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Subject: Where's the cloud support?
The recent arrest of Kim Dotcom and subsequent shutdown of his MegaEmpire should be ringing massive alarm sounds for every company offering cloud services, every investor in these companies, and in their customers.
But it's not, not yet. I've been waiting for the mass realization for a week, and it's only now starting to trickle out. What's happening to Megaupload is the biggest, scariest harbinger of implosive, disastrous doom for the cloud since marketing assholes started calling it that instead of, you know, online.
And here's why:
The United States government has arrested a foreign national on foreign soil and shut down his cloud storage service. Hundreds of thousands of customers have seen all their data just disappear, no matter if it was legitimate content or not. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of links to this data on websites around the world have suddenly become useless. Countless communities of talented and productive people are, without warning or recourse, completely fucked.
Where is Microsoft, Google and Amazon's support for the Megaupload empire? They, along with thousands of other companies, offer cloud services that are similarly at risk. For sure, they're more likely to be offered less of an apocalyptic shutdown because of their stature, but Megaupload was not a small outfit.
Do you use cloud services like Google docs, Picasa albums, flickr, deviantart, or even facebook? Imagine what happens to all of your content when a bunch of asshats start using these services for <gasp!> illegal purposes, and a government halfway around the world takes offense to it?
Well gosh, you'd lose all your stuff too, wouldn't you? One day you're king of the world with your online galleries of paintings and photos and fanfic, and the next you're a nobody like all those other schlubs.
The response of authorities to new scary technology is usually worse than the problem. Taking down the whole of Megaupload 'cause a (probably very substantial) percentage of their traffic was potentially illegal is sort of like killing the man 'cause he's got cancer. It's not subtle, and it should be terrifying for every single provider of hosting and cloud services.
And yet, somehow, there's no mention of it from the big players.
Hmmm.
But it's not, not yet. I've been waiting for the mass realization for a week, and it's only now starting to trickle out. What's happening to Megaupload is the biggest, scariest harbinger of implosive, disastrous doom for the cloud since marketing assholes started calling it that instead of, you know, online.
And here's why:
The United States government has arrested a foreign national on foreign soil and shut down his cloud storage service. Hundreds of thousands of customers have seen all their data just disappear, no matter if it was legitimate content or not. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of links to this data on websites around the world have suddenly become useless. Countless communities of talented and productive people are, without warning or recourse, completely fucked.
Where is Microsoft, Google and Amazon's support for the Megaupload empire? They, along with thousands of other companies, offer cloud services that are similarly at risk. For sure, they're more likely to be offered less of an apocalyptic shutdown because of their stature, but Megaupload was not a small outfit.
Do you use cloud services like Google docs, Picasa albums, flickr, deviantart, or even facebook? Imagine what happens to all of your content when a bunch of asshats start using these services for <gasp!> illegal purposes, and a government halfway around the world takes offense to it?
Well gosh, you'd lose all your stuff too, wouldn't you? One day you're king of the world with your online galleries of paintings and photos and fanfic, and the next you're a nobody like all those other schlubs.
The response of authorities to new scary technology is usually worse than the problem. Taking down the whole of Megaupload 'cause a (probably very substantial) percentage of their traffic was potentially illegal is sort of like killing the man 'cause he's got cancer. It's not subtle, and it should be terrifying for every single provider of hosting and cloud services.
And yet, somehow, there's no mention of it from the big players.
Hmmm.
BLEARGH