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The Pirate Bay Plans Servers In the Sky
1sockchuck writes "The Pirate Bay says it plans to deploy servers on airborne drones several kilometers above international waters. The site said it was experimenting with servers using Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized Linux computer. April Fools come early? Torrent Freak says the plan is real. It's apparently a literal approach to cloud computing."
and it sucked. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091964/
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Because they'll just get shot down or have an "accident".
But if there aren't any clouds in the sky, can you still access TPB? This sounds like an interesting project, though... I would love to see it work for technology sake.
But if there aren't any clouds in the sky, can you still access TPB? This sounds like an interesting project, though... I would love to see it work for technology sake.
In all irony, though, if there were LOTS of clouds in the sky, how would the site perform then?
So you only need like 5,000 drones in the sky at any given time, and they have to be disposable so you don't land illicit material on sovereign territory?
Sounds legit.
they really *crash*.
Supplies!
Pirating must pay really well. I can't imagine how much it would cost to manage those servers and keep them up there 24/7.
"Server Crashed"
It's been done before with Stratovision. The model doesn't work with current fuel sources and repair times.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Pirate satellites? Are we going to see SOPA 2.0 giving the government the authority to shoot down private satellites?
lots of problems with servers in the air... much easier to put servers on ships in int'l waters... like pirate radio...
Seems like it would be cheaper than drones.
I assume we're looking at:
I guess there are more compact antennas available, but they're likely to be both more expensive and more power-hungry than a dish.
Any sort of real server iron is going to cause both weight and power-consumption problems.
The main challenge is going to be to get enough solar panels fitted to the thing to both keep it flying and keep it talking.
Launching the thing is going to be a challenge - I'm pretty sure the FAA isn't going to approve it, so it either needs to be clandestine or off a boat. And since presumably TPB's finances don't run to aircraft carriers, that introduces challenges all it's own.
Server reliability is going to become a major issue. If you have no way of recovering the thing then you'll need to treat them as disposable - when one fails, crash it into something and replace it with another one. Unless your budget is large, you'd better hope that doesn't happen too often.
And, as others have commented, while removing yourself from every legal jurisdiction does mitigate your risk of having a search warrant issued, it only replaces it with the risk of being shot down. And it's getting to the stage where it's cheaper for a government to take military action than legal action, especially when they know no-one's going to shoot back.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
They're going to put Philip Seymour Hoffman in a blimp in the stratosphere?!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Technically the weather should be more stable in the sky if they set it up properly.
Once solar panels can provide enough power for the drones to stay aloft indefinitely this seems feasible.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
This whole plan is a little too "Pi in the sky" for me ...
Hast du etwas Zeit fuer mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer dich
Von 99 Luftboxens
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Denkst du vielleicht g'rad an mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer dich
Von 99 Luftboxens
Und dass sowas von sowas kommt
99 Luftboxens ...
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Hielt man fuer Ufos aus dem All
Darum schickte ein General
'ne Fliegerstaffel hinterher
Alarm zu geben, wenn's so war
Dabei war'n da am Horizont
Nur 99 Luftboxens
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I've had it with these mf'ing servers on this mf'ing ship!
But I was under the impression that drones do eventually need to be refueled and repaired? Which means these things need to come back through national waters and national airspace, where they suddenly fall under the jurisdiction of whatever country they're in to be refueled. Not to mention whoever is doing the refueling is putting themselves at risk. It won't be hard to track where the piracy drone is heading to for its maintenance. Sounds like a fun idea in theory, but I'm not to sure about the practice.
Ok, TFA conveniently neglects to mention how they plan to get an accessible IP address.
Who wants to be their ISP? And how long do you think that'll last?
This wouldn't do them a whole lot of good. The key to shutting them down isn't getting physical access/jurisdiction to them in some country, but shutting down their link to the internet. Like with any pirate, if you know where their home port is, you can easily cut them off there. Never mind radar and satellite imaging; all you'd need is traceroute and a someone in the country it leads to who is willing to sign a legal order to disable their internet access.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
And Skynet is born.
This was my first thought - what's the advantage of an aircraft rather than a ship (or buoy)? Two or three strategically placed should minimise the chances of weather putting the service offline. Also - using Raspberry Pi? I'm not in IT, but I'm thinking that the server power and bandwidth required by TPB is in the order of "quite lots".
We could set up our network of orbiting drones as node relays and create our own internet. Take that AT&T!
It would work great until AOL launched their own drone, which would be the size of the Hindenburg, immediately swamping the other nodes with traffic and requiring users to type all in caps.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The problem with TBP is that they only provide torrents, not seeds.
I have been thinking over seed servers - what BitTorrent calls a downloader - that would have no moving parts, be very small, easily disguised and solar powered.
You'd glue then to the outside of a building within range of 802.11. You'd need an alternative way to access them remotely in case the SSID or password ever changes.
Do raspberry pis work with USB storage? a four gig commodity stick is about six bucks.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Drone Wars have started!
You can't but love the concepts these guys come up with, all just for the sake of piracy. Didn't they a couple of years ago have a plan of buying their own island. It's a pity it didn't pan out (can't recall the reason), it would have been interesting to see where it would have led things.
I was unable to purchase a Pi when they went on sale.. The Pirate Bay crashed the two resellers buying theirs....
How would the server uplink with the rest of the Internet? It would have to connect either by long range wireless or satellite link. For wireless, you'd need a ground station in a nation, also satellites usually fall under the jurisdiction by the nation they are launched by. To shut them down, the RIAA/MPAA/others would just need to petition whichever country the access is coming through to pressure them into cutting the link. There is no truly independent option for connecting to the web.
The only thing this will do is help protect the server from being confiscated.
I think the easier solution, assuming that the data on the server is not that important (assuming if it's going on drones that there are already countless backups of it), would be to just create cheap throw away servers, then install them in a redundant network in various countries. By the time the legal process goes through to seize one of them, just setup another one elsewhere and wait for the slow progress of the law to catch up to it again. I'm sure some of the people behind The Pirate Bay, are competent enough to setup dummy accounts and stuff to ensure that even if one of the throw-away servers are seized, that they can't be traced back to them.
I can't think of any reason to do this (other than an elaborate April fools), to make these servers available to the internet they will need to either connect to ground infrastructure somewhere directly or rely on a wireless service provider (cellular or satellite).
If they're relying on a wireless internet provider they could just shut access to the servers off, if it's connected to ground infrastructure (which would of course need to go through 3rd party internet providers as well) then access can just be cut off from there instead. They may as well, if using miniature low cost servers, just create small self powered self contained servers that can be hidden at multiple locations.
Or, are they suggested that to access The Pirate Bay you will now need your own dish antenna to contact the server drones directly? :)
They have no intention of actually launching this, anymore than they're going to put servers on Sealand. But the announcement gets them lots of free PR.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
What goes up.....
Unless these drones have nuclear reactors in them, they have to come down some time?
This seems like a lot of wasted energy to me.. what is the point, the purpose of this?
If they are afraid of being blocked or their assets being frozen, the military can shoot down drones, and governments
can still block RF traffic. I don't see any advantage.
All these raspberry birds need to link to a base station somewhere (or how else would would customers communicate with them). And this station needs to be on firm ground, in some jurisdiction, and be connected via some backbone to the rest of the internet. Quite a number of potential points of failure to lean on without ever needing to take a single bird down.
lots of problems with servers in the air... much easier to put servers on ships in int'l waters... like pirate radio...
Just be careful to not put them anywhere near Somalia...
Oh great, that's all we need: an excuse to weaponize copyright enforcement.
I'd rather the MPAA and RIAA didn't have anti-drone drones, thank you very much. Please keep your servers in datacenters or come up with a better plan, like distributing them over millions of peoples' iPhones.
True or not, it definitely gave me a nerd/brain boner.
What's wrong with Nena?
OK, How about 70s American pop music? Norman Greenbaum:
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
When I lay me down to die
Goin' up to the server in the sky
Goin' up to the server in the sky
That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
Prepare yourself, you know it's a must ...
Gotta have a friend in Jesus
So you know that when you die
He's gonna recommend you to the server in the sky
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Putting it at a higher altitude lets the radio reach farther, presumably. I doubt you'd want to use commercial wi-fi for this since the range would only be on the order of hundreds of feet without a good directional antenna.
They've recently moved to serving magnet links only, which makes it far easier to host. Still a lot easier to just place on some old ship. Add solar panels on every surface and you might have a decent option, if you manage to keep power consumption in check and secure some sort of downlink
Would be neat if they could make it using biodegradable components too, so when the crash and/or fall apart from weather conditions they won't add to the trash in the ocean.
... Server down means a hole in the ground
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
It's apparently a literal approach to cloud computing
Herp a derp. You am SO FUNNY! HUR HUR HUR man where do you come up with such insightful, yet hilarious prose? Have you thought about joining a writer's guild? Seriously!!!
He would, but his stuff would just get pirated on the Pirate Bay, so he doesn't figure it's worth it.... :)
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Yeah, right. "Plan is real" right up to the moment when someone at least guesstimates (a) power required to keep that thing airborne for any reasonable amount of time (b) power required to maintain high-speed datalink and compares that to (c) power available from batteries, fuel or similar and (d) cost of batteries, fuel or similar. And no, "solar power" is not the answer. In few years, this may be achievable with large solar-powered blimps. But small drones running Raspberry Pi? Bah. Don't smoke that shit.
Why not find a deserted or uninhabited Island in the Pacific and simply build a low cost, low power data center there. If you use processors like ARM or Atom that don't require additional cooling, you could probably engineer and build something to withstand the climate and you can make use of abundant sunshine for power with a battery backup of marine deep cycle batteries. Add a satellite uplink to the internet and the problem (in theory, at least) is solved. Placing servers on an airborne platform is certainly not without risk. You have extreme conditions of wind, cold, and varying temperatures. Finally, how do you keep the servers up there as what goes up must and eventually will, come down. Helium is infeasible as a lighter than air medium, hydrogen could work. You also have the technical difficulty of keeping it in an orbit that is over international waters. While an interesting engineering challenge, it would make more sense to build a datacenter on an uninhabited island in international waters.
Why not deploy servers in high altitude balloons? Wouldn't that at least save on fuel? And the technology is relatively cheap as well!
It'd be simpler to just use Sealab's emergency radio beacon.
#DeleteChrome
And it rocked! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Skies
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yes, this will go well.
Its a true fact: using "herp a derp" to ridicule someone's post lowers your iq by 20%.
What about weather? Wind, Snow, Rain... Birds flying into them or like others said a missile accidentally detecting it and collides with it...
So will it use solar power? Wind power? and how long will the battery last when the sun goes down?
What if the thing goes offline? Where you will find it? If it falls into the ocean (that is if its flying over the pacific), how will they find this server?
This wont happen. I call this BS!
I can't wait for the Seastedding people to chime in here.
Why does everyone assume they will need to be "shot down"?
Consider that wireless already sucks, all that's needed to jam the things is likely an extension cord and a microwave with no door pointed up.
...as opposed to a false fact...
He it's not just one Raspberry Pi, it's a cluster of them, and with their minimalist site design and recent massive reduction in storage costs, their biggest problem is probably database performance.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Hmm, starting your post with 'Herp a derp' and quoting something that the post you replied to did not say (the summary did), while mocking the grandparent for saying it? I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but there's a significant chance that you might be an idiot.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Or just put the main server, which would communicate to the greater internet via satellite, in a watertight room with a medium sized nuclear reactor, and sink it to the bottom of the ocean. The reactor could operate for nearly half a century, assuming it was built well.
Where to get the nuclear rector? Go to hireapirate.com and ask them nicely to steal a submarine! How could this go wrong?
This comment is somewhat applicable but also somewhat "disconnected" from the discussion.
I would like to see lots and lots of small "local networks" similar to the old Bulletin Board System of yester year.
1) An individuals or small group would act as a "private isp" using wireless networks and local servers.
2) Each of these local networks would be similar to a "intranet" network inside a small to medium sized company.
3) These networks would be off the global network.
4) Large numbers of these small networks would reduce the influence of the PTB (powers that be) that try to control the internet.
( It is much harder to control millions of targets vs a handful of targets.)
5) It might be possible to interconnect these networks with an independent communication system say based on laser diodes.
I picture modifying cheap gigabit ethernet servers, and have lasers and sensors connected to act as the wiring between these servers.
( this is not as far fetched as one might think)
I have spent a year building a drone with parts from DIYdrones and 3 local hobby stores. Getting anything that would stay aloft for any length of time and then power "100Mbps per node up to 50km away" just does not seem to add up.
Just the keeping it aloft for any time at all (days not hours) seems like real work and in order for it too be a service weeks would be more like it. Then you want to power what I would think would be a pretty impressive antenna and radio to get the bits in and out.
However, a mesh of drones circling an island somewhere does sound like a recipe for a Bond film. Maybe they are just working out a screen play and plan on JOINING Hollywood.
Nobody said they had to move entirely to flying servers, the current hosting seems to be working fine. Imagine the lulz when the MAFIAA goons learn of these things! It'd be worth it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Next they will have to form a military force to respond to illegal shoot-downs in international waters or enter into treaties with countries with a navy and air force.
Might need a few airborns for use as wireless relays, but I agree: A drone boat is much easier for the server end.
The #1 rule of Slashdong trolling is to reply to the end of the highest reply chain thereby keeping your post from being buried under tonnes of comments. YOU, sir, are a m-o-r-o-n. Amen.
what's to prevent them from getting shut down?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This sounds like a job for Ham Radio, no? Two-way communication between the drones and multiple packet radios would be difficult to shut down.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
The term "Uptime" suddenly has new meaning.
Think those pirates dun lost their mind.
This idea seems pretty silly. Why not just put the same servers on a boat in international waters?
Unless they're planning on buying their own satellite and use something a heck of a lot more powerful than a Raspberry Pi, this cannot work. How exactly do they plan to connect to an ISP? Through a 4G cellphone tower or a satellite ISP? Not exactly server-grade bandwidth there. And how exactly do they plan to use a Raspberry PI as a server to handle thousands of requests every second? I can't believe this is being seriously discussed by anyone.
The base station would essentially be a router - no content on it, neither legal nor illegal. The court case for taking it down would be very interesting indeed, and might get some big players (backbone providers or anyone else running routers for a living) worried enough to chip in on the defending side.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Why not use a cruise ship like this slashdot story pointed out years ago. http://developers.slashdot.org/story/05/04/20/2251203/offshoring-to-a-ship-in-international-waters
Better than a political fact.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
The mods saw that it wasn't in English, couldn't be bothered to translate it, and are philistines who wouldn't know good music if it filled their vagina with bacon and then sent an Alsatian to go eat it.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Hey man, great sky crime!
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
This one made it to the front page over the one about the Pirate Bay using server hardware based on Lego Mindstorms running the new Linux kernel.
Connectivity provided by a 300-mile-long cat5 cable.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
Have the guy from "Up!" manage the servers.
Just kidding, I know the entire thing is a bs PR stunt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
I think they could broadcast hash tables to a rather
unstoppable base of P2P users.
Once a day, with the announced broadcast over Twitter.
Once it's updated, it would be quite persistent.
The entire Pirate Bay set of magnet links, descriptions, and maybe comments could fit on a flash drive. When the plane lands, update with a new version by plugging in a new drive. With magnet links, the rest is handled by the torrent network.
When Napster came around, some of us foolishly thought the beast was slain, that they couldn't prevent people from sharing music with each other, so easy was it to copy.
They simply shut down the central organization. In retrospect, that was an obvious move.
Then decentralized filesharing came around, and we again thought that we had won.
They went after the individuals, went after the indexing services AND started trying to rewrite the laws to make it possible to block things. That is/will provide the money and drive to start censoring the web, along with "think of the children!"
I worry if Piratebay starts using rasberry pi to play this game of cat and mouse that the mafIAA will respond by 1. redoubling their efforts to censor the web and 2. pass laws saying that hardware manufacturers are liable for copyright infringement their customers do. The big guys will be exempt if they bake heavy DRM right into the hardware, but organizations like Rasberry pi get shut down. The result being a loss of open source and increase in DRM.
Oh, the pun-pain!....on a Monday even
Table-ized A.I.
Small subs that go down deep enough to avoid the turbulence at the surface but shallow enough that it could use solar power and use sonar for communications. People could drop mics and speakers in the sea for a water based internet even. Or even blimps from an air tube (along with needed wires) tether that the under water subs could use as an antenna. and refill the blimps with hydrogen from electrolysis. The blimps could probably be used for the solar array as well.
Lucent in the Sky with Diamonds
Table-ized A.I.
..will be the most difficult part.
I wish there was a -1 retarded mod because you, sir, are a fucking retard.
you want more clouds they help you virtualize
and connect to it.
These guys just rock - and their longevity in the face of all the attacks by MAFIAA is the stuff legends are made of!
It's apparently a literal approach to cloud computing
Herp a derp. You am SO FUNNY! HUR HUR HUR man where do you come up with such insightful, yet hilarious prose? Have you thought about joining a writer's guild? Seriously!!!
He would, but his stuff would just get pirated on the Pirate Bay, so he doesn't figure it's worth it.... :)
I'd rather read something written by someone who's motivated by having something to say, not some self-important hack motivated by delusions of getting rich quick. In any event, pirates tend not to distribute utter garbage in quantity, regardless of the original medium. In my case, I'd rather use my bandwidth to upload many copies of a useful textbook than any number of some trashy romance novels.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Internet pirates keep thinking of extranational territory as some sort of promised land of milk and honey: if they can just get their data outside national boundaries, they'll be golden. They are wrong. A series of international treaties ensures that your vehicle always falls under the jurisdiction of one state or another. The Law of the Sea says that ships fall under the jurisdiction of the nation whose flag they fly, and failing to fly a flag is a domestic crime. The Outer Space Treaty says that spacecraft fall under the jurisdiction of the nation that launched them. And the Tokyo Convention says that crimes aboard aircraft fall under the jurisdiction of the nation they're registered in. (And failure to register an aircraft is typically a domestic crime.) Not sure the Tokyo Convention applies specifically to copyright violations or to unmanned aircraft, but at this point it's a universal international relations principle: your citizens' vehicle, your nation's problem.
Give up your dreams of escaping state control by leaving state borders. Your only hope is to fight within the state, rather than trying to run from it.
It would be far easier for them to hookup with the script-kiddies that are running the bot-nets and distribute their links redundantly across them. With thousands and thousands to shut down, it would take the authorities forever to get rid of that copy of "Mamma Madea's Big Happy Family".
heyyyyy they should use Blimps for servers, they can stay airborne for much less fuel right?
I've been doodling for years, designs of a solar powered small aircraft that could potentially stay aloft forever - given enough storage density (ie lithium ion battery or something even denser), and efficient enough PV arrays, motors, fans and wings it's doable with a small payload which itself could also be powered off the same system. Back when I started these doodles NiMH was just coming into mainstream, but that was still too heavy (didn't stop laptop makers using NiMH for internal power sources, though), it was the one point of frustration that stopped me from prototyping anything. That and the very inefficient glass plated PV cells, whereas now we have formable film PV which can be used as a single layer skin for wing surfaces. OK, it's not very strong, but does it have to be? We're not sending these things into combat, we just want them to stay aloft.
As a demonstration of how light an aircraft can be; back in school I built a dumb glider from some styrofoam laminate I found in a storage bin. This had an eight foot wingspan, was six feet long and used spars made from the same material to reinforce the full fuselage - just to make sure it kept its shape under its own weight and that it didn't detach itself from the wing. In all it weighed less than six pounds (with a small weight in the nose) and when ideal conditions presented (zero wind, slightly overcast), it went for a test flight.
From a two handed running launch the thing flew just shy of 120m and made a soft belly landing.
Pretty good for an unpowered, hand-launched school project. Wonder what it would have done with a propulsion pack that these days would easily weigh about as much as the nose weight?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
It's apparently a literal approach to cloud computing
Herp a derp. You am SO FUNNY! HUR HUR HUR man where do you come up with such insightful, yet hilarious prose? Have you thought about joining a writer's guild? Seriously!!!
He would, but his stuff would just get pirated on the Pirate Bay, so he doesn't figure it's worth it.... :)
You're only being so snarky because this sort of stuff goes right over your head.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.