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What Happens To Data When a Cloud Provider Dies?
Lucas123 writes "When cloud storage providers shut down, as four have done in the past year, users are left wondering how they'll get their data back and whether they'll be able to migrate it directly to a new service provider. More importantly, analysts say, what guarantees do they have that the data stored offsite will be deleted after the shutdown. Currently, there is no direct way to migrate data to another provider, and there are no government rules or regulations specific to data managed by cloud storage providers."
Does it dream?
As if people weren't losing any data when "the cloud" was called "shared hosting".
You take your chances if your hosting your data somewhere outside of your control. Unfortunately, when any company goes broke, customer concerns tend to go out the window as the major creditors swoop in to grab what value they can.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A cloud based form of backup or duplicates can only be one leg of a system to protect data. Gotta have at least 3 legs to stand on.
The reminder that 4 services closed in one year is fair warning.
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The cloud has immense uses but "trust me" is not something you ever want to here from the government or a company. Anyone that puts there assets out in the ether with no alternate location is asking for trouble.
Don't use the smaller cloud providers, rely on those that are too big to fail.
If it's not on your own system, encrypt it (maybe even on your own system, in certain cases), so that it will be useless if the cloud provider goes without deleting your stuff.
As for backups: do it yourself (as well).
Oh Slashdot, this is not news. IT lawyers have been addressing this for ages. If the SPA doesn't have clauses in place to protect customer data, simple, dont go with them.
The bigger concern is where the data is storred and who's viewing the data. Any buyer out there who is looking at Cloud must ask all these questions before signing up.
If you pay peanuts you get monkies, I think that sums this up!
And, this is why I will not be using cloud services for anything of value (meaning "anything ever"). It is bad enough that I have to rely on email from someone else.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Absolutely it does. The simple fact is time and again it is seen that private entities are completely irresponsible and require government oversight and the threat of law to keep them in check.
This idea of deregulation needs to stop. Conservative thinking is a failure. The only time regulation doesnt work is when it is purposely sabotaged to not work which is time and again what conservatives do because its too costly to follow the law and do the right things. If corporations (even do no wrong Google) where not inherently evil, this wouldn't be a issue, But capitalism is just as evil as communism, just in its own ways.
I'd think these issues are general so far as storing your data "anywhere but here" is concerned.
The Cloud is a great deal for the provider, and a terrible deal for the customer. No data security, and no guarantees in case of a catastrophic provider failure.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Storage is cheap. Just get something like a dRobo, throw some barracuda HDs in it and you have a multi-terabyte raid array.
Just SCP your files down the net into the black box and you're all set. Question is, why aren't you doing this already?
Just leaving your files up on your host and NOT backing up to local storage is classic dumbfuckery.
For databases, most cloud users use MySQL anyway, so just use the admin tool to back up and replicate to a local server. Don't have a suitable machine for a local server? Get a mac-mini, they are rather inexpensive and come with MySQL5 pre-installed and configurable through Apple's server admin interface.
Dear Cloud entrepreneurs and VC's:
If you are wondering why businesses aren't trampling themselves to go to a public cloud, here is half your answer. The other half was the Amazon outage. A CIO does not like depending on an outside company for his uptime metric. He wants total control. If there is an outage, he wants HIS people on it reporting to HIM. He doesn't want to go back to the CEO, "the cloud provider is working on it and there is nothing I can do to make it go faster."
If clouds happen, it will mostly be private clouds under the company's control. Sure it may not have as high uptime or be more expensive, but at least it's under their control. You surrender control going to an external cloud.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Paradigm-shifting forecasts notwithstanding, maybe you're just bone-stupid relying on someone else's storage to save your data?
Seriously, the 'cloud' storage IS a decent idea for data that needs to be accessed frequently from widely different locations.
But to rely on it (as some as suggested) as a primary storage point?
AHAHAHAHAAHHAAH. You're just plain dumb.
-Styopa
Once your data is in the cloud, you don't really control it anymore. And, some of the TOS for these things more or less say "we get to keep it and use it if we want to".
The fact that these fold an go under is hardly surprising ... and I bet the legal status of your data is a little bit murky if the assets get sold off to someone else.
The cloud has always seemed a little bit sketchy in some places ... both because it's poorly defined, and what's to say your data doesn't end up in a country with rather liberal "all your data are belong to us" laws?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
then after a while - in the next cycle - it shows somewhere else.
It rains down your data, everywhere.
Not only has this been an issue with computer data for a long time (see timesharing services), but it's been an issue in the "real world" for thousands of years. When Person A gives property to Person B for safekeeping it's called Bailment. There is a massive amount of common law on this.
But we already have the required government regulation, in the form of contract laws and the court system to oversee them.
There's no monopoly issue here, such as there is with say cable TV or EM spectrum.
There's no personal safety issue here, such as there is with food and drugs.
There's no necessity for living here, such as there is with electric/gas and water.
If you want some guarantee that they destroy your data when you are no longer a customer then use one that proivdes that guarantee. At my place of work we have language in out contract with our dedicated server provider about what they must do with hard drives that we have used and so on - and yes that means we negotiated with them for a price and likely paid more than if we didn't want that requirement placed on them.
really. the cloud is just a new name on an old concept, that's become viable because bandwidth is cheaper than in the past.
Anybody want my mod points?
you are half right.
assume both entities are equally powerful and hostile to you (ie, the gov and big business).
the only way to balance that is to have the old concept of checks/balances.
sadly, the republican dominated USA we live in for the last 10 or so years has turned the balance of power on its side and given both entities power but without ANY checks to keep them honest. the worst of both worlds, actually.
you can't trust the gov and you can't trust business. you can only trust them if they are at odds with each other. when they are friends, LOOK OUT FOR YOUR WALLET (and privacy).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
So adjust the law about what corporations are about. Right now they have a duty to their shareholders. Most companies incorporate in the state with the most favorable corporate laws, a Federal corporate law could help that. (You would have to incorporate in you own state, or incorporate Federally.)
Corporations should be beholden primarily to the taxpayers, the shareholders get a cut and say after that. Corporate officers should answer to the taxpayers. Attorney-client privilege for corporate lawyers should extend to the taxpayers, not the officers or shareholders.
Remember: Incorporation is a legal fiction given by the Government. The power of the government derives from the will of the people. Corporations should always act in the best interest of the people, and like the Secret Service, they should be willing to take a bullet for us. If a group of people don't want to take this responsibility, no one is forcing them to incorporate.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Currently, there is no direct way to migrate data to another provider, and there are no government rules or regulations specific to data managed by cloud storage providers.
Why is it that recently, people seem to think the answer is in government regulation, when in the past, people would choose a vendor based upon reputation and quality of service. I guess if it's a regulated industry, you can blame your shitty decision-making on the government.
To respond the concern about lost data, just because it's "in the cloud" doesn't mean that you don't have to back your stuff up. Data backup has always been and always will be a "best practice". From personal experience, a friend of mine ran a local ISP back in the late 90s. Shell accounts with storage were included with the flat access subscription rate. When he finally pulled the plug on it, he had 3 or 4 boxes just full of crap people put on there. We just went though it and made copies of the interesting stuff. I imagine the attitude of a startup wouldn't be much different than that. New technologies are tough, and tougher when you decide you want to embrace something like cloud computing, and see a bunch of companies you've never heard of competing for your business. You either go with Amazon, Google, IBM, or someone who might disappear in a year.
On a personal note, I think people should think very carefully about the decision to not host their own data, especially if it's of a sensitive nature. It's like paying someone to hold on to your vertical file for you and trusting that they won't tamper with it or make copies of your documents.
An interesting notion just occured to me though - people have trusted banks with things they put in safety deposit boxes for a long time so you have reputation to go by, would you trust a bank to host your datacenter?
We don't even have that in running cloud storage providers, let alone shut down ones.
Actually, I'd say when a company collapses, government regulation is the only way customers (and investors and creditors) are going to have any hope of protection. That's why we have bankruptcy laws in the first place. The free market can't regulate a company that has collapsed, it has nothing to lose. What's going to happen? Another company is going to out compete it at collapsing?
Until we have the utopia that is our phones as our primary computers that can be used on the go and then seamlessly transition to desktop use with keyboards and monitors, storing data locally, planning ahead and synchronizing what you need will continue to be the way you should manage your data. Cloud services should be a last resort backup ONLY.
What is the draw to cloud services anyway? Access to your data from anywhere?
You can get 12" laptops with 500gb hard drives and decently-sized keyboards. Use standby instead of shutting down and you have pactically-instant startup and still lots of battery life
Heck, most people need little more than Facebook, email and a place to store pictures. Any smartphone can do that.
That information is my personal property.
It is the government that usually sorts out property issues (and contract issues). There is a VERY long history of this.
Sorry to rain on your psuedo-libertarianism parade but the government is exactly the right entity to help sort this out. This is a simple property issue.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Hopefully semi-serious customers do have in-house backups, and semi-serious providers do give a bit of warning before pulling the plug ?
That's a lot of effort and money down the drain for users, in any case.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
If you give your data to someone, they have it.
You can't control what they do with it.
You can try to force them through threats, laws, legal actions, contracts, promises, etc. But that isn't the same as controlling it.
If you want control of your data, you need to keep control of your data.
Maybe RMS should coin a phrase and write an essay on how cloud computing is so careless.
Corporations should be beholden primarily to the taxpayers, the shareholders get a cut and say after that. Corporate officers should answer to the taxpayers. Attorney-client privilege for corporate lawyers should extend to the taxpayers, not the officers or shareholders.
Remember: Incorporation is a legal fiction given by the Government. The power of the government derives from the will of the people. Corporations should always act in the best interest of the people, and like the Secret Service, they should be willing to take a bullet for us. If a group of people don't want to take this responsibility, no one is forcing them to incorporate.
I'd hate to live in your dystopian future, friend. Government's powers derive from the people, but buisnesses don't. Incorporation is a recognition that people acting in a group with each other don't give up their individual rights.
Republican dominated USA? What the fuck is wrong with you?! Did you forget about the democrat congress and the democrat president in the last 10 years? My Lord how you blamed republicans for this is beyond my imagination as both parties are at fault and both parties had opportunities to change the course.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
On shared hosting you can migrate from one service provider to the other without major pain, because there are a lot of providers offering LAMP/J2EE/ASP.net etc.
In the case of the cloud, you depend on the cloud APIs which aren't standardized and because cloud servers aren't a commodity. You can't migrate from Amazon cloud to Microsoft cloud without writing your own abstraction layer on top of proprietary cloud APIs.
If you want some guarantee that they destroy your data when you are no longer a customer then use one that proivdes that guarantee. At my place of work we have language in out contract with our dedicated server provider about what they must do with hard drives that we have used and so on - and yes that means we negotiated with them for a price and likely paid more than if we didn't want that requirement placed on them.
And when said server provider goes belly up, how do you ensure that guarantee is enforced, rather than the servers sold off to the highest bidder, complete with all contained customer data?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Note I didn't say "is", I said "should be". And we should NOT be creating new and distinct laws, beyond maybe a new law saying "This should be treated under the old law for safe deposit boxes". The problem has already existed for safe deposit boxes, post-office boxes, non-post-office boxes (like the former MailBoxesEtc). If a particular bank branch is closed (or moved), there is a whole protocol for notifying box holders and handling things if people don't show up in time.
That said, I agree with other posters that if it's not already in your contract, you made a mistake putting your data there in the first place; and even if it is, you may find that bankruptcy court considers the data the server's because it's on their computers, or considers the data of no monetary value and just sells off the hardware. I also agree that I would not use abstract cloud services for sensitive data. Remote hosting, or remote co-location, where I own a specific machine in a secure location, is a different story (I hope).
Caveat Emptor -- if you are getting your storage for fewer currency units by being the cloud, shouldn't you expect it to be "cheaper" too. Total Lifecycle Analysis boys and girls. Chasing only the quarterly bottom line can be penny wise and pound foolish.
Thats why I like dropbox. I have copies on my desktop that are synced to the cloud. Im a Mix Engineer/producer(lots of large audio files that need to be transferred back and forth) my partners in cali and chicago have access to my dropbox as well. And there are other clients who have access to shared folders. So unless the midwest and westcoast are simultaneous destroyed we have at least 3 full backups of the dropbox on local machines. Along with backups of the shared folders.
There could be legal agreements between you and the provider that prevents the provider from selling it. But the liquidator could be acting as an agent to some creditor, who might not have all the incentives to be nice to you. So you put it on the cloud. Make sure it is not something that will embarrass you if it becomes public, something that will not cause you damage if it ends up in Nigeria.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Especially with the increasing ISP costs/bandwidth caps, no freaking thank you. I'd prefer to pull my data from a hard/external drive without my ISP eyeballing/charging me for it. And hey, then I don't have to worry about CloudCompanyA going out of business.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
The cloud's purpose is to serve your data without using your local pipe.
You should maintain the main copy of that data yourself.
How is this different than have your data stored in any single location?
* Stand alone system w/o backups: lose the system, lose the data.
* Stand alone system w/ backups in the same facility. lose the facility, lose the data.
Anyone that puts all of their eggs in a single basket without understanding the scope of the decision probably shouldn't be making those decisions. A proper risk analysis will weigh the risks, the costs, and the benefits.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
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Most opinions on Slashdot tend to skew towards information not being "property" at all. It's a bunch of bits. A cloud storage provider is simply a storage device, and like all storage devices it CAN fail. You need to plan for that possibility and have a contingency plan in place. If you are so naive as to place your data solely onto one of these services then if it fails you're SOL.
Instead, use them as a supplement to your other backups. I use Dropbox pretty extensively myself, but if it goes under I'll just switch to another provider, as my data is still on my drives too and still gets copied to DVDs fairly regularly .
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
there are no government rules or regulations specific to data managed by cloud storage providers.
While there is most likely a solution to this problem, it does not lie in government regulation.
That's what the airline industry said, same goes for the bankster industry, as well as the oil industry, oh, and don't forget the utility industry and commercialized penal system.
And last but not least, an unregulated government. The voters should demand a balanced budget, term limits, reasonable campaign funding, accountability of office-holders, the outlawing of corporate special interest groups, a re-affirmation of the separation of church and state and a separation of business and state.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Errrm, ... it disappears?
Unless you have a functioning backup strategy that is.
BTW: Captain Obvious called and asked if you wanted his job.
I had an idea which I thought at the time was novel. I haven't worked out all the kinks in it yet, but if it could be made to work, I think it could be awesome.
It starts with a home server, web-facing and firewalled against casual intrusion. You keep your data on that in some standard configuration which lets outside companies tap into and add value to the data of everyone who registers their servers with that company.
Example: Photo-sharing on a social network. You'd have your pictures on your home computer in a given format that the outside system could read. You'd register your server with flickronlylessskeezy.com, and users on that system could see your pictures, comment on them, etc. The second logical step would be to register your home server to hold the lists of friends and comments.
Advantages: The data would stay on your computer. You control who does and doesn't access it by registering and deregistering outside services and controlling privileges, and if the service goes down, all that's lost is an accessor method; your data is still in your control. And if some organization decides they absolutely need to take down some incriminating or inconvenient data, an attack on a single server will take care of it without damaging the service for everyone else (beyond not seeing that special data).
Disadvantages: It does require either static IP addresses or tracking back through dynamic IPs, and more than a little computer knowledge on the part of the user, including database management, although with some very specialized software, there might be ways to make this user-friendly. It would also benefit greatly from decent connection speeds and ISPs who don't throttle "power users" (which right now is damn near none of them). And some companies which get in on this might want to stifle competition by using non-standard or proprietary data formats, which means if the service goes down your data is stuck in a black box which you can't open.
...
Well, once those problems are cleared, anyway, I think it could work. Thoughts?
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
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The cloud is no place to store your data. Clouds are, by their nature temporary and a very vapourous item. I want my data on my servers. I need to be able to access the data from anywhere. I have no trust that the cloud where I store my data will not disappear, go out of business or otherwise vanish. I might keep a backup on a cloud server (as long as only I have a password and the encryption is 256bit) but, never my primary data.
We're not happy 'til you're not happy.
In my experience, non-IT companies are falling all over themselves to move to (at the very least) hosted IT services. The true answer to this question will come out when the first major provider flames out. Think about this with a cynical eye towards the situation. CIOs and other decision makers are under immense pressure to cut costs, especially in companies where IT is not seen as a strategic investment. For every software company or non-IT company that uses IT to its advantage, there are 10x as many who use IT for file/print/email only, and see it as a cost like paying the janitor and building staff to keep the place running. Cloud providers win business by doing a shiny PowerPoint with animated graphics showing all those power-eating servers and local IT staff fading into "the cloud." At the same time, they promise the ability to get rid of your IT staff and replace the current IT spend with a monthly charge that can be completely written off as an operational expense. MBAs are seemingly taught on Day 1 that human resources are a necessary evil to be minimized, and that operational expenses are preferable to fixed asset spending. Therefore, this PowerPoint resonates with them and the decision is made.
The problems come behind the PowerPoint. Every IT problem the business had before now becomes the provider's problem, including data storage/retention, bandwidth issues, server provisioning and all that stuff. How well does it work out? Everything depends on the competence of your provider. Even with ironclad SLAs in place, (a) Really Bad Stuff can still happen that makes them null and void, and (b) SLAs are only a piece of paper guaranteeing you free service or a payment in the event of an outage.
Any business considering The Cloud needs to think of the following:
(If this sounds like the list of questions to ask when considering an outsourcing agreement, it is. Cloud is just IT outsourcing without a directly accountable staff at the provider.) Businesses who want data integrity and decent service need to realize that they have to pay for it, just like they do in a traditional outsourcing/hosting scenario. If a CIO chooses to go with the equivalent of GMail for their internal messaging, just 'cause it was cheaper than the fully-hosted, DR'd, off-site backed up, SOX-compliant managed email service, then they deserve what they get.
IT get's sold on the server's hard drives on ebay or at the Liquidation auction.
I have a friend that has a large chunk of the "pets.com" database from the old server he bought years ago.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Of course, that would require a government that regulates for the good of its citizen rather than the corporations. Cloud market is still young, there is some hope that good regulation can be passed.
Talk to a lawyer for your own state, but for a good overview of what incorporation is today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_(business)
"...a corporation being a legal entity that is effectively recognized as a person under the law). The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organization, sports club, or a government of a new city or town."...
A corporation has extra rights that the "people acting in a group" don't have. If a person or persons dump oil into the gulf of Mexico, they can be taken to jail. If a corporation dumps millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, there will be a fine. Even if people died in the accident, no one will go to jail, and the courts are loathe to implement a "Corporate Death Sentence" where the fines are enough to bankrupt the company. (Enron was a exception, not the rule)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
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Sorry to rain on your psuedo-libertarianism parade but the government is exactly the right entity to help sort this out. This is a simple property issue.
If you lend your car to Joe Bob Inc and then the company goes bust, what do you think will happen? Hint: they won't drive it back to your house and give you the keys.
I remember when a company I worked for years ago in London went bust with large debts, the bailiffs took away all kinds of hardware that was on loan from various companies and they then had to try to get their property back. Why do you expect data to be any different?
This video illustrates the problem with SLAs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RabecxZKmU (probably safe for work, depending on how long you watch the clip for -- stop watching after the promise to be safe).
Vendors want customers, and will do anything or say anything to get them. Especially vendors will promise something if making the promise will get them what they want, and there is absolutely no disadvantage to breaking the promise. Any customers who believe a promise that cannot possibly be kept are fools.
I hate it when I make a joke and I get modded "+5 insightful". Mod the stupid comments "funny", not "insightful", pleas
Absolutely it does. The simple fact is time and again it is seen that private entities are completely irresponsible and require government oversight and the threat of law to keep them in check.
This idea of deregulation needs to stop. Conservative thinking is a failure. The only time regulation doesnt work is when it is purposely sabotaged to not work which is time and again what conservatives do because its too costly to follow the law and do the right things. If corporations (even do no wrong Google) where not inherently evil, this wouldn't be a issue, But capitalism is just as evil as communism, just in its own ways.
Translation: It would have worked much better if we had only busted more heads!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The same thing happens as with any other cloud dies, it's contents are dispersed across the land.
In the case of a data cloud, you can be sure that your data is dispersed like raindrops across the land of the Internet, and just like rain anyone with the resources to collect it is free to do so.
That's why I like Amazon EC2 - my "cloud" servers are Linux instances running in their cloud, and I can easily mirror the data to my own servers. While I use their cloud API to start/stop/provision servers, I'm not dependent on of their API's to host my application. If Amazon went away, I could have my servers up and running at another provider overnight. (I do take full advantage of Amazon's multi-region instances, so I wasn't affected by their East Coast problems.)
Fortunately, I don't have terabytes of data locked aways in S3 - my database is a few GB so it's easy and cheap to mirror it to my own servers.
I'd never host an app on Google's App Engine API - I'd never be able to migrate to another provide if Google changed their service offering to something I didn't like.
Sounds like a good opportunity for some wild product/API that will (once your accounts are set up) migrate and/or replicate your data from one cloud to another. Sounds like a very difficult task, perhaps presently impossible, but I'd call it "Osmosis" :-)
An approach like this will almost certainly result in some hybridized outcome.
With the uncertainty and instability in the cloud services world, I think it's more sensible to rent a safe deposit box nearby, and go there every so often to swap new data backups.
family guy reference
They can't guarantee that you get your data. That's what backups are for. Government regulation is not meant to protect people from their own stupidity, regardless of the fact that it's sometimes abused to this end.
But they can make it a criminal offence to sell servers, drives, flash media, or any other data storage device with customer data from a shut down company. It should also probably be an offence to buy the same without reporting it.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Co-Op Datacenters. Instead of Rackspace or Amazon, customers buy a piece of the datacenter, just like a co-op. It can still be run by Amazon or Rackspace, but the financial risk is spread across its customer base. Additionally, Amazon or Microsoft or Rackspace no longer has to carry the assets on their books. Hence, better operating margins. Win-win.
Cloud is just a buzzaord... the data this question is asking about is all physically located someplace, and the same laws that handle physical stuff should handle this as well... the problem is that there really aren't rules in place for this situation either.
I once knew a company that had a service provider go out of business - in order to get their data back, they had to talk to the former netops guys to find out which machines were physically theirs, and then bid on them and win them in the auction of the service providers assets.
If 'cloud' does anything here, it simply complicates the question of "which data is their machine on" with a layer of indirection.
Read the contract carefully. Providers generally exclude themselves for all liability in the contract that they post on the Internet.
But there is one big time bomb in those cloud storage contracts that nobody talks about: The contracts often impose a "duty to defend" upon the customer. That particular little bedbug means that if a person sues the provider over the data you store on their site, that you have a duty to defend the provider. That means you pay for all the provider's lawyer, expert, and court costs. The person suing the provider may have a bullshit case, but you will still have a duty to pay for the provider's defense. The language is often written extremely broadly.
Do you want to sign up for an indeterminate liability amount for a provider that you don't really know?
I'm not convinced at all this type of service needs government regulation. Data recovery and destruction policies should be part of the contract with the company, and existing contract law can deal with any problems. If you chose a service that didn't have good recovery and destruction policies, that is a poor choice on your part.
Because its not off-site.
Because its low performance.
Because its not for the enterprise.
If the data is personalized, maps names to genders, birthdates, SSNs, street addresses or phone numbers, the disposition of the data is a safety issue. Just a corner case.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Provider can't put third party copyrighted data on torrent
But it can put third party uncopyrightable data on torrent. PII and other facts are not copyrightable, nor is an exhaustive collection of facts (at least in the United States). Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service.
If you have a contract with Joe Bob stating that you are leasing it to them, or storing it on their property as part of a bailment, you retain title to the car and no one can attach it. If you are leaving your car with Joe Bob to get the bumpers refinished, and then they turn around and sell it in foreclosure sale, they've stolen your car. Merely "loaning" property to another does not give the other a right to sell it or convert it, that's larceny.
What the Internet might need is something like a Bill of Lading. Bills of Lading are just commercial contracts, but their terms are quite regulated and come from centuries of both state and private custom. The role of the state is to regularize the procedure and make sure it's easy to understand and that terms of the contact are always executed exactly as the contract states, so that there's no grey zone where the cloud vendor can appropriate your data or unilaterally change the price to access it.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Make it part of the contract that the cloud provider is adequately insured to cover the costs of data redemption followed by wiping the cloud servers in the event of going belly up. Include a provision for periodically proving to the client that the insurance is in force. Not a perfect solution, but it's probably the best you're going to get. The cloud provider could use the phrase "bonded and insured" as part of their own marketing. Then it becomes standard business practice to only entrust sensitive data to "bonded and insured" providers.
Adherence to the truth is a form of disloyalty.
There could be no corporations without the say so of the the government. (Corporation being an entity that is treated like an individual, and limits liability to the people in the organization.)
There could be no government without the will of the people.
Corporations rely on the government for their standing, the government relies (or is supposed to) on the people.
Ipso facto corporations rely on people to even exist.
Then they rely on people to consume.
They rely on the people, without the people there could/would be no "corporations." That does not mean that there would be no groups of people organizing to accomplish a goal. There would be no legal "corporations."
My solution is to not use "the cloud" at all. Other posters are correct that when you put your data in the cloud, you lose any/all control over it. IE it is no longer yours. I do periodic backups. One backup copy gets stored locally, another is stored (on physical media) at anotrher location.
This type of thing can be as simple as two friends or relatives (that trust each other) storing backups for each other. The problem with "the cloud" is that you do not know who has access to or control of your data. How do you trust someone you don't know?
at
All Bits Go To Heaven.
And that, right there, is why I recommend that we all start using personal servers that we control rather than some data storage that we have no control over.
And, before you say blah, blah, blah consumers aren't smart enough ... there are products out there that you can purchase from Best Buy that give you plug and play "cloud storage" that pretty much anyone who can use a USB drive could use. Now, we just need to get more online services to let you use your own server and I would be happy :-)
I'm not a bird, I'm a super-advanced flying stealth dinosaur!
Just use Fog, it's Raid 1 for Clouds.
I8-D
Communism isn't inherently evil. Not at all. The people conducting communism have proven to be so (along with the propaganda you have been fed, I am sure), which is why you've drawn that conclusion.
Communism, capitalism, etc etc can be wonderful ways of life, as long as the people conducting those ways of lives are not evil and maintain the system with personal responsibility, altruism, and integrity.
Consider this: If everyone in the world chose not to exploit and take advantage of others, we would live in what most would consider heaven. It's only because there are a few (thousand?) people hell-bent on control and power that we (billions) suffer through THEIR system of control and power. Imagine how much money and power over an entire country/the world an ancient tribe desires. Once you realize that the society you (and I) live in is designed to prevent your satisfaction, contentment, and self-actualization, you'll realize that political and monetary systems are irrelevant to your true life. Yes...it's a natural drive...but it's not a requirement of life.
Cloud providers win business by doing a shiny PowerPoint with animated graphics showing all those ...The problems come behind the PowerPoint ..
But between the powerpoint and the emergence of the problems, there are bonuses for the top management. The gang has shown the powerpoint to the board and have already awarded themselves fat bonuses and have already left camp looking for their next chump. The board also does not care too much, they get paid, what 100K for six meetings in a year? and the free use of corporate guest houses, jet, club memberships and special boxes in the stadia...
The stock traders don't care either. They buy before the conference call, wait for the "guidance" from the CEO and sell a day after the call.
So who pays? The ultimate chump is the small investor and the taxpayers. The big investors would be bailed by the government.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
rsync
http://p8ste.com - Web based Clipboard
Why does anyone believe that "more government rules and regulations" are the answer to this issue? More importantly, why pretend that the lack of "government rules and regulations" is a major part of it?
goes to heaven of course, unless it is bad data.
Republican dominated USA? What the fuck is wrong with you?! Did you forget about the democrat congress and the democrat president in the last 10 years? My Lord how you blamed republicans for this is beyond my imagination as both parties are at fault and both parties had opportunities to change the course.
Well let's do some math:
Senate D/R
01-03 50/50
03-05 48/51 R
05-07 44/55 R
07-09 49/49
09-11 57/41 D
House D/R
01-03 212/221 R
03-05 105/229 R
05-07 202/231 R
07-09 233/198 D
09-10 256/178 D
Senate has 4 years of Repub majority to Demos 2.
House has 6 years of Repub Majority to Demos 4.
President
01-04 R
05-08 R
09-10 D
President has 8 years of Repub to Demos 2.
So yes the GP was correct. The US was Rebulican dominated for the last
10 years. And yes, the Republicans are more to blame for the last 10
years of Federal Government. Although, I'd certainly agree that there
is more than enough blame to give the Democrats plenty of it. On the
other hand and despite my above sarcastic-attempt-at-humor, who cares?
Let's just try fixing things, adding checks and balances, etc., and
forget who to blame. Let's choose the US as the side to be on instead
of D or R.
My government (America) tends to sh*t itself when dealing with century-old problems if someone gets a computer involved.
Property issues? Totally handled.
Cyber-property issues? OMG!
I'm not saying that the government / rule of law shouldn't sort it out, I'm just expressing my complete lack of faith in their ability to do so in just about any capacity.
I absolutely hate trusting others with my data, but there are just some features on cloud platforms that are great:
- Web and mobile clients, some with the ability to stream
- Sharing features
- Auto-sync for certain folders with desktop clients
I know that it's a small list, but it makes the data incredibly accessible to me wherever I am and beats the hell out of setting up VPNs and SSH connections. Is there a software suite that would allow me to have these features on my own personal storage unit?
You are mistaken. The republicans only dominated 4 years according to your numbers, and the democrats only 2 years. The remaining 4 years consisted of divided government. Given our system of checks and balances you can't say a party dominated unless they controlled the house, senate and presidency.
If you are using an other company to hold/work with your data. get a CONTRACT that explains what will be involved, what guarantees and compensation you have if there is a problem. As well an exit clause and plan.
The problem is dumb people just jump onto the cloud without any real dealing with the company, and host valuable stuff on it. The could concept is a good technology plan (although it is the same as hosting now), it is actually is a net plus. However get a contract if you data is valuable. Otherwise you are whim to the company.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What's going to happen? Another company is going to out compete it at collapsing?
It seems to have "worked" for Wall street!
In that the government bailed them out.
"Put it in the Cloud, its awesome, it'll save you money, and its awesome, did I already say that, I'll say it again, its Awesome!!!"
If you've falled for that line, I have one word for you. Sucker.
And there's another 2 words as well. Data Sovereignty. Who owns the data in the cloud? You do?!? Possession is nine tenths of the law, and who possesses your data? The Cloud does. So who owns the cloud?
The only data you should commit to the cloud, is data with no value.
For exactly this reason, everybody should have their own personal URL shortener service. Those short URLs started out as a mere convenience, driven by Twitter's stupid 140char limit on messages, but suddenly turned out to have a much more meaningful and important use.
Conventional web analytics are only accessible to the people who created and host the content under analysis. They can track where their audience came from, when and how, but nobody else does. If I refer people to some web-stuff I'd like to get an idea of how many people I influenced - how many people followed my recommendation. It is a measure of my own reputation and influence, so highly personal. URL-shorteners give us a way to measure, with a reasonable degree of accuracy and assurance, the influence we have in persuading others to follow our webby blatherings.
So I wrote one. It's a Java-based one (for reasons described at http://1.mikro2nd.net/xtN8) so won't suit everybody's needs. Free under AGPL. Still very rough, but usable.
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
Problem is, if the company had enough money to keep the disks up for migration, it wouldn't have shut down in the first place. The rules of creditors apply, and customers don't count. About the best you'll get the government to do is restrict the disk buyers from redistributing the data. Of course when the disks get sold to a foreign interest that won't apply either. The only real way to protect the data is to require the destruction of the disks. That'll never happen with the creditors wanting anything they can get back on their investment.
It is safe to say that there will be additional cloud service and product provider shakeout, it’s not if rather when, who and what happens. As many of the comments/discussions have touched on, what happens to your data when the services shutdown or when they fail/lose access as has also been a problem or growing pain depending on your perspective. One solution is to stay clear of clouds or MSPs or hosted or out sourced or data hotels or whatever you prefer to call them. Another solution is to embrace balancing risk with reward, perhaps taking adequate steps including keeping copies of your data elsewhere, encrypting and so forth or just leverage the all you can consume data buffet model not worried about availability/accessibility until you lose access. How much time do you spend thinking about a cloud services business model, financial conditions, terms of service (do you actually read them?), employee including CEOs turnover as an indicator of a services health or viability, or do you decide based on low or no cost? Ok, all of the above are considerations, however they do not address the challenge of what happens and how do you move your data? A few months ago I moved from one cloud backup provider to another in order to leverage more functionality/capabilities from the new service and at a higher fee (better value). I did the migration by not moving data per say, rather, backing up for a short period of time to both to have a dual copy. Then stopped backing up to the old provider and let that data expire as I had good retentions at the new provider. Now for backups that’s one approach, however for archive or general file or data storage in the cloud, that would require some movement/migration or sync to occur. In classic IT form or tradition, of course you can add another layer or stack such as using services or providers or access tools that provide the transparency (hmmm, cloud virtualization or federation?) to enable a tool to do the move/migrate for you. The tools exist today, however not all service providers support them or the tools may not support different services. Some access tools are built into software ranging from backup/archive to dedicated gateways/access appliances/cpop that learn the various service APIs and some even adding SNIA CDMI. In case you have not heard, SNIA CDMI is the Cloud Data Management Initiative API that has a value proposition of providing an API abstraction layer to include enabling data movement between the cloud products or services assuming that the service and tools you are using support the API. Of course, there exists a dilemma which is that some cloud gateway/cpop (cloud point of presences) vendors have shut down or suspended operations. The other caveat is that additional layers of management tools are going to be added whose cost needs to be included in cloud conversations. For those environments looking at clouds for value, trust and functionality will trump low cost, however for others, that low cost or for fee service may result in extra headaches. What this all means is that clouds or whatever you choose to call them are in their infancy (compared to what you may have seen, experienced or worked with in the past) and as a result, tools, infrastructures, best practices, policies, procedures need to evolve at least for those who are looking to deploy flexible, scalable, resilient data infrastructure based applications. When it comes to cloud, don’t be scared, however, look before you leap, do your homework, use some common sense and leverage your experience. Cheers gs http://storageioblog.com/
Greg Schulz The Server and StorageIO Group IT infrastructure technology advisors and consultants Twitter @storageio
With the availability of cheap storage, why on earth would I pay some money to a company I do not know, and may go belly-up and lose the data I have intrusted to them? No Thanks.
just the same if my storage device damaged or lost.. off course there is a probability of loosing data but if we compare in my opinion cloud will be much safer and protected.