When DVI made its initial claim, the ocean was still a legal void. But the deep seabed had already been recognised by the UN as a Common Heritage of Humankind. The USA ignored this framework. In the context of the Cold War, the deposit’s metals could eventually serve its industry well. So, in 1984, the US authorities gave a license area to OMA. This area was known as USA-3. It completely overlapped DVI’s deposit, but it was bigger, as Illustration-1 shows: it measured “approximately 156.000 km2”. A big stake had thus been lifted out of the ocean commons and enlarged. One could, therefore, argue that the USA behaved as a fence of a stolen good.

From: Undo Enclosures