Filesharers Want To Build Weather-Balloon-Hosted Download Site

blogs.forbes.com

13 points·lotusleaf1987··8 comments

Wow, the pirates are coming full circle to their intellectual ancestors, and launching a fleet of vessels!

That's awesome. When it flies above international waters it won't be regulated?

It can still be regulated/blocked by the countries people live in, just like with the Pirate Bay.

The only recourse is wireless transmission, like the old pirate radio ships, but given the state of satellite technology that model would not translate well.

What countries regulate/block the Pirate Bay without blocking all other outgoing traffic?

The reality is that people use VPN providers in friendly countries for their file-sharing now. What you see when you type in thepiratebay to your web browser has little relation to what is actually happening in the file-sharing community.

Fascinated with the practicality of this. How do you keep such a balloon at a stable altitude and position? And what about power generation? Or radiation hardening?

Solar with a battery is probably the best for long durations. I imagine gyroscopes might be useful for stabilization. Radiation hardening is fairly simple; most things requiring the shielding can be shielded, with cables connecting them to antennas. To me the biggest issue would be preventing government/RIAA (or equivalent by country) from crippling it electronically from the ground. The server would have to be maintained from the ground, so any malfunction or bug would be the deadliest threat.

This is all so Snowcrash -- welcome to yesterday's science fiction.

This is not practical, logical, or cost effective. If this is anything more than free news coverage, then those involved are idiots.

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