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What Happens To Your Files When a Cloud Service Shuts Down?
MrSeb writes "Megaupload's shutdown poses an interesting question: What happens to all the files that were stored on the servers? XDA-Developers, for example, has more than 200,000 links to Megaupload — and this morning, they're all broken, with very little hope of them returning. What happens if a similar service, like Dropbox, gets shut down — either through bankruptcy, or federal take-down? Will you be given a chance to download your files, or helped to migrate them to another similar service? What about data stored on enterprise services like Azure or AWS — are they more safe?"
And if you're interested, the full indictment against Megaupload is now available.
...if the answer is "backup"?
If you can afford to lose the data, it's fine to have it in the cloud.
If you can't, you are SOL if you don't have a backup - one that is not in the cloud.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The foolishness that is millions of users trusting a single giant computing grid owned by a single private corporation was stupid in the first place.
it is everyone putting their eggs in the same giant basket
ranging from policy changes to mergers/takeovers/acquisitions to bankruptcies to government intervention - whatever you can imagine. its a single point of failure and your important stuff is gone.
moreover, these cloud stuff are utilized for making collaboration tools work. so if cloud is gone, there goes your entire communication in between your team, company, clients, workgroup, whatever.
its strategically stupid. run your own cloud if you want. dont put your stuff on another company's turf. its dangerous.
Read radical news here
Has Megaupload been found guilty of anything? If not, why has their site been shut down? If copyright laws apply to the internet, then why doesn't due process?
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
Reminds me of the old saw, "Neither your life nor your property are safe when the legislature is in session."
But once the SOPA-esque laws and treaties become The Way That Things Are (tm) - and unless things change drastically, they eventually will - and once the Great Consolidation has run its course - what choice will there be?
Check your premises.
Seeing as Dotcom was arrested in NZ, you may want to fly to a less US-friendly locale. I hear Venezuela is lovely this time of year.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
The legitimate users of the service have lost real property
No they haven't. It has been argued time and time again on this very site that the idea of "intellectual property" is nonsense and that the loss of data does not deprive you of anything real. If it's a legitimate argument for people who download music and movies, then it's a legitimate argument in this case. Or else it's inaccurate in both cases. You can't have it both ways.
A huge part of the whole cloud approach is that it is an approach to data storage that comes with all of the redundancy built in. The idea is that it's expensive to run your own redundant data stores, keep them secure, etc. So, one basically outsources it to the cloud.
Now we're in a situation where the manner in which some subset of the users of a given cloud can bring the entire thing down for everyone, resulting in the loss and exposure of everyone's data.
Let's consider for a minute AWS. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of companies that exist pretty much solely in AWS space. They rely upon the cloud for their existence. AWS is a lot more reputable than Megaupload. However, at the end of the day, the same problem potentially exists with storing things in the AWS cloud.
And if this can happen to one company, it can happen to any, including the "more reputable" ones like AWS. Especially with the SOPA-esque laws and treaties being pushed.
This will absolutely break the cloud model. It renders all the advantages of the cloud moot, and in fact, opens up a completely new security hole (that of unwarranted seizure and or destruction of data by government agencies, or perhaps even rival corporations with an accusation of illicit content). Disney thinks that MyLittleComic is storing their data in JoesCloud? Accuse JoesCloud of hosting illicit data, get the whole thing nuked.
This results in loss of business (at least in the USA); it makes it harder for the smaller firms and startups to be viable; and it further entrenches those corporations that are big enough to pay the appropiate bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbyist donations in Washington DC.
Finally, I would never, ever argue against due diligence. I would, however, claim that for a number of organizations that cloud use IS due diligence. And I'd still maintain that a good number of folk's fourth amendment rights were just tossed into the crapper.
Check your premises.
If I were to physically deprive an artist of his or her only copy of his or her intellectual property, then we'd be making an apt comparison. As it is, it seems like you're just trolling for the **AA. In the Megaupload case, I would guess that with the amount of data taken down, at least one person, probably thousands, have been deprived of their only copy of data, which is real property. If I download a copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller album from LimeWire, I'm not depriving anyone of anything.
I'm not defending copyright infringement here, I'm just pointing out your terrible logic.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
I am surprised that NAS's haven't caught on very well. I have had one since 2007, and have been living in "the cloud" ever since. I can access all of my data over the internet, and it also serves as a nice little low power web server that can run gallery and various other apps. It can stream media, and I can even kick off a bit torrent movie download at work, and then watch it when I get home. All the other functions are really just gravy, as I originally bought this set up to replace a large old power hungry pc that was acting as a file server to supplement my roommate and I's meager laptop drives. I am protected both by RAID 1 and an external USB hard drive that I do a full backup to on a weekly basis. The only thing I am really missing is having a backup kept off-site, which I could do if I was willing to swap out disks, or pay for a service that would allow me to do an online backup.
Its a little pricey (about $400 for disks + the NAS itself) and requires some knowledge to set up properly, but I have no real space limitations, upload/download limits, and I can add or disable features as I see fit. Oh and of course, mine runs linux on top of a low power arm CPU.