From: Vincent Cate <vince@offshore.com.ai>
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 05:14:31 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Rumors of death of Anguilla Data are greatly exagerated.
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.91.960811142731.3169A-100000@offshore>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.960811145436.3170B-100000@offshore>
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Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com>
> Vince has the right to run his business any way he likes.

This is a very good libertarian point.  

> Vince has made it very clear that he is NOT a data haven. Anguilla is
> a TAX HAVEN. That is, if you are selling copies of some software over
> the net or what have you, and you run the business out of Anguilla,
> you are not liable for any Anguillian taxes because there are none.
> 
> Anguilla is *not* a data haven, drug haven, or any other sort of
> haven. I would have thought that Vince made this clear.

And Anguilla is first and foremost a taxhaven.  But it tries hard to be a
very clean taxhaven (does not want drug money etc).  I think that "clean"
corporations operating here tax free is a potentially huge market. 

Anguilla and OIS are not the data haven of cypherpunks wet dreams. Neither
Anguilla nor I want "hit men for hire" advertising here. Sorry Tim.  And I
think the loss in clean business would outweigh any money from such by a
long shot. 

The concept of a datahaven is still evolving.  There are things that we
can and will do from Anguilla.  So while Anguilla may not really far along
the cypherpunk datahaven scale at this point, I would not go so far as to
say it is not a datahaven. 

One simple example is that OIS was given a project Gutenberg CD-ROM and
may sell online copies of old books.  Some countries are extending
copyrights back further into the past.  Anguilla is not.  So we could sell
books that have expired copyrights in Anguilla but not expired in USA etc. 
Think regulatory arbitrage.  

Taxhavens are a huge and well understood market.  Datahavens are still
new. Not counting gambling, they may only be $0/year rounded to the
nearest million. 

   --  Vince

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Vincent Cate   vince@offshore.com.ai  http://www.offshore.com.ai/vince/
Offshore Information Services         http://www.offshore.com.ai/