With the entertainment industry determined to stop filesharers, countless torrent sites have collapsed under the pressure and many survivors are arguably biding their time. For years, sites like The Pirate Bay have been considering ways to sidestep the legal system, such as buying the micronation of Sealand. That venture proved to be too expensive, but filesharers haven't given up on dodging copyright law and the Pirate Parties International (PPI) may have found a solution.
PPI is the umbrella organization of the Pirate Party movement (active in nearly 50 countries), and some of its members are mulling the possibility of running a filesharing site from the sky. "We plan to use some kind of balloon and try to keep it up in the air for as long as possible," said Swedish engineer Erik Lönroth. Someone also suggested running a site from a satellite in space.
No matter the vessel or altitude, operating a star-bound site from Earth would be a daunting task – financially, legally and technically. Assuming they scraped the funds together and launched a site into orbit, it could still be disconnected if its bandwidth provider received a takedown notice. Not to mention how difficult it would be to perform physical repairs on the server.