The Pirate Bay is setting sail for stranger seas. Sweden’s most infamous website and one of the more popular sources of pirated music, movies, and video games on the Internet announced on Sunday night that it will place its servers well out of the reach of authorities and corporations looking to protect their intellectual property. How will the Pirate Bay ensure that intrepid web surfers will still have access to magnet files of bootleged versions of Call of Duty? By sending its servers into space.
In a post on its official blog, The Pirate Bay stated that, thanks to the development of GPS-controlled drones, the ultra-tiny, powerful RasberryPi computer and powerful, affordable radio equipment, it will be able to fly its servers into low orbit where they can’t be seized by authorities looking to shut the service down. The LOSSs, Low Orbit Server Stations, will be able to transfer around 100Mbps up to around 31 miles away.
For less scrupulous gamers with a penchant for the fantastic, this means that games can be pirated from space, which is both romantic and convenient. For game publishers like Activision-Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and many others, these servers mean that the thorn of The Pirate Bay will be driven even deeper into their sides.
The gaming industry won at least a symbolic victory against The Pirate Bay earlier this year. A copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in 2008 against The Pirate Bay resulted in a Swedish court finding the three founders of the site guilty of unlawful transfers of protected material, including classic titles like Diablo II, Call of Duty 2, Warcraft, and F.E.A.R. The defendants appealed the decision with the Supreme Court of Sweden, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal, locking the Bay’s founders into sentences of one year in prison and fines of around $3.62 million each. Of course, those founders continue to live free abroad and their site continues to operate.
As of now, it looks like IP thieves will have plenty of opportunity to download games like Diablo III and the rumored Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 from The Pirate Bay sometime during 2012. The only difference is that they’ll be potentially be pulling them down from space. That last sentence should be read with as loud a voice with as strong an echo as possible.
