Is what they're doing legal? I'm pretty sure a tourist visa means you can't use it for work (activities for which payment is received or capital is gained), even remote work. I'm told that the Thai government is pretty harsh in punishing such things.
That article just confuses me. It says it is ok and then contradicts it a paragraph later. Eg:
"Digital nomads – people working remotely or running online businesses – in Thailand can legally work there on tourist visas"
But one paragraph down:
"It is unlikely that travellers will be granted a re-entry stamp after two or three visa runs. If your passport is stamped “O-I” (out-in) upon arrival, it is unlikely that you will be able to re-enter the country again should you decide to do a visa run"
It is confusing two separate ideas. One is that it is ok to work while on a tourist visa, the other is that doing multiple visa runs (regardless of whether you work) is not ok. The out-in problem is true of many countries and has nothing to do with working.
Not sure about Thailand, but this is true for USA.
My colleague's wife is on H4 (dependant) visa and prior to coming to USA, she had a job in India. We talked to a lawyer and then with USCIS and both of them confirmed that it is not a possibility that she can work remote here in USA on H4 even though she gets paid in India.
Anyone doing this should also check what qualifies as business to avoid confusion at the border (there are specific things one is allowed to do and specific things not, IANAL, YMMV).
But I know what you're talking and while what we're doing is technically a gray zone, what the government is after is mostly freelancers that basically live in Thailand, but are not paying taxes there and are constantly on a visa run to re-enter the country.
Nevertheless, how do you differentiate between holidays and work and where to draw the line? If you're responding to a work emails while being on holidays, does that count towards the taxable income in that country you're visiting?
> Did you file a tax statement and did you pay any taxes on income earned while you were residing in Thailand?
Absolutely. We're not evading taxes. All income is taxed in Spain. And we weren't residing in Thailand. We were only visiting it and happened to also do some things that were related to our business back home in Europe. The work we did had nothing to do with Thailand itself.
I'm not an international tax specialist, but at least from a moral point of view I don't see that we did something wrong.
In European countries for example you only become a tax resident if you spend more than 183 days there.
>In European countries for example you only become a tax resident if you spend more than 183 days there.
Pity Thais cannot easily come to Spain and work illegally. Despite what you've said it's blatant public abuse of the tourist visa system in Thailand.
Honestly when I see blog posts like this my opinion of the author and company goes down considerably. Breaking the rules and publishing the fact that you are makes me question what other grey areas you'd operate in.
Yes, what they did violates immigration law in Thailand. And the comments of a senior immigration official don't change the law; they just indicate that at least in that region the enforcement is likely to be rather lax.
But there's really nothing to get bent about. No locals were out of a job. They lived there as tourists so paid a lot more into the local economy than locals, including a lot more taxes in the form of VAT on all their purchases.
The only real issue is that they were at risk even if they didn't sense it, because what happens now and then is someone gets pissed off (usually another foreigner) and rats someone out. Then the police see an opportunity to collect an extortionate "fine" before they get deported.
> They lived there as tourists so paid a lot more into the local economy than locals
How did you determine that? I've lived as a hippie in India, similar to what Steve Jobs did. I spent 0 money and lived off the temple welfare system. I was exploiting the generosity of people who had a thousandth the resources and welfare that I had. I wasn't alone. There were hundreds, if not thousands of other Westerners doing similar things.
They put more into the Thai economy (renting a house, buying products, paying for services) and didn't take any money out (all earnings were from existing clients abroad).
It might contravene visa issues from a literal read, but I think the intent was fair. Many Australians would call this "the vibe of the thing" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJuXIq7OazQ
By that logic. Rental prices would go up, as foreign demand for property increases, pricing locals out of the market in the process, because they cannot compete with foreign earned salaries. Not just rentals, goods and services go up.
Increased strain on policing and hospitals. Strain on Thailand's subsidised public transport system, subsidised diesel fuel, subsidised water utilities.
No tax revenue from foreign workers as they don't declare in Thailand despite being required to do so by law. The only exception being VAT.
The general point of nomads working in Thailand is the ability to lower outgoings beyond what you could do in North America or Europe. Nomads don't spend cash like tourists and that makes them a drain on the economy.
So what's Thailand got to lose from allowing foreigners to set up shop. Well the huge fees required to be legal for one.
> Could you explain how you formed that conclusion?
It appears that Mobile Jazz is a company that caters to western audiences, most of the work they will be doing will be for western clients who wouldn't hire Thai workers. The workers just happen to be out of office when they do their jobs.
While from a legal perspective it might be all correct what you're saying, I think that most people simply have more important matters to worry about.
For example, it's also illegal to cross a red traffic light as a pedestrian at 3am in the night on a deserted street. That doesn't mean that it is immoral or that it causes harm to anyone.
And I wouldn't even want to know all the "illegal" things you're doing that you are not even aware of. Just saying.
My beef is not that you worked illegally in Thailand. It's the fact that you wrote this up, didn't mention the fact that it's not above aboard, which promotes others to emulate you without warning, and published under your own name which is foolish at best and could end up with you being deported at worse.
There's been around eight of these posts of 'Digital Nomads' working in Thailand and not one of them bothered to mention that they were breaking the law.
> at least from a moral point of view I don't see that we did something wrong.
You did. You lied on your Thai tourist visa application form. It explicitly said:
"I hereby declare that the purpose of my visit to thailand is for pleasure or transit only and that in no case shall I engage myself in any profession or occupation while in the country"
Any form of "work" (defined as exertion of effort from memory) is deemed illegal without a work permit - international volunteers need one just as much as those of us working for a commercial entity.
Re "spying on you": immigration police have conducted "raids" on coworking spaces, not to mention the potential for upset/disgruntled locals/competitors/whoever to report you.
> No, absolutely not. This is the same mistake the one laptop per child people made.
No absolutely not. The mistake the OLPC people made was trying to make people believe that throwing underpowered overdesigned overpriced laptops at kids would solve any problem other than providing employment to Nicky Negroponte and his gang.
Good that you're not surprised. But there's a lot of people out there (and here in the valley) who subconsciously (or consciously) believe that if you're dark skinned with curly hair and athletic, then you're deficient in the intellectual arena, or worse, that you're a thug.
> why don't we congratulate everyone who publishes a math paper?
Because not everyone's story defeats a stereotype that is dangerous and damaging. I'm surprised that this has to be explained.
Ellen Pao, Harvard MBA. Job history was corporate attorney, other non-technical jobs.
Ajit Nazre, Michigan Tech PHD. Job history unclear. Google hits on him mostly indicate a skeezy character. If the BI article is credible, most startups including the ones in India have dropped him like a rock after the lawsuit came out.
> Why do they get all the money?
Good question. Most engineers fail to realize how critical all of them are. They fail to demand fair compensation for their time. Instead they treat pats-on-the-back, a beer bust, maybe a gifted $10 ticket to see a scifi movie as major rewards while their management takes the bulk of the compensation pie.
> In this example allwinner is applying the eastern "share, modify, pass around" model, which isn't compatible with the western model of strict license adherence.
I don't think your comment matches reality. Eastern "share, modify, pass around"? How does that even remotely match what is discussed in the google group thread? What All Winner did was to take free and open source GPL code paid for by the community (including competitors), modify said code, make binaries, ship defective non-compliant hardware and software BSP to customers and expect everyone to be silent about it. Nope. That's not an "Eastern model" at all. No need to hide their behavior behind shadowy cultural claims. AllWinner knows what they're doing is illegal.
Technically, they hang the victim by his/her neck until death. Execution is applied even for non-violent crimes, like being found in possession of drugs, even small quantities like less than 1 ounce of heroin. Most recent hanging in Singapore was July 2014.
Yes, but Singapore doesn't prosecute you for reverse engineering. That's why he is there. Your point of irony is directed towards other acts that are not relevant to Bunnie's situation.
According to wikipedia the US is fairly permissive regarding reverse engineering hardware [1]: In the United States even if an artifact or process is protected by trade secrets, reverse-engineering the artifact or process is often lawful as long as it has been legitimately obtained.
Bunnies protest is about what happened to Aaron which was a case about data theft, copyright and the draconian way the us government intended to prosecute and punish.
Singapore has similar copyright and antipiracy laws, and an even more authoritarian and unfair legal process. [2] Human rights activists, foreign scholars and opposition party members have pointed out that members of the opposition parties often suffer "misfortunes" of various kinds, including arrest, sued into bankruptcy especially in defamatory lawsuits, and imprisonment, with the convictions and bankruptcy in turn barring the opposition candidates from standing in elections.
For the record, I love Bunnie, Singapore and the USA
> Yes, but Singapore doesn't prosecute you for reverse engineering. That's why he is there
Is your statement above verified to be true? Has Bunny actually said that?
I'm not a lawyer, but this article seems to suggest that Singapore's legal system is quite similar to the US and does permit prosecution for reverse engineering.
"
7 In broad terms Creative’s claim is grounded on three central allegations of facts, viz: (a) that Aztech reverse engineered (through disassembly) version 1 of the Sound Blaster firmware; (b) that Aztech copied portions of version 2 of the Sound Blaster firmware, particularly in four undocumented commands, E2, F0, F4 and F8; and (c) by loading TEST.SBC into the PC’s RAM and disassembling it, by means of running the DEBUG program, Aztech infringed Creative’s copyright in TEST.SBC.
"
http://www.singaporelaw.sg/sglaw/laws-of-singapore/commercia...
It is not clear that RMS is driven by ego. He's motivated by a very clear goal to keep free software free. Free as in freedom free. As for ESR, well, yup, that's an ego that is sufficient in size to have a gravitational pull. http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2000082800620OPCYKN
I think this is an unuseful definition of ego. I had a significant degree of contact with RMS in the period leading up to the launch of GNU, including being one of his roommates when he formally launched it, and I assure you he's very seriously ego driven. Are not his expounding etc. of his Free Software philosophy, a rather big thing as in a set of principles etc., the actions of a man very certain about himself?
I think you're just perceiving a difference in how it's expressed by each of them, e.g. one reply is that ESR has a very clear goal of increasing the quality of software. Which for me is the big difference between "Free" and "Open" software.
Oh, he is certainly ego-driven, but not in the same way as Jobs was, for example. RMS does not put his person before everyone else, but he lives rather through his principles and tries to convince everyone why it makes sense to follow them. And he has a very solid rationale he has developed through the years, making him very articulated.
> It is not clear that RMS is driven by ego. He's motivated by a very clear goal to keep free software free.
No, he's driven by a very clear goal to prevent non-free software, even if that means preventing free software that might, potentially, in the future, be used by someone, somewhere, to create non-free software.
And I think there is a certain amount of ego in there that gets in the way of good judgement on means, in that he tends to take actions which will naturally result in the free software he protects from being involved in producing non-free software losing mindshare to either non-free software or free software not wrapped around with his preferred restrictions, which is contradictory to his purpose -- since it means that not only does software that isn't crippled in features to prevent its utility in contributing non-free software wins, but that that software is also itself either non-free software, or non-copyleft free software that can more readily directly contribute to non-free software as well as being used by people who might build non-free software through use of the features of the software.
Waited a bit, got the email, tried again - Everything worked! I've wanted GooglePro forever - and now I have it - to the point of almost ponying up the $400 of my hard earned money for it.
Registration failed for me with a message suggesting such remedies as trying a different email address. Punched in a gmail address and it worked. Perhaps coincidentally.
I assume it is the fact that there is a bottle of Macallan 12 whisky behind him? Yup, that makes me uncomfortable as well. You don't drink whisky without a proper glass.
