Would You Rent Out Your Unused Drive Space?

Press2ToContinue writes "There is a new idea out there, proposed by Shawn Wilkinson, Tome Boshevski & Josh Brandof, that if you have unused disk space on your HD that you should rent it out. It is a great idea and the concept may have a whole range of implementations. The 3 guys describe their endeavor as: "Storj is a peer-to-peer cloud storage network implementing end-to-end encryption would allow users to transfer and share data without reliance on a third party data provider. The removal of central controls would eliminate most traditional data failures and outages, as well as significantly increasing security, privacy, and data control. A peer-to-peer network and basic encryption serve as a solution for most problems, but we must offer proper incentivisation for users to properly participate in this network."

Comments

Nope

[Anrego]

Two biggest reasons:

1) Even encrypted, I'd still be pretty wary of having arbitrary files stores on my machines. Even if legally in the clear, just dealing with an LEA when someone uses your machine as a child porn host is going to be unpleasant.

2) Bandwidth is far more valuable to me than storage space. I've got tonnes of storage space, it's cheap. Bandwidth far less so.

Re:Nope

[JMJimmy]

Besides, who has free storage space!?

Re:Nope

[BarbaraHudson]

Storj is based on blockchain technology and peer-to-peer protocols to provide the most secure, private, and encrypted cloud storage.

That's what they all say. Funny how it never works out that way.

Re:Nope

[OzPeter]

Two biggest reasons:

1) Even encrypted, I'd still be pretty wary of having arbitrary files stores on my machines. Even if legally in the clear, just dealing with an LEA when someone uses your machine as a child porn host is going to be unpleasant.

From TFA they talk about "shards" being stored on a computer, so that no one computer holds a complete file. But yeah, if LEA comes a knocking then I bet you will still be in deep do-do.

As for bandwidth, what I don't get is how do you get your files back if you can't guarantee the people you rented disk space from actually have their machines turned on?

Re:Nope

[blackest_k]

makes no sense, how much would you rent out say a 2 terabyte hard drive, cost less than $100 to be worth while. might not be bad if they paid $50 a month for it not so much for $5 a month or less.

So why are you willing to payout $50 a month for encrypted 3rd party storage which is legal.

On the other hand say you have a college which needs offsite backups you have another college in the same area also needing off site backups. Now you could could pay for a third party to provide off site storage or you could trade storage space for storage space. If their systems go down they can restore from you and if your systems go down you can restore from you.

It's not the worst disaster recovery plan ever. However it does need trust between the two parties not so easy between strangers. However you might do it between say your drives and your parents. Assuming your not in the basement of course...

   

Re:Nope

[BarbaraHudson]

People with bandwidth caps are going to hate this. People with "soft" bandwidth caps (throttling after x gb) are also going to hate this. But I think the worst is that it now incentivizes people to install a trojan on your system and rent out your storage space without you knowing, same as they did for bitcoin mining.

Re:Nope

[whoever57]

Even if legally in the clear, just dealing with an LEA when someone uses your machine as a child porn host is going to be unpleasant.

Imagine this in the UK:

Police:"We think you have kiddy porn on your computer, what are the contents of these encrypted files?"
You: "I don't know"
Police: "Tell us the password"
You: "I don't know it"
Judge: "Go to jail until you tell us the password!"

Re: Nope

[blang]

Very clever, but you forget one thing.
The dudes showing up at your door is not going to a be gullible fellow nerds.
They will carry it all away, you tablets cell phones, and anyting that looks like sort of computerlike. They are not going to take just the usb stick you hand them, they are going to look at you with blank eyes when you try to explain about vmware.
Then they can with law in hand force you to hand over passwords.
The inconvenience is not that they might find something youre hiding,
The inconvenience us that they will take all your stuff, for who knows hiw longm and werher ut wilk be returned to you intact. The san itself probably should be in a different physical location, preferably on a different address that does not have internet. With wifi or ethernet connectivity to your server location.

So better be more clever. If you have added frequent offsite backup, via net or sneaker, and the ability to recover quickly to a replacement san, ok.

If you have the $$ also review any such deal with a lawyer and have a plan what to do in case of different scenarios.

Re:Nope

[AmiMoJo]

It's cheaper to keep data than to evaluate it. Someone asked about sorting out a large collection of photos they had taken for work (professional photographer) due to the amount of storage space they were taking up on Slashdot a while back. Someone else then pointed out that even if they paid some intern minimum wage to do the evaluation it would be more expensive than just buying more drive space and a NAS.

For companies where people who are well paid generate data, like say engineers or researchers, they would need someone who understands those things to do the evaluation. The cost of deleting something they need years later could be high. I sometimes look at 15 year old files for work. The thing is, 15 year old files are all tiny and can be stored easily. By the time file are old enough to consider deleting them it just isn't worth doing.

Not a chance.

[YrWrstNtmr]

Drive space is cheap. In addition to not being able to use some of what I have here, I also have to dedicate part of my bandwidth?
Not happening.
In addition, whose responsibility is it as to what is 'stored' on my hard drives?

"proper incentivisation"? You couldn't afford enough to pay me for this.

No

[gatkinso]

For the reasons already cited.

No thanks to kiddie porn on my drive....

[ip_freely_2000]

No way I'd want to support some a-hole keeping some kind of illegal garbage on my system. Is the company running this idea going to indemnify in all jurisdictions? Is some FBI guy going to kick in my door to grab my drive for the contents of some kind of nastiness? Just a bad idea.

Re:No thanks to kiddie porn on my drive....

[grumpy_old_grandpa]

It is sad to see that years of propaganda and fear-mongering by the government, politicians and police have actually worked out so well for them. Twenty years ago, the response to a peer-to-peer hosting network would have been "give me some of that". Today, it's "imagine how the police could fuck you over if they wanted to".

How much more will it take to admit to ourselves that most Western nations are now police states?

Re:No thanks to kiddie porn on my drive....

[YrWrstNtmr]

Years of propaganda? That, and also assholes who will use this for their own means, and screw the innocent user, simply because they do not care.

Freenet has existed since Napster

[preaction]

And that is all this is.

Re:Wuala used to have this

[Oligonicella]

That catapults it from no to fuck no. Smells very much like scam.

I'm Charlie

[ArsenneLupin]

Funny how we all shake our heads at the Muslims, who kill over pictures, but considering this whole kiddie porn madness: we're not any better. It's just pictures. Cartoons even in some cases.

Re:I'm Charlie

[Beeftopia]

Pictures of a long dead prophet and caricatures of top officials and warlords. Versus images of real sexually victimized children.

One image is political speech, the other are sexual scenes with those who cannot give consent.

Both are images of course, but images can capture all manner of human experience, from the banal to the brutal.

Re:devporn

[hairyfeet]

He's talking about warez, the excuse every warez site and protocol uses has been "we also share Linux ISOs" trying to use the old VHS "some non infringing uses" standard as an excuse.