lot less forgiving on this 'arrangement' than the UK - US citizens pay tax in the USA on their worldwide income, wherever they live. So if you are just going to lie about where you live - you might aswell just lie about your income anyway
Personally I think it's all either a pipedream AND/OR a way of trying to show up how stupid US immigration is.
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A Bruce Sterling one actually - Islands in the Net (although Neal Stephenson has touched on the idea a couple of times as well as have others like John Courtenay Grimwood).
Frankly the biggest issue with this whole idea is the country they've chosen to anchor off. Access to Silicon Valley is all very nice, but American security paranoia and the IRS make the whole thing untenable. They'd be better off getting the Canadians to lease an island off BC or something.
does anyone involved have a clue how ROUGH the East Pacific ocean is?!? and there's no anchorages out there, its deep ocean floor bottom, the continental shelf drops off very steeply on the west coast of North America.
this is truly looney tunes stuff, could only have been conceived to defraud investors.
Won't help much.
Quite simply, the current protectionist-inspired uber-hostile attitude to foreign graduates of local institutes(*) has had an immediate effect on the number of applications to study at said institutes - and the remaining applicants have no desire to work in the ocuntries concerned after they graduate (for the most part they have employment guaranteed elsewhere).
(*)USA and UK have both gone down this path but others are folllowing.
The end result is that innovation is happening elsewhere and so are the business opportunities. If these policies are kept up the UK and USA will both end up as even larger parochial backwaters than they already are.
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and will presumably become available at a severly discounted price. And no doubt Captain Francesco Schettino could be persuaded to resume his old command, and if Blueseed is really, really lucky, perhaps even Domnica Cemortan could be prevailed upon to come aboard in one capacity or another. What could go wrong ?...
Henri
Of course, if your company is outside everyone else's jurisdiction, whose court are you going to use if someone else steals your money or ideas?
Some international NGOs have this problem - having the status of embassies, they are exempt from local laws and taxation in their host country but, without a national government in charge, they have no justice system of their own....
Are there women on Octopus, which is one strange ship too, is it not? And a sort of metaphysical island in surreal empire powering by, in search of Anonymous Forward Control of Mass Power.
An Elite Power Hack and Key Crack which Delivers Lead Privileges and SMARTR Support with Virtually Invisible and Invincible AIdD ..... Supreme Assistance .
Why not just open a company in one of the several Caribbean tax havens? These have banks, airports, fresh water, women, warm weather (although there is the hurricane season to think about), sand, nice food, etc. I know it is on the other side of the USA but it is only a short flight to FL.
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