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File-sharers have always had a flair for the dramatic, and the latest effort by Pirate Parties International (PPI) lives up to this longtime characterization. For yesterday a group of PPI’s members began discussing plans for a high-altitude balloon that would host an airborne file-sharing site, placing it well above the reach of pesky copyright laws and enforcement groups.
“We plan to send a file-sharing site (or something similar) into the sky – possibly a blog (?),” writes Erik Lonroth. “We plan to use some kind of balloon and try to keep it up in the air for as long as possible. Hopefully irritating the crap out of authorities in as many countries as possible.”
Fellow member Francisco George suggests the group could use SkyGrabber software to download material from the airborne site, much as Iraqi insurgents did when they hijacked images and live video feeds form US drones in the War in Iraq.
Moreover, here’s Lonroth’s plan:
Basically – its a balloon as a first step.
A balloon with a “webserver”/”file sharing site” proposes some separate problems:
1. Make a balloon stay up “long” in the air. High enough to be annoying, low enough to allow various “data traffic”.
2. Define a MINIMUM of devices that needs to go up with it, that….
3. A) Can be powered by a “POWER SOURCE”. B) Survives very cold climates and tough winds. C) Can’t be “hacked”. D) Provides a “pirate-like service” that can be accessed somehow from ground level.
4. In best case – can be recovered.
A balloon with a “webserver”/”file sharing site” proposes some separate problems:
1. Make a balloon stay up “long” in the air. High enough to be annoying, low enough to allow various “data traffic”.
2. Define a MINIMUM of devices that needs to go up with it, that….
3. A) Can be powered by a “POWER SOURCE”. B) Survives very cold climates and tough winds. C) Can’t be “hacked”. D) Provides a “pirate-like service” that can be accessed somehow from ground level.
4. In best case – can be recovered.
The plan is pretty appealing and would certainly lead to an eventual drastic retooling of how we think of copyright protections, but it’s likely to never get past the drawing board phase. If you recall there was a sort of similar effort on the part of The Pirate Bay back in 2007 when it looked into the possibility ofbuying Sealand, the sovereign Principality founded in 1967 in international waters, six miles off the eastern shores of Britain.
That plan lasted for about a month until it realized that it “would have been difficult to get the [network] capacity we needed” out there.
In any event, I do hope Lonroth and the PPI succeed. If anything it would be interesting to see how the RIAA and MPAA react and whether or not we see them invest in some sport of copyright air force to take out “insurgent” websites.
Source: ZeroPaid
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