Torrent site The Pirate Bay wants to "build something extraordinary" to keep its servers -- "the ones that re-direct your traffic to a secret location" -- safe from prying eyes.

In a post on the website's blog, "MrSpock" reveals plans to use "GPS-controlled drones, far-reaching cheap radio equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi," to build low-orbit aircraft that will float some kilometers up in the air.

These so-called Low Orbit Server Stations (LOSS) will act as satellites, redirecting traffic and pointing people towards torrents. "With modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away," a Pirate Bay spokesman says.


In its infancy, The Pirate Bay famously kept its servers in Sweden with the optimism that that they were safe from the United States' law enforcement agencies, and American entertainment outfits.

From its inception 2003, The Pirate Bay would publish legal threats it received, and any "polite" responses they sent back.

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Each response had a similar theme: our servers are safe because they are in Sweden.

Take this one from 2004, in reply to movie studio Dreamworks. "As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America," a Pirate Bay staff member wrote. "Sweden is a country in northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here. For your information, no Swedish law is being violated."


That bravado shattered in 2006 when Swedish police raided the Stockholm offices, confiscated the servers and caused the website to go offline for three days. Pirate Bay staffers were arrested and four were charged with "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws" in 2008.

Since then, the torrent hub has had to be a lot more careful. It still has servers in Sweden -- it installed some new ones in Malmö in southern Sweden -- but they're much more secretive about their location -- these new ones are hidden in a mountain cave. The Pirate Bay also has servers in both Belgium and Russia for backup in case of another raid

This isn't the first time the site has promised radical steps to remain online. In 2007, the Bay reportedly tried to buy the Principality of Sealand -- a micronation platform in the North Sea off the Suffolk coast -- for true legal immunity. The Sealand government, however, did not want to be involved with the file-sharing site.


But for The Pirate Bay, "we can't limit ourselves to hosting things just on land anymore." The low-orbit servers (if they ever come to fruition) will be immune from the law (says The Pirate Bay) because "our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war."

The site's ambitious plans don't end there. "When time comes we will host in all parts of the galaxy, being true to our slogan of being the galaxy's most resilient system." Good luck with that, guys.

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