File Sharing Drones Proof Of Concept Already Built
from the fly-drone-fly dept
There was a fair bit of discussion recently about the story of The Pirate Bay exploring using drones to build a flying file sharing system -- with many insisting that such a thing was a completely ridiculous-to-impossible notion. They might want to think again. It seems that a proof of concept had already been built by a different group, who had no idea that TPB was considering this idea. Liam Young from Tomorrow's Thoughts Today already built what's basically an implementation of the what the Pirate Bay described, which you can see below:Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: drones, file sharing, international waters
Companies: the pirate bay
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Two thoughts
2. I'd trademark the name Misquito for this project.
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The future
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BRING IT ON!
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I have to say this story is a great attention grab, but really just a gimmick, unless TPB didn't do a google search for "International Waters" because the second result talks about whether they are 'lawless' and "international waters for planes" the fourth result talks specifically about flying craft. So either no one at the TPB did the search, which is kinda hard to believe... or its a hoax.
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Me too
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Re: Me too
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The FAA - Government-industrial complex can shoot those things down in seconds (and they have taxpayer resources to do it), while those things cost money for people to create, not to mention they can impose huge liabilities on anyone caught using or delivering these devices which can be a huge deterrence to their spread.
Bad laws need to be repealed, not simply worked around. Otherwise, you have a situation like China or Russia.
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someone was talking about funding a carrier... how about a battleship? Much harder to kill (pure ability to take damage and keep functioning, not more damage resistant) and pretty much perfect of C&C work. much cheaper to maintain it's guns than the planes on a carrier, too.
(well, sadly there's the downside of carriers being able to kill 'em, but that's what Light carriers are for: dedicated interception duty. much cheaper than a standard carrier.)
that said, what you probably Actually want is a stealth cruiser.
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Laws governing international waters can easily be changed by various governments willing to do so at the control of various pro-IP interests.
The reason no anti-drone laws of this nature cover International waters yet is simply because drones that can be used to infringe, and hence impede on various government granted monopoly privileges, hadn't existed before. If this does manage to circumvent various government established monopoly privileges, trust me, laws governing international waters will change and governments will find a way to legally stop these things with impunity.
None of this will stop piracy, of course, it can't, but it will impede political communication and it will impede competition against government established monopoly communication channels, artificially raising the price of communication in general.
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I'm not all that sure they'd have a hard time finding a state more friendly to their cause and business to act as a land station either. That being the case if State A opens fire on TPB's drones which are registered in State B; State B can consider this an act of war no matter what State A's excuses are. Hardly impunity.
And a precedent has been set. While pirate radio clearly broke the UK's right to regulate the public airwaves (grant a monopoly on spectrum) the Royal Navy never, to the best of my knowledge, never seized or sunk a pirate radio ship operating in international waters. So there is no need to change maritime law as this has already been settled by that example. At least as far as these things ever do get settled.
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Heck, just track the silly things and seize them on the ground.
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Irony: Destroying them would be an act of international piracy and terrorism, by the definitions most people use. ;)
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Sorry, the whole idea is a non-starter, and amusing sideline that shows only what people will do to steal content - how desperate they must be!
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The thing has to connect somewhere, and that is the point where it will fail - EVERY TIME.
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The Pirate Bay is engaged in a publicity stunt. They do not actually need to use drones.
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"Hey guys, we have a website that pisses the americans off, let us have a tiny bit of space and ignore us, and you get to enjoy their rage face."
Not only will any action taken then will result in war, it will result in NUCLEAR war.
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Get Stuffed
It would work out fine. Get off your sorry fat ass and move if you're too far away, you spoiled lazy lump.
How far is it from Toledo Ohio to international waters?
Who gives a shit? This is for the Free World, not the Dying Police States of Fascism.
I know its hard for you to believe, but the world does not revolve around your sorry dumb asses.
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Not sure why they bother with drones....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4xNcF6T7Is
Why are they even bothering with drones. Why not just go for placing a ton of small satellites into orbit?
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Re: Not sure why they bother with drones....
I choose lifeboat because they are designed to auto-right themselves when blown over by a large wave. They will use way less power to use them and potentially could harness enough power via solar panels mounted to the boat to stay out there indefinitely.
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Re: Re: Not sure why they bother with drones....
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Fresnel zone.
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Right, Mike?
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Go, Freedom Advocates and Innovators, Go!
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I know how you guys just hate people being able to communicate freely on a mass scale.
This has nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with the citizenry being able to communicate.
Nice try though.
I know I know AC but but but... piracy... for the children blah blah blah.
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Go, Pirates, Go!
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i am monkyyy and i approve of this message
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Re: Go Pirates
Pirate4ever.
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foreseeable consequences
Near-earth orbit is an even more pollutible region than urban airspace. Orbital debris is already an enormous pain; a paint flake or a machine screw travelling at orbital velocity can do serious damage to a delicate instrument (like say, a satellite), debris can stay up for a long time, and collisions just create more debris. A long-term solution will be tricky, but suffice to say a hacker group that tried to inject thousands of microsatellites into orbit without permission would make itself seriously unpopular.
I like the idea of a covert network riding legitimate hardware. Most the smartphones in a city working together could form a pretty nice one. And it could be made deniable too: a smartphone worm could create such a network, so any particular person with a file-sharing phone could plausibly be completely innocent and unaware of what was going on-- and this would be true even if no such worm had ever actually made the rounds.
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Re: foreseeable consequences
1. There is A LOT of space to be occupied before collisions become a frequent occurrence. This is even increased by the fact that there are multiple levels of orbit that can be utilized before it becomes a serious problem.
2. So develop the micro-satellites to be encased to deploy a soft exterior or better yet maybe you could use reverse electro-magnetism that could be triggered by a proximity sensor and repel other objects so that they don't collide with them.
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All someone would need to do then is have the right instructions to on how to mod a SatTV dish to access the network and Bingo Bango... On Demand file server network available to anyone that wanted to access it. Doesn't even have to be connected to the Internet at all.
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I also like your idea of "a thick layer of soft foam". Are you perchance thinking of six inches of foam rubber? People have actually been working on this problem for a while.
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What I was talking about is controlling the polarity of an electro-magnet to repel instead of attract an object in much the same way natural magnets repel each other when the polarity is reversed on one of them.
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And comic book physics this isn't. People didn't just pull that out of their rear like Star Wars' Death Star. Ferromagnetism is just one kind. You can use magnetic fields to repel metals as well as attract. And yeah, even a 'soft' exterior would be a disaster if it hit a solar panel.
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Imagine the first time one of the TPB drones collides with a commercial passenger flight. Here's the headline in the NY Times:
Aaaannd here's the headline here at Techdirt:
You guys and you're fantasies... you never cease to amaze.
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Interesting...
There is also the fact that flight routes are pretty much standard and well known. If "pirates" manage to solve the engineering problems of putting a drone in the air in international waters for long enough to be useful (and keep it there) I think they won't have any problem in avoiding known flight routes.
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2. Commercial airliners also have long range radar and are directed by air traffic controllers with long range radar which would spot the drones long before they had a chance to collide.
So it appears you are the one with the fantasies.
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"Shoot all you want. We'll make more!"
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Under the radar
There really are quite a few examples of people working on very similar projects for a variety of reasons. TPB going to magnets freed them up immensly. That was probably step one.
Here's another example: http://server-sky.com/
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