Cloud Computing and Far-Reaching Implications for Cloud-Data Ownership Rights

It's been a while since we've posted here, but I've just come across an article at Wired Magazine that I thought would be of interest to us as librarians and general keepers and guardians of information in the age of digitization, file sharing, and cloud computing.

By great coincidence, our last post here was also about Cloud Computing (thanks, Amy!).

But I'm hear to talk about the dark side.

Full article: Megaupload Case Has Far-Reaching Implications for Cloud-Data Ownership Rights, by David Kravets.

Early in 2012, you may have read about the seizure of the domain Megaupload.com. To oversimplify, the seizure took place amidst allegations that the site encouraged copyright infrigement.

"The problem lies in the fact that there is currently no clear process for owners to retrieve property that federal prosecutors effectively seized when they shuttered the file-sharing and cyberlocker service, " writes Kravets. That is, the owners of stored files - individual people around the world, as well as individuals storing files on behalf of larger organizations - have no way of accessing files and data that they may legitimately own and which does not violate any copyright.

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation... is representing one of Megaupload’s users in a lawsuit against the government that could set a precedent for cloud users in general," says Kravets. In this case, the plaintiff has gone to court seeking the return of high-school sports videos that are the property of his company. He maintains that the files he stored at Megaupload are the only existing copies -- they were his back-up after his own computer crashed.

There are also issues of privacy, of course, as the Court may determine that owners can only retrieve their data after it's been checked by outside parties for copyright-infringing materials. And libraries are famous for protecting patrons' privacy.

Kravets again: "So far, federal prosecutors are proposing a process that would make it essentially impossible for former Megaupload users to recover any of their legitimate data."

Imagine if libraries storing legitimate data in the cloud were to lose access to that data. Imagine that no other copies of that data existed, for whatever reason: spatial or financial hardship, failure to regularly update old hard-drive files with new versions stored in the cloud, on-site computer crashes, any number of reasons, really. Where would such cloud-computing libraries be then?

Scary.