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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?
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
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.
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/
Not too hard to do - just need enough money.
Note: given the sheer amount of pollution, you should probably only do the following to prove a point, and little else.
First, buy hundreds, if not thousands of cheap mylar helium balloons. Then, strap a tiny computer, a geek stick full of pirated material, a cheap wifi WAP /w antenna booster, and a battery pack to each bundle of balloons. Release them over the area by the hundreds over the west coast of a continent, doing so from pickup trucks at random locations. The mylar balloons last for well over a week, and (at least somewhat) reflect radar signals so that aircraft could avoid them if need be.
Pros: They're too small to waste A/A or SAM weaponry on, if you knock one down there's hundreds more, and they can be launched with some modicum of stealth.
Cons: Not certain how reliable any given one would be, they could be hijacked (though they could be hardened), and you'll have little control over their flight path. In aggregate, it'll be a bit pricey to do, and you'd have to buy your helium a little at a time to avoid notice.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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 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?
Honestly, I'd go with a small wind and solar power generator with a battery pack. Then you wouldn't have to worry about them becoming dead-in-the-sky (dits).
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
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.
I'd suggest just under 100 of them. Be sure they're reflective of light in the 630-740nm range.
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
... 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......
From the Associated Press, July 15, 2013:
Faced with an ongoing budget crisis for the next school year and pressure from federal mandates to increase education about copyright law and the life-imprisonment mandatory minimum sentence violations carry, the local high school is offering a $10 bounty for each piracy-supporting balloon brought in with a functioning computer. School officials have announced that through a partnership with an unnamed sponsor, each mylar balloon (the so-callen "floating sanity") will bring in approximately $20 for the school, and the school will keep the computers as well.
In an Interview last Tuesday, school district superintendent Ben Dover extolled the benefits of the program. "We see this as a win/win situation, very likely to ease the pain of the budget deficiencies. We get an influx of new computers, and additional monetary assets as well." he said to a room of reporters and concerned parents. "If, as rumors have suggested, the computers are unable to run Windows 9 Bloat Edition, we can still sell them off to help cover the cost of licensing both installations of our grading software.
Sources close to the issue say that there are some concerns, however, as the partnership contract has some unusual conditions. According to one anonymous source, the contract specifies that all term papers and homework assignments completed by students will become the sole property of the partner, who will then charge licensing fees to the school and teachers before they will be able to grade the students' work, costing the school up to $500 per assignment, or more if the work will be used as a class example.
A spokesperson for the partner, who has asked to be addressed only as Dick, has denied such allegations. "That's preposterous," he told reporters, "our license fees aren't nearly that low."
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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.
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%.
I can't wait for the Seastedding people to chime in here.
Yeah, but as with just about everything, it's the "getting enough money" part that makes up the bulk of the "hard part."
Well, at lot of even home-grown ones can be 100% automated to fly a path pretty darn well. I think there was a story about one going super far (trans Atlantic?) made by some students on the cheap.
So you have it fly around a path, and either via timer or sensor... have it return to a specific landing place by the shore where someone can refuel it / maintain it, etc.
Begun, the Drone Wars have.
Good-bye
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?
Begun, the Drone War has.
FTFY.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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
The way you make it
I can't believe it
I ain't never seen a plan...like...that
The way you show it
It makes geek's peepee go....DADOINGDOINGDOOOIIIIING!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is there anything like styrofoam that's biodegradable? There are already RC planes made of various forms of it. Still you can't get away from the battery and electronics...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No points to mod you up, but I thought it was funny.
But then I'm old enough to remember the song.
-- Alastair
Yeah I think TPB comes up with these wacky plans once in a while as sort of a sci-fi concept to demonstrate how hard it could be made to take a site offline at the hardware level. It could be possible but it wouldn't be cheap or easy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Might need a few airborns for use as wireless relays, but I agree: A drone boat is much easier for the server end.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sorry - I didn't get down to your post before putting mine in. And your post was way better...
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".
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.