These privacy issues are like whack-a-mole.  This cloud stuff should have the same protections as your private papers.  They should only be searchable via court order with cause.  

My brother has always said, "It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission."  My brother is an ***hole.  So are the people that made this decision to violate our trust.  

Anyone who thinks they have nothing to fear if they have nothing to hide are already lost.

If they can read then they will write and or delete.  Watch for a rash of politically motivated witch hunts.  

Say hello to your new jailer:

Darrell Issa

backs out of the room slowly...

 It's interesting reading people's comparison of the internet with actual physical things. Books, hard drives, media is not the internet. It does not even begin to be the same rules and the internet.  The internet within itself is pretty much a science project or theory. No, don't look at me that way. Then we get the hard drives, raid, back ups. Guess what, they are owned by someone else. The rules of whomever has physical control of the item wins is the rule that applies. It happened with my club a million years ago, it fits for my hard drive now. One cannot just decide that the hard drive that is in someone else's server has anything to do with what is mine. It doesn't. What I can use, touch, and carry around does.

It comes down to trust. My stuff is on a privately hosted resell account that I found is just as cheap as a regular service . He is an individual in the UK who rents a whole server that resides in Belgium. Dunno, perhaps a foreign server is more secure. Would renting a whole server be more safe? Get together with some friends and pay for it. Last I looked it was something like $250-$500 US per month. Ten folks together, $25-$50 each. Would that work? Rent a server? That brings perhaps the concept of "mine" back into play.

Meanwhile, we can't count on what travels trough the unknown paths and lives on someone else's machine as anything approaching "ours". My mind imagines in a court of law telling that a box full of photos in someone else's house is mine, and perhaps there are times I don't want to.

I know, I'm crazy. Sometimes my mind works in weird ways. I carry my most important backup on a thumb drive on my key ring. *shrug*

Lizmarr... make sure they're encoded, and that only you have the key.

1. Thumb drives can be stolen.
2. Many of the thumb drives I have bought have failed after two years or less.

Solution. If you have nothing in the cloud then there's nothing to steal. What's mine is mine and right here where only I can access it.

Laugh, Ross but how about all your art work here on WC, or elsewhere?

How about a zip drive or HDD in your house... if what's yours isn't yours online, why stop there?

The whole point of this is to motivate folks to let their representatives know, and to raise an unholy stink about it.

Typically when uploading your property to a site [such as here] there are specific terms of service/use associated with doing so.

IF a cloud service stated conditions PRIOR to use that your stuff may be used/abused/taken/sifted through/whatever then that's entirely fine and fair.

The real issue arises where the rules change AFTER 'agreement' and without consent from BOTH contracted parties.

If legislation alters the TOS then the contract is void.

If you cannot/will not sue for breach simply pull your stuff and avoid like the plague.

The cloud is being forced on us.  Apple, Amazon and a few others already have it so integrated that you have to rely on it or have your own server and data archive.  

Tablet devices for example don't currently have enough storage to maintain everything you end up getting.

That's why you get a 32gb SD card AND a portable USB drive.... and say: "F**k the cloud"

I have a 32gb SD card for downloads, etc, and a 500gb portable drive for storing music, video and photos...

.... which allows me to say: "F**k the cloud"

To be clear: 

The issue has NOTHING to do with WC per se. WC isn't really a "data storage facility" in any traditional sense, but with the government's motion, there is no clear definition of what that might be.

It has to do with ownership and the government's stand that after uploading anything to the Cloud. It has to do with as Jafo put it, "where the rules change AFTER 'agreement' and without consent from BOTH contracted parties."

The remedy some would say, is to pull what you uploaded. The problem with that (again, not with WC) is that Cloud services back up what you uploaded (copied it) and it remains with them thus you have all the risk and no benefit.

It also has to do with your Fourth Amendment rights and whether they exist.

Also, whether you have a file on your HDD and have to email it, is it yours anymore? After all, the government might say, "You uploaded it to an ISP and from there it was sent onward. Therefore, you no longer own it."

Don't forget that if you do shun online storage and use some type of in-house solution, make a copy to be stored off site or invest in some type of fireproof container (and leave it by an outside wall so you can find it after the fire)  It's not worth it to be grabbing all your goodies if the house is on fire. And if you are not there when it is then what? Back it up and store it off site. Rotate through your media.

If the redundant copy is encrypted, you can have a friend store it for you, as well.

Primary reason is off site storage.  Off site, and it will not burn down or be stolen.  But then the risk of the company being nabbed by the feds.

Cloud storage is the best platform for storing online date. I have been using cloud storage services from different providers. I always got full reliability and storage with 100% automation. Specially DropBox, JustCloud, ZipCloud are some of those Cloud storage services who are providing most secure storage platform. Government can not be able to by pass security shields of these storage services as it comes under the violation of privacy policy. Cloud storage has far better features than any other storage options or devices.

Source: http://www.cloudreviews.com/blog/cloud-storage-benefits

WTF is the cloud anyway. Why do people need to invent names for stuff?

I suppose it's to make something potentially dodgy look cool. "Hey, look at me - all my stuff is in the cloud, I'm sooo trendy"...

Uploading all your personal stuff to a somewhat vaporous environment is asking for it

Silly humans.

If your cloud data has any value, and you work for hire, then it is owned by your employer. Normal people (due to their high time preference) do not have IP rights to lose.

rahal... Sorry, but I don't understand what you're talking about.

Here's an extreme case: Say you do digital art (original digital art). You want to back it up to protect it. You use a service which gives tou a huge amount of storage free, and it's off your machine (which you back up to an external disk) so you figure it's safe.

Along comes a hacker and steals what you stored online. The government says he owes you nothing because once you upload it, it isn't yours. Same for Adobe and MS. If they store their stuff online, they have no IP rights, per our government's absurd thinking. Of course the same isn't true for them. Ask Julian Assange.

My point is that the product of your work at a place of employment (or in a role for which you are compensated) belongs to the one paying you. It doesn't belong to you: It'll be in your employment contract. If you make bagels for a company, the bagels clearly don't belong to you. The same is true for IP, and art.

The same is true for YOUR art.

Say you make a chair and store it in space you rent from someone else. Then a third party comes along and takes it. When he's dragged into court for theft he says, "You can't try me for theft. Only if it's stored in his own house is it yours."

Nonsense.

Just popping back to reply.

As a general rule people seem to think they have more rights than they really do. They believe they have the same legal status as companies and private individuals: hence they think they have right to privacy, freedom of speech, to intellectual property etc.

Whereas the truth is, as an employee, your rights are pretty much limited to what is specifically granted by statute and nothing more.

rights are not given to us by government. 

government can only take rights away.

And you, as an employee, only have those rights when the government takes them from your employer (to whom they naturally belong) and gives them to you.

??? I've read three of your posts now and none of them have made any sense.

I wonder why cloud is based on a (social network basis or idea) if i may say so, it has so many similar features you basically share your work/data/information you never know where the data is stored while you still have the control over it, but who knows exactly, if you decied to delete the content you provided- if it is not stored on another backup server somewhere else...meaning that your data would be still free-roaming.
while i like the idea to store data and have it ready on any pc with a connectiion to the www i dont like the mechanics behind it.
Im afraid of the idea uploading a project i was working on for a week and then loose every rights for it.I have also read that they can use the data and store it where ever they want and share the information about it, dont remember the page i read about that sadly...
I used a social network once named tagged and i still can find data about my account via google and thats terrible because i deleted that account 3 -4 years ago..
If im wrong i would love to get some more input on that topic...since i was thinking of using it but currently im not going to bc of the SOPA integration.



 

More on the topic of privacy:

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/eu-us-data-privacy-war-100999

“The scale of lobbying by the US government and corporations is extreme. Data privacy in the USA is largely unregulated, and general rights are only given through terms and conditions,” Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, told TechWeekEurope.