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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.
As a point, the government will be using all files hosted on those servers as evidence in the case. They will not likely, and are not required to, give access to those files.
...if the answer is "backup"?
Good question, but it's not really an issue for Dropbox as that service maintains full local copies on each of the computers I have on my account.
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
This is exactly the reason a lot of companies keep things in-house. That way, as long as you're running, you have control of your own data. This has always been one of the dangers of The Cloud .
I've always wondered what happens to Pokemon in a trainers' computer when the trainer dies/quits/etc. I imagine the same would happen to megaupload files. Like the pokemon lost in a nonphysical oblivion for all eternity, these files will endure an endless torture of nothingness.
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.
Your files will glow in golden sunlight when the cloud dissipates... =)
It sounds hauntingly familiar to what happens when a DRM licensing server goes down. (And also due to a company folding/retiring the service.)
Clearly, we need a magical, distributed, self-healing data storage system. I think I've heard of one or two of these (can anyone provide links, if they exist?) but I guess they haven't been popular enough to be remembered. (And I'm not talking about mere P2P; I'm thinking something more like distributed, redundant storage with the structural resilience of BitCoin.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Just like Jackson Games in Austin (Google It) back in the 90's. Feds seized hardware and all data in a raid that were later proved to be innocent of. It took 7 years to gain access to the companies data and accounting records. By that time - it made no difference. Interestingly, the IRS got involved in the middle of this and they didn't care why the company could not access their records - huge tax fine, penalties and liability followed.
That have been a number of cases already that prove that there is NO privacy or even search warrant required for seizure of data outside of your own physical control... Even items stored on your cell phone are not protected in many states.
I wouldn't trust the cloud or any virtual storage any further than I can physically throw it.
I don't even trust GMail to keep my e-mail store forever, but download them to my own copy of Thunderbird each day. GMail is probably not going away any time soon, but what would I do if for some reason they shut down my account? Customer service for issues like this at Google isn't exactly stellar. If you don't have your own backups of what you have in the cloud, you are asking for trouble.
If you had an account on Megaupload, especially if you are not American, write to your representative and complain about the US unilaterally stealing your investment. There seems to be no hope of America reforming from within, but maybe some international pushback could make a difference.
There is nothing magic about the "Cloud". From a practical perspective it is little more than a remote hard drive. A cloud provider going away is very much like a hard drive failing.
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.
It goes away. Hope you had a backup.
If you're lucky, the cloud provider may provide you with a one-time access to your account, but isn't it far safer to assume that if your cloud provider goes down, you've lost everything you put in? Not just data, either - if you've prepaid your account, you probably lost all that stored value as well.
Cloud storage providers especially. What happens if your hard drive dies? You lose the data. What happens if your backup tapes fail - you've lost the backup. What happens if your dropbox/skydrive/etc. disappear? You've lost your files.
All those XDA Developer links? Gone. hope the original authors are still around to upload them elsewhere or that someone downloaded it and can upload it.
Cloud providers make us lazy - we think "it'll always be around and I can grab it later". Turns out later can disappear - perhaps temporary (e.g., your or their internet connection dies), or permanently. But it's really just the same as storing files locally - there's a chance the storage may fail.
The possibility that a cloud service can go offline quite suddenly should be a major factor in your decision whether to use the service at all, and the extent to which you'll rely on it. The customer agreement for Amazon Web Services is better than I might expect because it says they will notify you if the service goes dark, but that might be small comfort if you are not prepared for a sudden migration.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The cloud has burst.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
All your files end up on drives being sold on eBay.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I would not be in the least bit surprised if a class action suit against the government (or something of that nature) was launched from all those who had legitimate files on Megaupload. Imagine if the USG shut down Youtube when it was first starting up. But truthfully, we are as a society held to the laws we make. To quote a lawyer once while I was in court, "If people don't like the laws, they should change them."
What are you smoking? First, you can't sue the government (easily). Second, the ones to sue are the people running Megaupload. If you had a valid contract with them to give them money so they store your data, then it was _their_ duty to ensure your data is safe. One part of their duty is to not commit illegal activities that gets them closed down.
People who fail to keep backups deserve everything they have coming to them.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Depends on whether the government concedes that it committed a tortious act or not. If not, they have to give permission for the suit to go forward. I am certain that there are many precedents already on the table that will show that the government withholding property of a 3rd party for the purpose of evidence in a criminal case is not considered a tortious act.
Is a case against some Dell folks for massive insider trading scam.
Wanna take a whild guess as to who gets more jail time?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Well, the summary specifically references a developer's forum where I can sympathize (being a developer) with people modding Android ROMs or whatever and uploading such binaries for distribution to others. I guess the people who run the forum don't really get a say in any of this. However, as a software developer, I can imagine a third option for files that are user generated (and for the most part legal).
... perhaps a hash of the date, checksum and filename? It would then maintain a key-value pair of these megaupload links to your internal URIs and also a directory structure of these URIs as the files. Now, say megaupload is a very unreliable/questionable service or goes down and now your forum is worthless. Well, you can always re-spider your site and replace all the megaupload links with links to your cloud hosting of these new files or work out a deal with another third party similar to megaupload where they would accept the file and URI and return to you the URI paired with their new URL. Then it's a matter of spidering your site and replacing the megaupload links with your new service's URLs.
Now XDA-Developers is going to have tens of thousands of once helpful posts that now lead to a broken link. How could they have avoided this? Well, I'd imagine that someone could have written an internal bot for their forums that would harvest links to the external megaupload. They then could have subscribed to megaupload, downloaded said linked files and created a local cache of their files purely for their own use on a small RAID. Now the last thing the bot would need to do is take the megaupload URL and develop some unique URI
It's a pain in the ass but let's face it, some forums could perish when their codependence on megaupload is fully realized in a very painful manner. And I don't think that's a fair risk to the users who have created hundreds of thousands of posts.
My work here is dung.
...for a client, I'm not going to fool them into believing its any more secure than offsite copies in C level officer's homes or other safe location with physical access. In fact, given what happened with Megaupload, I'm not sure I could, in good conscience, convince a customer that cloud computing is secure for them.
i am so very tired....
... 5) Profit!
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
What happens to all the files that were stored on the servers? If you don't have a backup yourself, then you're SOL.
That's one reason why I refused to depend on cloud storage and keep a NAS. I keep telling friends who use their smartphones as their main PC, digital camera, etc to back the stuff up and not just to the cloud. If you don't, you might find yourself F'ed one day. But do they listen? Nope.
FreeNet is one. It is better for storing files than /dev/zero.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Prime example evidence #1 of how SOPA breaks the cloud.
A single complaint that a cloud service has a copyright file can result in a takedown of the entire cloud. Stranding all clients of that cloud.
Thanks to the government and their extra-judicial processes, they have broken the notion of internet provided services.
No it's not, you luddite. If I upload a file into the cloud, the file now exists in two places. I have it, and the cloud has it, and now maybe other people have it too. It is exactly the opposite of everything putting their eggs in one basket. It is more like magically multiplying your single egg among many baskets, so that any basket which disappears still leaves you with a bunch of eggs in a bunch of baskets, with plenty of eggs for everyone.
If I'm wrong, then you will kindly point out how now nobody can pirate movies anymore, because the only copy (the only egg) of those movies existed on Megaupload (the only basket).
Oh my goodness. Who could possibly have forseen that might be a problem.
Deleted
Whats any different then what happened during the dotcom bust where millions lost whatever they were storing on image storing services? They couldn't get them back theres no money to pay anyone to watch the server farm no money to pay the elect bills and so on. The only thing that has changed is the naming of the server farm its called the cloud.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Those emails are pretty damning, especially the ones specifying payments to users for providing illegal content. To paraphrase: "User X has 10 great, DVD ripped copies of some popular movies, let's send him a check for five grand." If anything, though, this is proof that the existing law is working as intended and we really don't need any additional bills to go through to crack down on piracy.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Today, millions of people understood why technical staff always had reservation about "cloud-based" solutions.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment - Full indictment with the evidence you claim hasn't been presented.
AJ Henderson
Storage@home was a distributed storage infrastructure designed to store massive amounts of scientific data across a large host of volunteer machines. The project was developed by some of the Folding@home team at Stanford University, and is currently inactive.
One part of their duty is to not commit illegal activities that gets them closed down.
At this point, it has not been demonstrated whether Megaupload has committed any illegal activities (remember the presumption of innocence and all that). The problem is that it's not unfathomable for an entity to be taken down in this fashion regardless of whether they actually commited any crime; especially if SOPA/PIPA or any similar legislation ever gets passed.
should work out pretty well. Just upload your content to as many "cloud" services as possible and each one can pay for itself if your content is worth anything. If one provider goes away, the rest will take up the slack. Use magnet links.
Isn't that exactly what is meant by "The People" in the name of the suit?
If you're dumb enough to store important files online, and not have a local copy, why should you get them back when that service goes offline?
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
Generally speaking, that isn't a bad idea. When you put money in your bank, you're putting your eggs in that same giant basket.
What is a bad idea is putting your eggs in a basket with a switchblade, kilo of coke, a couple grenades, a packet of anthrax and a VHS tape of kiddie porn. At that point, you really need to blame yourself when that basket gets taken from you.
Well, when I upload something to the cloud, I still of course keep the master file. So there is no problem.
From the site:
WE DON'T HAVE ANY DOMAIN NAME FOR NOW
ONLY THIS IP ADDRESS (http://109.236.83.66) BEWARE TO THE PISHING SITES!
This is the NEW MEGAUPLOAD SITE! we are working to be back full again
Bookmark the site and share the new address in facebook and twitter!
But apparently if you go to the site, you will be used as part of a DDoS attack?
http://gawker.com/5877707/the-evil-new-tactic-behind-anonymous-massive-revenge-attack
They will stand trial, and if the trial concludes with them being acquitted they can get their domains, servers, etc. back. The fact that they will lose so much business that they will wind up bankrupt is irrelevant to due process.
Palm trees and 8
Unless, perhaps, the "evidence" in question is files uploaded to Megaupload by their rightful copyright owners (ie: exactly the class of people who would be suing the gov to get their files back). Those files would not be evidence of a crime, because no crime took place in their transfer from computer to Megaupload to whoever downloaded them.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Freenet is exactly that. Unfortunately it's nowhere near the normal web performance-wise.
Freenet uses a distributed data store, where information is pushed into the grid by the uploader, then spreads around further when accessed. That unfortunately means that things only survive long term if they're accessed. On the good side, data doesn't depend on the provider to keep existing. If people keep accessing something, it will remain present in the network.
It's also rather painfully slow. We're talking of minutes to load a webpage, though once the node is well connected to the network it can perform fairly well.
It's not very user friendly. Besides the slowness, conservation of data is not guaranteed, and Freenet addresses are long hashes. There ae no friendly domain names. All you can have is a categorized Yahoo styled index, and bookmarks.
Freenet has mostly static content. Things like forums are possible and exist but it takes special Freenet-targeted technology. You can't run any random web forum on it. There's a forum included in the Freenet system itself, you can access it from the interface.
The other option is Tor hidden services. That's the usual web, except the Tor network obscures the location of the actual server and its clients. Performance is usually good. Unlike with Freenet, there's still a single server somewhere, which if found can be taken down.
Not much. Everything I put in a cloud service is encrypted in a truecrypt volume. Even if they are sold to the highest bidder, or inspected by a marxist government they are useless to anyone but me.
This is why I ignore any claims of "security" any cloud service has. the ONLY real security is the security you control, everything else is fake.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
WTF do you think happens!
The old eDonkey, gnutella, gnutella2 etc... networks before Bittorrent are fully distributed. The downside (and why people moved to Bittorrent et all) is because searching was slow (no central index) and because the media companies, unable to shut down the networks or the uploaders, resorted to flooding the networks with bogus mp3 etc.. files (as well as all manner of viruses uploaded by blackhats, and random exe's you'd have to be silly to download tbh).
However, hosting non-infringing content should be fine, and using URI's (i.e. magnet links) you can link to any file you want, it's availability only limited to number of seeders who keep it (which if it's popular, should be enough to sustain it).
It had to be said: obligatory xkcd reference.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
If you're using file storage/replication services as a backup, then you have the originals. The point of a backup is that you can lose either of the copies and still have another. That's relevant whether it's the original that goes up in flames, or the backup.
If you're these services as the sole-source for storage, then you're doing it just as wrongly as if you used a single local storage device, or else the data isn't important enough to worry about losing.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Those guys usually upload their stuff to multiple hosts, because files are taken down very often.
Sig? Heil
"The Cloud" is for dopes. Period. If you stored mission- or life-critical data in "The Cloud", then you get what you deserve.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Cloud is a teenager with spiky yellow hair and a big sword.
The Cloud is just bad English, or Cloud referring to himself in the 3rd person, which is just weird and creepy.
I've been watching the hype over cloud-this and cloud-that for several years with an increasingly cynical eye. Perhaps this incident will help convince a few others to look pass the trendy buzzwords and actually THINK about what can happen. For example:
1. Drives seized, eventually end up for sale to the public, random people now own your data.
2. Cloud provider hacked, dangerous random people now own your data.
3. Drives seized, feds download all your data and start going through it to see if they can make a case against you. (Oh, you don't think they can? Keep in mind the words of Cardinal Richelieu: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.")
4. Drives seized, someone decides to make a few extra bucks selling your data to your competitors. Or spammers. Or phishers.
5. Drives seized, someone graciously decides to let you "have your data back", but what you get back is not what you think it is -- it's been quietly, carefully modified. Maybe your research statistics have been subtly corrupted; maybe there's malware in it; maybe it's missing a few key pieces here and there.
When you use a cloud provider, all you've got is your best hope. And "hope" is not a valid security strategy.
Wow, that would have been a REAL pain if I was trying to grab the latest UK (BBC) TV coverage of Formula 1. Good thing that it happened now, and not in March. But seriously, anyone that actually stored files for future use on any of those file sharing networks deserves to lose them just on principle. Dumb way to store data. And anyone that thinks or argues that those sites are not there primarily for the purpose of "sharing" music, TV and Movies is just plain lyin. You'd have to be crazy to scoop anything at random, and you search for very specific file titles. Why do you think that Google started making it harder to search file sharing sites, spawning dedicated search engines for megaupload and it's ilk.
"If the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Donny Rumsfeld
Mod the parent up! This is precisely why the cloud is a bad idea. In effect, you are giving up all of the rights to your data for some small amount of convenience. The entire cloud push is an alarming direction for very little return. It is much better to invest in your own hardware and infrastructure. When the cloud vaporizes, what are you left with?
Because nobody is listening. You thought recovery took a long time when the servers were online, just wait. And wait. And wait. If it's not evidence, it's going to the next used server auction. Good thing you know they will secure-wipe those disks before the new owners reuse them, or worst case, mine your cloud.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
But all the links on their site are to MegaUpload. So if anyone else wants to find it, they are shit out of luck, unless someone goes through and modifies every single link to point elsewhere. Which would require that person to have every single on of the files or some source for them. Since the eggs are spread out, that is difficult in the extreme.
Which is why torrents are so advantageous. As long as one person still has the file, everyone can get it (through peer exchange via a magnet link if the tracker goes down.) That is what OP meant by everyone putting their eggs in the same basket. Practically speaking, it is now impossible or extremely difficult for others to get those files.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
RFO brother. Well said.
"If the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Donny Rumsfeld
First Rule of Cloud Computing Use: Never upload anything to the cloud you wouldn't want the entire world to see.
Are you going to get this data back? Of course not. The servers have been seized by the government because they were used for criminal activities. They're not going to take the time to go through everyone's files to find the good ones and give them back.
They're going to count up the number of items that look like copyrighted content (7 billion copyrighted photographs, 28 million ripped DVDs, etc.), come up with a multiplier for each type ($5,000 for each photo, $15 million for each DVD, etc.) and then tell the judge the copyright infringement at Megaupload was so massive, the value of the damages is greater than the amount of U.S. debt held by China.
Second Rule of Cloud Computing Use: Never assume that you have any guarantee of access to anything in the cloud.
Keep in mind that the Rules of Cloud Computing Use are a necessary because of the Three Laws of Cloud Computing:
If the point of this case is protecting intellectual property, what happened to the right of all the user's of Megaupload to their intellectual property? It's like if some criminal organizations had deposited some stolen money in a bank, and the authorities froze all of the assets of all of the bank's customers, criminal or no, for an indefinite period (to protect the property rights of the victims of the theft). It's outrageous. And ironic.
Course, it could be a Feeb sting site. Get out yer tinfoil hats, kids, we're gonna have some REAL fun now!!
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
The thing is it would be easy for AWS to find and disable Megaupload's account. It was Megaupload who wrote the incriminating emails, and it was their business that would be seized. Amazon would retain "safe harbor" and "mere conduit" defence, and no judge would warrant shutting them down.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Seriously? Is this still a question to be posed? This is why this particular use of the cloud is pathetic. Don't come and act all surprised that you lost your stuff after you put it out of your safe reach!
Pathetic.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
The way this was done is a little silly, Megaupload has operated in the open for years, and Kim has been a very public figure. Then the New Zealand government swoops in on them for the US government which says it is a criminal conspiracy and wants to extradite everyone associated with Megaupload to the US for criminal conspiracy charges. Seems like overkill to me, and the timing is very suspicious with the SOPA/PIPA going-ons. Look how MF Global ripped off people to the tune of $1 billion, can you imagine Jon Corzine or any of the banksters cuffed and called part of a criminal conspiracy? Investors will be lucky if they get their money back, never mind jail time for the high mucky-mucks.
I have heard that there are e-mails from one or two of the Megaupload people which sound incriminating, but extraditing anyone remotely associated with Megaupload to the US, as a so-called member of an international criminal conspiracy, is overkill and absurd. It's why the US government loves conspiracy charges - you can go to jail for a long time for crimes someone else committed, however loosely associated they may be with you. The news is showing the mansions, the helicopters, the expensive cars - it is talking about incriminating e-mails. Did everyone arrested live that large, did they all do incriminating things? I think not, but with the MAFIAA gunning for their heads the government will use the conspiracy charge to spread the doings of one or two to anyone remotely associated with Megaupload.
The summary is off base here.
Knowingly hosting and profiting from infringing material is most certainly illegal. Look around page 30 (probably other places as well) and you will see they knew about the infringement and rewarded people who posted it. Pretty damning. They even prayed Youtube didn't have a fraud-detection system. Google even sent them a notice that they couldn't work with them because of the copyrighted content, 4 years ago.
All in all, they may not have done infringement themselves directly, but they certainly profited by it and did little, if anything, to discourage it. It would be like knowingly charging rent for a drug dealer's business. They may not have done it themselves personally, but they aided and abetted.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
What is Azure? (Are you kidding asking about a service run by a company with the reputation like the owner of Azure?)
xoda.org
In this case, making a copy of the data would not have required shutting down the site
all that was needed was for them to take a copy of the data and leave a copy with megaupload
Having read through the complaint, the accusations are chilling. The complaint basically describes any service that derives a profit from user-uploaded content and makes the leap that the site is responsible for all content uploaded by users. In this case, the site may very well have known that the vast majority of content was being uploaded by users with no rights to the content, but almost everything that's claimed could be claimed of services where that isn't the case. If this sets a precedent for sites being criminally liable for content uploaded by users, there are many, many online services with much more legitimate intentions that could be affected.
There's also other nonsensical claims in the complaint that make it scary for those trying to play by the rules. For one, they claim that by not providing search functionality to aid copyright holders in identifying their content, the service was promoting piracy rather than the claimed use as a personal backup service. To me, a global search to help identify files that aren't yours seems like it would aid in piracy, not help it. Any functionality that helps copyright holders find their content will also help those that are looking to download it illegally. Also, unbelievably enough, the evidence against them includes a tool they created for copyright holders to claim files were copyrighted and remove them from the system. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how trying to help copyright holders protect their content can be evidence of conspiring to violate copyright.
Losing access to your data is only one of the points to be made here.
There's also the question of the government having access to your information. With one blanket warrant (the website), the government now has access to all the files of all users, whether infringing or not.
This is roughly akin to the government getting a search warrant for a bank, and rooting around in all the safety deposit boxes.
Another question relates to the security of the data.
As I understand it, MegaUpload allows users to choose who has access to their data. If your data was valuable, what happens if that value is lost due to the feds losing control over it?
Does the government guarantee the safety of the data? Can the government be sued if your trade secrets mysteriously find their way to the hands of your competitors? Or to China?
Indicting the owners of MegaUpload is one thing, but every way you look at it the seizure of the data is an infringement of people's rights.
Hardly. FreeNet is about as far from self-healing as you can get (if your content is unpopular, it just goes away). What Samantha's talking about sounds more like Bittorrent - which can suffer from the same popularity problem, but unlike FreeNet the files are always available as long as at least one person has a copy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What happens if a similar service, like Dropbox, gets shut down
Except your dropbox files are also stored on your computer locally. So if the service dies, the only thing that breaks is the public link/the server side copy.
If you're going to use a comparison to a "similar service", at least use a good comparison, like rapidshare or sendspace.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
What Happens To Your Files When a Cloud Service Shuts Down?
They're toast.
That was the easiest "Ask Slashdot" ever. What's the next question?
No, really. That's all there is to say about it. Everything else either follows from there, is trivially obvious, or is pure speculation, ranting, off-topic or trolling.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Check out the plates on some of these:
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2008 Rolls-Royce Phantom Drop Head Coupe, VINSCA2D68096UH07049; License Plate No. “GOD”;72.
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Fiberglass sculpture, imported from the United Kingdom with EntryNo. 83023712;85.
1957 Cadillac El Dorado, VIN 5770137596;86.
2010 Sea-Doo GTX Jet Ski, VIN YDV03103E010;87.
1959 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible, VIN 59F115669;88.
Von Dutch Kustom Motor Bike, VIN 1H9S14955BB451257;89.
2006 Mercedes-Benz CLK DTM, VIN WDB2094421T067269;90.
2010 Mini Cooper S Coupe, VIN WMWZG32000TZ03648 LicensePlate No. “T”;7191.
1989 Lamborghini LM002, VIN ZA9LU45AXKLA12158, License PlateNo. “FRP358”;92.
2011 Mercedes-Benz ML63, VIN 4JGBB7HB0BA666219;
You thought your content was safe. You lost. You thought your content was secure. You lost. You thought your content couldn't be seen or decrypted by third parties. Odds are, you lost there too.
I wish I had more sympathy, but "the cloud" still looks like a sucker's game pushed by government-corporations as a way to acquire, monitor and control digital content for economic and political purposes. Think anything else and you're just being a gullible fool. Sorry, but that's the real world you see in those broken links today.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
that Clouds EVAPOURATE. They are nothing more than unstable non-linear containers of water vapour anyway.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
It does not have to be the file itself, it is the container of the files. Look at it in this aspect: A law firm or accountant is investigated for misconduct. The government issues a search and seizure warrant. They can and will go in and remove the filing cabinets containing evidentiary documents and non-evidentiary documents as well.
As currently viewed, Mega* was committing a crime that the US feels it has jurisdiction over. According to law, the govt has the right to stop all business, detain the suspected criminal as well as evidence. In this instance, the "crime" is serving the files, thus the govt shuts down the site. Same as if you sell drugs out of your bodega.
Seems some people always need a catastrophe before they really look at the characteristics of the services they use. As with all cloud-services, worst case (and a worst-case that is likely to manifest itself) is not only that all your data is gone, it may also involve law-enforcement (or contractors for them) may be looking though that data and may start to ask questions. Even if your data is completely legitimate it may either not look that way or the people looking at it may simply not understand it.
Of course all that is no surprise at all to anybody that thought about it beforehand instead of simply falling for the "cloud"-hype.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This.
Check your premises.
I agree, I wasn't disputing that. But the may have the right to take and hold real evidence, and still be held responsible for returning property that is not relevant to the crime being investigated. Especially in this case, where returning a copy of the legitimately uploaded files would be sufficient.
I don't know if this is the case, but if I were a lawyer looking to start a class action to get some of those files back, this is where I'd start my research.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
https://cloud.torproject.org/
To help new customers get started in the cloud, Amazon has introduced a free usage tier. The Tor Cloud images are all micro instances, and new customers can run a micro instance for free for a whole year. The AWS free usage tier also includes 15 GB of bandwidth out per month.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
People are lazy enough to use a service like MU and not be driven towards something that delivers true anonymity, freedom, resilience against controls, etc. People are also greedy enough to create a service like MU that is obviously driven by massive profit. Stuff like MU has an opportunity cost and does serious cultural damage because it serves to hide the need for anonymity, true encryption, disconnection from currency, etc. I'm a free speech and copyright reform activist, and even I support the indictment against MU (although the asset forfeiture and some of the damage claims are excessive, the racketeering, conspiracy, money laundering, and tax evasion charges are spot on.)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
BT isn't far off—but not just BitTorrent, more like BitTorrent with an extensible torrent, and everyone only seeds some fraction (let's call it n%) of the whole data set. That way you don't have to mirror everything, but unpopular files will always be protected. The key thing is that the chunk distribution is random, and there's enough redundancy in the system to make sure a file is always represented at least x times, and that the copies are geographically isolated to make the whole thing highly fault tolerant; ideally no data should be lost if, say, an entire country (or US state) suddenly goes dark.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Now that's closer to FreeNet. It could work if the total storage is tallied and peer failure stays below a designed maximum tolerable level. FreeNet just doesn't do either of those things and basically only keeps the most popular content.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
welcome to the future.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
What happened to people and businesses when their banks went belly up before the FDIC?
The answer wasn't pretty.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This raises an interesting issue. Since this appears a criminal investigation, related parties are unlikely to easily gain access to the materials. For example, in a drug seizure context, the government basically assumes 'too bad' or complicity for related parties/owners (think seizure of an auto or house allegedly implicated in drug crimes). Understandably, technologists see a significant distinction. Unfortunately, the law lags 5-10 years behind reality so while these issues are obvious to most technologists, these issues might not even be comprehensible to some in the legal community. That said, when you are dealing with 1) data servers (often remotely hosted), 2) massive amounts of data potentially unrelated to the criminal investigation, 3) potentially easily segregated, electronic, data silos (in other words, each user has its own dedicated, protected area), and 4) a collective environment, the analogy to auto seizures seems to obviously break-down (more like the seizure of an entire 500 unit apartment building because someone sold crack in #203). Thus, one would presume the affected parties (assuming no complicity--which the government probably will argue is uncertain) would need to challenge the seizures in a court with jurisdiction--which raises its own complexities and costs (plus predicate issues of standing to sue). But, note, there is perhaps another serious issue here related to additional liability. When the servers are seized, the current astounding breadth of government review of the materials seized might implicate others in crimes. The situations is a not-unexpected conundrum (for some of us), and one that you probably won't find featured in your shiny, cloud-computing-will-save-the-world marketing brochures.
Having my car seized would be, in the eyes of the court, part of the risk I knowingly or unknowingly accepted when I dropped my car off. I believe that the US feds would use similar logic in regards to the data they impounded. Places like megaupload are generally known to host damn near anything and everything. It's my understanding they are pretty good at self policing at taking down CP when it's found, which in the Feds eyes is proof that they could also be self policing in regards to copyright infringement if they chose. Thus; if someone posts infringing material on MU and it doesn't get taken down, then MU is at fault. If I then upload some non-infringing material of my own and it gets caught in the dragnet, that is part of the risk I knowingly or unknowingly assumed when I chose MU as my filesharing host.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
I see a lot of assmad in this alleged "indictment". $675 Million is nearly the equivalent of what Kung Fu Panda 2 made worldwide. The "loss" might seem like a significant number, but it's actually chump change compared to overall worldwide gross sales of all other files combined from 2011. This is only a PR stunt. There's nothing to see here, move along.
http://www.worldwideboxoffice.com/index.cgi?order=worldwide&start=2011&finish=2012&keyword=
Apparantly if "Premium users of the site, a small percentage of the overalluser base, are able to download and upload files with few, if any, limitations." you will loose all access and possibly even be indictable by the nutbags running the U.S. legal system.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Nullsoft WASTE?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Google uses what they call the High Replication Data Store. Data saved this way is synchronously stored on hard drives in multiple (three or more) data centers, most likely in different countries, if not on different continents. Synchronously means that if any of the data centers has problems then any of the others can take over immediately with no loss of data. It's about as resilient as you can get.
what makes people think that storage on a cloud has less problems than storing on-site? Being shutdown by the law, any cloud service could be shut down by a power company for unpaid bills, rogue, low paid staff, telcos may have a major failures, etc. I would expect that along with large reputable clouds, that there would be dodgy operations that grab the money and run, or just have bad management. Diversity, not cloud dependency.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I just looked at the document and in there it states clearly that Megaupload is based in Hong Kong. How can a US court take down a business located in Hong Kong?
It is fairly obvious that megaupload was operating under the grey area of the law. It is not that surprising that it would be shut down after a while.
You should always back up your data, but it is much less likely that dropbox will suffer the same fate as megaupload. If dropbox starts becoming a hub for piracy and dropbox turns a blind eye to it, then you should move your data.
Services like Azure and AWS rely on big corporate businesses and have an incentive to keep its reputation strong. Having it used for piracy will cheapen the image, so they have incentives to stamp it out and not do anything that will get it in trouble with the law.
In Dropbox one can create public link to file, and it is served by Dropbox servers. From copyright standpoint of view, they are "just as infringing" by the possibility that someone shares the link like in MegaUpload.
So this is frightening action by US.
The lost is real if all the copies of a piece of work disappear. The lost is imaginary/trivial if more copies exists somewhere else. For some files in Megaupload there are no known copies.
MOD THE CHILD UP!
I think that our copyright laws are deeply flawed, but the slippery slope you describe does not start at a provider that happened to have copyrighted content, but it starts with people that knowingly gave money to uploaders for works they knew were copyrighted with the intent of enriching themselves with advertising and subscription revenue. That's a far different case, I think.
I think this a very realistic and worrying possibility. I can easily imagine a scenario:
Workday runs Payroll for hundreds of customers in a single environment. Each company has its own "tenant," but all the data is stored, together, in Workday's one big in-memory database. Workday is entirely responsible for backups, disaster recovery, etc.
Assume your company uses Workday for payroll services. Now imagine that some other company that is also using Workday is using fake employees in the Payroll system to launder money. We all know "money laundering" is all the FBI really cares about, so they eventually figure out this is happening. What is keeping the FBI from shutting down Workday, entirely? If they do shut Workday down, I'll bet your company will be destroyed by the fact it can't pay it's employees, and by the penalties the IRS will impose when you can't file your taxes.
"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
This just shows that our Data will never be safe in any cloud storage. So how will services like Dropbox or iCloud provide a guarantee? I guess they cant!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
No. Dropbox files are stored, unmodified, in a local folder across multiple locations. It's a syncing tool, not just a backup system. If Dropbox's servers close tomorrow, I still have the local folder on my desktop and my laptop. It just means they'll no longer be automatically synced across both machines when they are saved, nor can they be remotely accessed any more.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
This is EXACTLY why SOPA and PIPA had to be stopped! Thank the millions of observant and motivated people who campaigned against them and made the idiots in D.C. re-think the folly of those two measures. Yes, I'm sure there may be legitimate reasons for investigating and possibly prosecuting MU, but the entire service should not be shut down without warnng OR DUE PROCESS! This is what SOPA and PIPA would have made even easier! And sorry, Mr President, I do not have a better solution, but I don't need to have a secondary plan in place to know when the proposed plan stinks to high heaven! That is what we pay (DEARLY) for you and the Congress to do! DO NOT SHIRK YOUR JOB!
4) Enjoy your consumer level 512 kbps upload!
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
You can think of cloud providers as hard drives. You can probably count on them for a couple years, but given enough time failure is inevitable. Differences include data security, and the fact that several cloud providers may be involved in a coordinated take down (or buy out).
It is tricky to do what you propose. First, there will never be enough space, because people will want to store more than 1/4 (if you require 4 copies) of the space they provide. Second, it will be overrun by child pornography if it can be used anonymously. Third, it will be very difficult to verify that your content is actually stored in 4 places at once. Fourth, it can take an inordinate amount of time to retrieve content if it happens to be stored far away or on bad connections.
Freenet solves 1) and 3) by not guaranteeing anything, 2) by everyone closing their eyes, and 4) by being so slow that it doesn't matter whether content is on a fast or a slow server.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
A cloud provider going away is very much like a hard drive failing.
Except we are told that it's considerably less likely because operating a reliable service is their core business and hence should be something they're very good at.
Hard drive manufacturers have offering a reliable device as their core business and they should be good at it too. :-)
I get your point but I am discussing the result of an event not the likelihood of an event. Also consider the event spurring this discussion, the gov't takedown of a service provider. That is an external event that does not reflect upon the provider's reliability.
Then there is the inevitable fact that not all service providers are equal. There will be, or are, discount providers that will provide less reliability at a lower price. Much like hard drive manufacturers offer consumer grade products at a lower price than server grade products. Much like web hosts offer budget solutions where the user does patches and other maintenance and full service solutions where the provider takes care of patches and other maintenance.
As long as you run dropbox on at least one desktop computer you have a local copy of your files. If you use more than one computer chances are you have multiple copies of those files. Of course you lose the ability to share those files when dropbox shuts down but at least you have the files in an easy to find place which should make it easier to move them to another cloud service. This seems like a fairly robust model to me.
anyone trusting the cloud to keep their property safe deserves losing it...
metageek
That's what happens when you rely on someone else to publish your materials and, more importantly, don't backup.
It's not their duty per se, but they're the only ones who have any standing in getting the data back. It's your duty to ensure that your data is safe, whether that means keeping a local backup, or uploading it to multiple providers. Unless you signed some kind of contract with your host, just because your data is being hosted there does not entitle you to any protections.
Now, a large cloud provider like Amazon might be able to maintain AWS service even if their US servers get seized, but only because they have servers in other countries that may not be simultaneously seized.
Provisions in SOPA get around that bit by disabling the DNS outright so that the load balancing can't even kick in.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
From the Indictment:
1. KIM DOTCOM, MEGAUPLOAD LIMITED, VESTOR LIMITED, FINN BATATO, JULIUS BENCKO, SVEN ECHTERNACH, MATHIAS ORTMANN, ANDRUS NOMM, and BRAM VAN DER KOLK, the defendants, and others known and unknown to the Grand Jury, were members of the “Mega Conspiracy,” a worldwide criminal organization whose members engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering on a massive scale with estimated harm to copyright holders well in excess of $500,000,000 and reported income in excess of $175,000,000.
All throughout the Indictment the defendants are referred to as the Mega Conspiracy. Isn't that a bit unprofessional? Do they indict people being accused of murder as "The Murderer" as if that person has already been found guilty? I would hope that the jurors don't have access to this document as I would find it quite slanted. If I couldn't trust the writers to print facts as opposed to opinion, then I would as a juror find it my duty to consider jury nullification as an option to balance the justice scales.
I don't encourage copyright infringement but I do believe in a fair trial and use of the term "Mega Conspiracy" throughout the indictment to refer to the defendants doesn't sound quite fair to me.
clouds evaporate?
The same thing that would happen if you put all of your eggs in one basket and somebody that you entrusted with the basket dropped it.
I remember some advice about that....
Ah -
"Don't put all of your eggs in one basket".
The first few pages of the indictment read a lot like some of the business plans I read in the early oughts.
If a person only has one copy of a file, then it doesn't at all matter which basket it is in, does it? Yes, I am assuming people know what the fuck they are doing. If they don't then it's hardly surprising that they would have problems, is it?
If you put your eggs into one basket, that's a risk, and that risk is unrelated to "the cloud". But the vast overwhelming majority of people who put things "in the cloud" also keep them on their computer, thus "the cloud" is a backup, or else their computer is. And for those people who don't use the cloud as a backup, they have still improved the security of their files, because "the cloud" is more secure and has greater uptime than computers run by people who don't know what they are doing.
I was't addressing your first point, but I will: your critique is only valid with the untenable assumption that "the cloud" is less reliable than whatever infrastructure the organization would otherwise have. If you have essential infrastructure, then "the cloud" is not so bad a place to put it, considering all networks have downtime, and generally cloud services have pretty fricking good (though imperfect) uptime. Superduperduper organizations can do one better by having redundant local/cloud infrastructure, if they can afford it. Remember, the police can also storm your server closet.
My point was closer to the second of your points: yes, what I am saying is that putting files in the cloud is not at all what the OP described, which is "putting
all your eggs in one basket". That's my whole point: he's a luddite with some kind of inferiority complex surrounding the current evolution in information infrastructure, and he need not be, because "the cloud" is a step forward, even though like all solutions it is imperfect.
Is that the same thing as a complete moron who doesn't understand anything about the tool he is accusing others of not understanding?
still be held responsible for returning property that is not relevant
To the best of my knowledge their responsability would consist in handing the physical property (servers, hard drives) back to the owner. It's up to the management of MegaUpload to get the files back to the original owners. That's **IF** they don't just seize the property and auction it off, which is very common here in the US. IIRC just over half of the property siezed in drug cases and auctioned off by the police doesn't even belong to anyone charged with a crime. They're normally supposed to wait until the court case has been wrapped up before doing so, but they generally don't unless it's actually needed for evidence. Once it's been sold it's now the problem of the former owner to try to get it back from the new owner, the only beneficiaries are the police and however many lawyers can get involved.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
As is oft quote:
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
i think the risk is more associated with using services which dont have a clear, legal business model.
has to be the lamest idea ever. If you dont back up your files you need on DVD and lock them up in a fire proof safe in your home and the 2nd copy in your banks Lock Box then you deserve to loose all your data. If you need to share with many users there any many other ways to do so then to put them on a website hosted by who knows.. and you trust them to keep it safe? I mean really now.. not that hard to set up your own FTP server and share with your friends and family.
What happens if a similar service, like Dropbox, gets shut down?
One of the reasons I prefer Dropbox for storing my non-essential files to some of the other cloud file storage services is the syncing feature. I keep the files on my local drive (all of my computers local drives, actually.) If Dropbox were to go down for any reason, I a copy of that file on every machine.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
LOL you're lame if that's the case...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
That is, until the final purging... the day which all bits will know their final zeroing...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
It goes to the new owners that can do anything at all they like with it. If there was anything there at all of commercial value the new owners can sell it if they like. If nothing else spammers still pay for lists of email addresses so all those backed up address books are worth something. That's not even getting into criminal activities - insane as it sounds people do put banking information and everything required for effective identity theft onto things even as insecure as DropBox. You'd better hope that whoever gets the server at auction or whatever is going to be perfectly honest (every second hand server I've bought had a lot more on there than the bare OS - does anybody wipe?).
If law enforcement own it then it becomes of value for a fishing expedition for any hints of crime, real or imagined. Innocent photos of children and less innocent photos of consenting adults that just happen to look young can get someone charged and the officer behind it promoted before it makes it to court - so less than perfect law enforcement are not the sort of people you want with their digits on your personal files.
I'm sure the above poster knows it, but for the rest of you, once your data is passed on to somebody else you have no control over the data. If it's something you would be uncomfortable with seeing on the front page of a newspaper or something that can cost you money (eg. enough information for somebody spend money in your name and leave you with the bill) then why are you putting it out there? It's not enough to trust the hosting company, they may have no control themselves once the liquidators move in and then you've got to trust whoever ends up with the auctioned gear.
And the US doesn't understand why overseas businesses are reluctant to store information on US servers...
I am John Hurt.
The actual answer is (as always) to have backups of anything you feel is important.
Ironically, the specialist on-line back-up services seem to be among the worst offenders in terms of guarantees.
For example, we looked into this a few months ago, and one huge and very well known back-up service had Ts & Cs that seemed to say (quite clearly, IIRC) that if they decided to close down the service for any reason then they would have no obligation in terms of granting customers data access beyond letting you download what you could over the next 3 days. On a fully saturated leased line, with no-one else hitting their servers at the same time, you still couldn't download the volume of data that even their entry-level business packages supported within that time frame! And clearly in practice not everyone has a handy leased line available and it is highly unlikely that the back-up service's servers would stand up to their entire customer base trying to do that at once. They normally offer other ways to retrieve your data en masse if necessary, such as posting it on discs for a small fee, but those options all stop as soon as they announce the closure. Basically, they offer a back-up service that can disappear at any time without giving you a chance to retrieve everything, so better hope your office doesn't burn down around the time they decide to do that, then.
We didn't take out a contract. We did notice that while the above was the worst case of not really providing the advertised service at all, several of the other big name specialist off-site back-up services didn't seem to be much better. None of them actually promised to take steps such that even if they had to shut down at short notice for any reason there was a always a credible plan in place to get your data back to you.
One of my colleagues made a strong case that we should use something like encrypted files uploaded to AWS if we wanted cloud back-ups, for the simple reason that Amazon make most of their money elsewhere but rely on AWS themselves as well, which with their scale means it is inconceivable that the service would be shut off with the loss of data before we had chance to retrieve it. In the end, we decided (as we have with most other cloud services) that the whole idea didn't live up to the hype, and we opted to lease a dedicated server housed in someone else's data centre and we basically just do an automatic rsync from our normal servers to the back-up with suitable levels of encryption applied throughout.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I don't think you read his post. He said "single point of failure".
If people made copies of their "eggs" then why are they complaining about losing a single "egg"?
He has a point too about using cloud based services for collaboration. When it goes down, your communication tools go with it. That's not just cloud either, but Skype as well for example.
Some operations are just too sensitive to put into the cloud. I would never want any of my medical records or personal data hosted anywhere in the cloud, and I would expressly disallow it. From that perspective, as a company, it can be unacceptable to have your data, in the clear, outside of direct company control at any time. I might make an exception if a 3rd party security company was to audit the security, random audits were permissible, and there were very strong non-disclosure agreements, SLA's in place to protect company data. For most sensitive SaaS services those kind of agreements do exist.
I think the entire context of his post was cloud only set ups. Not backup.
At least that is how I read his post, and I agree with some of his points from a business consideration.
Seriously? They're calling it the "Mega Conspiracy"? I'd expect that from a 14 year old, not an indictment.
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
I think:
1) and 3) are necessary characteristics of a system that's intended to make data hard to take down. If you can know there are 4 copies, you can get the servers where they reside removed. Then we're back to having the problem this story is about.
2) is probably a temporary problem. Here's why: there can't be that much of it in existence. Production has to be small. With a small amount of content, the amount of requests will also stay fairly small, because people aren't going to redownload the same thing they already have. But on Freenet, what one has in the downloads folder doesn't matter. Data must be actively accessed to persist. My guess is that as Freenet grows and other kinds of traffic become much larger in proportion, any kind of unpopular content will have a harder time remaining stored. Of course it'll still exist, but it'll get buried in some obscure corner and be hard to retrieve.
4) seems to be getting better. With bandwidth and hardware now being much better than when Freenet got started I noticed that performance seems to have got considerably more tolerable.
What do you do when your cloud fails? The answer is: the same thing that happens when any hosting solution fails.
Clouds are for hosting data, not storing it. Data storage is an old problem that was well solved a long time ago. The current incarnation of cloud computing exists to solve the hosting problem, not the storing problem.
If you're storing data in a cloud, then you're doing it wrong.
Your cloud hosting fail-over procedure is to mirror the files on another host and redirect connections to the new host. That's pretty much the standard procedure for any hosting solution.
This is precisely why we need new protocols for clouds, so that for example, if one provider shuts down, we can easily rely on redundant copies hosted elsewhere.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I don't think you really know what warez is. Modified phone/tablet ROMs aren't considered warez.
Nobody cares what the CAPTCHA for your post was.
I see that MegaUpload's PayPal account had around $110,000,000 flow through it. Will PayPal be prosecuted under proceeds of crime legislation, or are they allowed to earn money from criminal activity with impunity?
Korma: Good
And this is why I am cloning myself....
- Raynet --> .
Things like that aren't really going to help when license servers go down. That's the real reason I'm against software licenses enforced by code: I have the right to the code, and should continue even if the company goes away, my net connection gets killed, or I change my video card (see latest bullshit from Ubisoft activation based CP).