File-Sharing Group Mulls a Floating Pirate Ship of Servers inside the Sky [Pirate]

Pirate Parties International recently had a meeting wherein an extremely bonkers proposal was discussed. The issue: Where can servers that store data frequently seen as unsavory be kept? The solution: Hanging from an enormous balloon within the sky?

Pirate Parties International, which, notably, would not have direct ties to PiratPartiet (the Swedish political party with two MPs and links to The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks ), still has to constantly take care of the seizing of varied servers. Looking to keep these servers safe from the authorities isn’t any easy task, person who is consistently being fought. The crowd tried back in 2007 to store its servers on Sealand, a former British naval base off the coast of Suffolk that (mostly) seceded and claimed independence as a micronation. (Side note: The history of Sealand is fascinating and frequently hilarious-its Wikipedia page is extremely recommended.) But the deal fell through, so PPI often has brainstorming sessions to return up with new ideas.

Some of those will likely be more feasible than others.

Last week, the crowd’s mailing list included discussion of a probable airborne server, connected to either a blimp (solar-powered, obviously, like the Nephelios ) or a weather balloon. That craft would both keep it safe and, inside the words of one Swedish engineer, ” hopefully irritate the crap out of authorities in as many countries as possible.” After all, this concept isn’t totally practical, since the crowd has limited resources and an airborne server presents a complete host of problems (not least of that’s how you can keep it within the air for a protracted time period).

Other suggestions included a low-level satellite, that’s costlier but actually a more robust idea-it’s permanent, it’s already been done, and it operates in less dubious legal waters. Not to assert that it wouldn’t be great to work out a tremendous floating balloon attached to a server within the sky, however it might only happen when pigs fly alongside it.

[ Forbes ]

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This post is tagged: authorities, british naval base, pirate bay, swedish engineer, time period, weather balloon, wikileaks