Ever heard of "Low orbit server stations"?

I love Pirate Bay for pushing the envelope with everything they do. Personal opinions on piracy aside...the approach these guys take to to solving their problems, are always innovative. They push us to really think outside of the box of what is possible.<p>Most 'sane' people would be burned out by constantly fighting "the man" for so long. But these guys seem like they are machines.<p>Love it!

People have been putting their servers in the cloud for a while now.

"A real act of war" - or, more likely, an act of civil aviation rule enforcement.<p>Obstructing airspace is a pretty serious issue. Unlike copyright law in general, there will be absolutely no absolutely no legal ambiguity if one of their machines is a public safety problem. That's hefty fines or jail time with little chance of public sympathy.

Isn't this the core spirit of the internet? ARPANET was designed to "emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks."<p>I've heard of remote parts of the world relying on amateur radios to access the internet (citation needed, please). This approach, to me, is simply a more technologically sophisticated. But it's nevertheless beautiful.

In Canada uncontrolled airspace are the areas not in an aerodrome and goes up to 1,500 feet (?), I forget the exact height, that's where radio controlled planes, hangliders, ultra-light aircraft, hot air balloons can go without needing a pilot's license or special permit.<p>If there was some device floating or flying there but not in controlled airspace or a danger to other aircraft it is perfectly legal for it to be there.

What a difference a title makes...<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3720699" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3720699</a>

When I heard Reddit planning to build a low-orbit network, I realized they were going to build the "outernet". This is another stab in the same direction, and I would be surprised if the 2 forces didn't join.<p>This airborne/orbital network, combined with the "innernet" TOR, will allow for the future of the unregulated internet.<p>The original internet will become the walled garden that half of humanity wants to live within. Those of us in the other half will have our free innernet and outernet.

How about doing what radio pirates did, and having a station in international waters?<p>You are still bound by whatever law your vessel is registered under, but many of them just don't care. If you (probably illegally) could send out an autonomous unregistered vessel, it would be really hard to take out.<p>An armada of solar powered autonomous buoys ... that would also be kind of cool.

"This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system [...] with modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away"<p>...or just jam the signal, surely? If you were <i>that</i> serious about it...

An airplane a few kilometers in the air is _not_ in orbit.<p>Pity - if they had the bucks and the chops to actually orbit a server ... now that would be something.

"This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war."<p>In my current state of disenfranchisement with the government I will not be surprised if this happens. They took the "ends will justify the means" policy long ago. All I can do is hope their latest 'ends' benefit me.

That's hilarious but not remotely feasible, is it April 1st yet?

Had to look at the date to make sure it isn't April 1st yet.

How are they planning on powering these devices? The original article doesn't mention . . .<p>Solar seems the most obvious choice (to me).

In order for this to work you have to get the balloon high enough where it won't be affected by simple weather patterns.<p>Then you have to make the device capable of withstanding extreme conditions.<p>Then you have to make the balloon stay in position.<p>Then you have to swap out the balloon's every X day to refuel and recharge.<p>Predicting the future here: they will make a balloon and radio system that works for about 20 minutes before it drifts off and then realize there is a whole lot more to putting computers in the sky than just announcing you are going to move your data-center into the sky.

Image a satellite BitTorrent tracker which flies over your head every 90 minutes. You got a 5 minute handshake window to discover the peer network, then the rest is handled on DHT.

Such a awesome idea, but most of the stuff thepiratebay has attempted has never really materialized into anything<p>See: Buying a island / Baywords / The Video Bay

<a href="http://server-sky.com/" rel="nofollow">http://server-sky.com/</a>

great, instead of hiding those proxies in some random apartment complex with a fibre optic connection, you're putting them up in the sky for all to see - I doubt this post is serious. and btw. what about the ground receivers? your local law enforcer can take those down pretty easily and I imagine if you're gonna send 100Mbps thru the air, somebody's gonna pick up on that pretty easily.<p>if I was piratebay, I'd rent a cheap appartment somewhere in downtown zurich (switzerland is unlikely to take down filehosters (rapidshare is located here as well)), get one of those cheap fibre optics connections (check under: <a href="http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/ewz/de/index/telecom/ewz_zuerinet/verfuegbarkeit_pruefen.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/ewz/de/index/telecom/ewz...</a> ) and install your servers in there. you get 100 mbps up for about 200$ a month. admitted it's still an expensive setup, but that would be some reliable hosting.

Good luck with that. Really, the only airspace they'll be able to fly in will be that of the sovereign nations they'll be overflying. Unrestricted typically means &#60; 300 meters (the altitude that you can fly a model aircraft in). Flying a drone definitely != low orbit.<p>Way to go to get a lot of press but (ahem) this will never fly.

I think it would be way cooler to have something float in international waters and use tidal/wave power to keep running. I guess that would be a lot easier to mess around with though.

Servers are the new power-hogs. Go one step further: put servers on actual satellites, using solar power. Endlessly scalable, free power, at the cost of some milliseconds of lag.

There are a variety of issues with airborne servers. It's hard to keep things in the air for long periods, and it's harder at low heights. Higher up, you can avoid a lot of weather issues, winds tend to be predictable etc.<p>Satellites mean big latency. Boats have supply issues. Sealand is apparently a bust. Frankly, if you want a data haven, do something similar Cryptonomicon talked about. Though that too has some issues, especially given how undersea cables work.

The proposed system still has a very weak point, the drone-controll-station and land/take off spots. The government or the MAFIAA will simply intercept the drones on takeoff/landing. Wasnt it in the USA where a law was passed a few months ago to prohibit civil drones in the air, or at least "regulate" drone-flying? Sending stuff up in the air will be a crime.

But disabling the radio system that's on earth wouldn't it be the same as disabling the servers?

TPB could easily encourage its users to use a truly decentralised model. Given that TPB is effectively simply serving small magnet links of a few bytes in length, this would actually be extremely easy.<p>But of course then they would have made themselves irrelevant.

What do they mean by 'modern radio transmitters'? Are they planning to use open Wi-Fis or LTE networks or use something else that I'm not aware of? Is there some off-the-self tech available for this kind of thing?

This not feasible for two reasons (and many more). Lipo batteries won't last long enough for it to make sense. Carrying server equipment is also not feasible and further reduces battery / gas life.

Someone hit "publish" on the April Fools post instead of "save as draft".

I was just thinking of the possibilities of building a high altitude wireless network to serve rural communities. It almost seems uncanny that I find this same article pop up today.

Would you believe, my Irish ISP blocks piratebay access.

I'm doing something similar with an RC airplane I'm building. Streams live video feeds from 3 cameras via CDMA. Flight Simulator be damned.

I love the idea and I was actually thinking of doing something similar myself.<p>Any drones under 400ft and don't leave line of sight of the operator are legal.d

I hope that actual smart people aren't really working on this. It used to be that this kind of crazy ambition was what started the best companies. Its an almost Apple-ish goal from yesteryear. If this generation's Wozs spend their efforts simply trying to thwart dumb government, I think society will be poorer for it, even if they can watch all of the free movies they want over the blimp.

Talk is cheap.

So... what if a bird flies into it?

This seems more like a silver lining to open sourcing space vehicles industry. Very recently I saw this: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvDqoxMUroA" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvDqoxMUroA</a> which is an inexpensive hack to reach over (I mean as compared to what tax-payers shell out) 120,000 meters. That's real space! Much beyond the scope of corruption, but evidently an easy frontier to become a junkyard if greed and dumbness (read SOPA/PIPA &#38; Govies) continue on the path of destruction.

Even if there IS a better way of doing it on the ground, this is a GREAT way to embarrass the ones who are trying to shut you down.An Aeroplane or helicopter needed just to shut down a floating computer?

Let's hope the 'Bay doesn't accidentally take out a 747.

Let's see - a foreign object positioned above the United States in a low orbit.... pretty sure that will get shot down.