SOPA Archives - Serious Startups

It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, No, It’s Pirate Bay

Pirate Bay which recently due to legal litigation against another site, revamped how it would do business is doing so yet again. First they would no longer allow users to download Torrent files from them, but instead use a magnet to do so. Now is flying in the Drones to do its work.

Seeing how the US has no legal grounds over International waters, that’s where The Pirate Bay is heading, but not in ships. Using GPS-controlled drones, instead of data centers.

Everyone knows WHAT TPB is. Now they’re going to have to think about WHERE TPB is. We were further informed that the first drone will probably fly above international waters.We’re already the most resilient and the most down to earth. That’s why we need to lift off, being this connected to the ground doesn’t feel appropriate to us anymore,

Is the statement Pirate Bay told TorrentFreaks earlier today. Not sure how it’ll work, don’t worry, they’ve also even explained it as they are not shy that this’ll be their next move to combat what has been an offensive by the US against websites, the government doesn’t like, even if no legal grounds to stop it are there.

With the development of GPS controlled drones, far-reaching cheap radio equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi, we’re going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air. This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war. We’re just starting so we haven’t figured everything out yet. But we can’t limit ourselves to hosting things just on land anymore. These Low Orbit Server Stations (LOSS) are just the first attempt. With modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away. For the proxy system we’re building, that’s more than enough.

Lets just make sure those in control don’t accidentally fly over New York as they already have the ability to not only shot down planes, but Drones as well.

Scott Pelley: Are you satisfied that you’ve dealt with threats from aircraft, even light planes, model planes, that kind of thing?

Kelly: Well, it’s something that’s on our radar screen. I mean in an extreme situation, you would have some means to take down a plane.

Pelley: Do you mean to say that the NYPD has the means to take down an aircraft?

Kelly: Yes, I prefer not to get into the details but obviously this would be in a very extreme situation.

Pelley: You have the equipment and the training.

Kelly: Yes

As you can see again in an article we posted in September of last year. Here video included.

This’ll be a new challenge as we may see more Torrent sites trying to do the same. We’ll be keeping an eye on this as more news comes in.

Source: TorrentFreak

Government Stranglehold On Kim DotCom Slipping

When the New Zealand government assisted the United States with serving warrants on the founders of megaupload, it made explosive news. Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom (who’s last name has been changed to dotcom from Schmitz), is a resident in New Zealand and lives on a sprawling mansion in the hillside of the country.

The New Zealand government took possession of Dotcom’s home, several cars and several million dollars that Dotcom had in bank accounts in the country. They also held Dotcom without bail as long as they could before extradition.

Three weeks ago Dotcom was finally allowed out on bail. The government in New Zealand had set up an allowance of sorts for Dotcom and his family to live off of while awaiting an extradition hearing later this summer.

More after the break
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Google Doodle Helps Inform People About SOPA On Blackout Day

January 18th is SOPA Blackout day. Websites around the country are “blacking out” in protest and to spread the word about the Software Online Piracy Act otherwise known as SOPA.

Reports on Tuesday mentioned that SOPA was most likely going to be held up in Congress however websites like XDA and Reddit said they were still going forward with plans to black out to encourage people to do something about SOPA.

XDA is hoping that people will contact their congressman by email or phone to let them know that they don’t support SOPA.

While it would be impractical to think that Google could go black and stop operating their search engine for a day in support of the anti-SOPA movement, they have posted the Google Doodle above with an information link below the search bar.

Over the years Google has been a bit wishy-washy in their dealings with issues of online piracy. While they don’t hold back search results from search engines for torrentz and other online download sites, they did block Grooveshark from the Android Market despite the fact that Grooveshark has a clear policy about digital rights.

Nevertheless the Google Doodle will help spread the word about SOPA to the millions of folks who do a Google search today.

Video Game Manufacturers Razer And Red 5 Take A Stand Against SOPA at CES

The interwebs are going wild about SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act). We’ve all read the story by now about XDA and many other web companies like Reddit, who are going dark this week on January 18th to raise awareness about SOPA.

Well these guys at CES could not have said it any better. Although many in the video game industry are believed to be protected by SOPA because of online piracy, many companies actually agree that SOPA is too restrictive and that the government shouldn’t be able to exert as much control as they are proposing.

It’s true that millions of dollars are lost in online piracy but it’s very hard these days to associate actual numbers to the losses of the copyright holders and creators. On one hand copyright owners may be losing initial dollars from someone downloading an mp3 or a torrent of a movie, on the other hand it’s well-known that even pirated copies of music, videos, movies and software lead to building not just scale but popularity.

SOPA affects everyone who uses the internet. If SOPA is to pass than then websites could be shut down without warning if a site is believed to be violating copyrights. In addition SOPA could cause websites from being blocked from ad payment networks and payment facilitators like PayPal.

For more on SOPA read this wiki