Small ground-traversing robots would not be subject to the same weight penalties as airborn drones. And ground level is where most of us wifi users happen to be, most of the time. We've built them a wonderful habitat replete with high-speed autoroutes - storm drains and sewers - and convenience stores to snack from in the shape of dumpsters and trash. In the city, you are never more than three metres away from a rat. Their robot minions would be better modelled on the humble sewer rat than on the soaring seagull. Rather than looking up at the stars, I believe the Pirate Bay should be looking down at the sewers. And baloon-type UAVs have the slight problem of being at the mercy of the winds, or requiring an anchor cable (which again makes them trivially easy for the Police to take down). The sad truth is, quadrotors and small UAVs have lamentably poor airborn endurance, with flight durations measured in double or triple digit seconds rather than minutes, let alone hours. Otherwise, it's Game Over for the MPAA.) This means that a cat-and-mouse game can be easily won by the authorities there's no need to deploy air-to-air missiles over built-up areas when you can just have the Police keep an eye out for pirates refuelling their drones after midnight. (I am ruling out nuclear propulsion because I assume The Pirate Bay do not have access to a supply of fissionable materials. LOSS needs to either be self-sustaining (which implies solar propulsion, along the lines of ELHASPA or NASA's Pathfinder aircraft) or it's going to have to land regularly to take on fuel. All of which is going to drive up the weight, complexity, and cost of the LOSS. To blanket an area of a square kilometre with a strong enough signal to sustain a high data rate (they say around 100mbps) is going to take both a decent antenna and a fair amount of electricity. On top of which, TPB propose to broadcast a wifi signal from their LOSS drones. The Raspberry Pi is a low power device, but still draws juice via micro-USB, at up to five watts. First among these is power consumption and payload weight constraints.
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