As you’ve probably heard by now, popular file-sharing and storage site Megaupload was taken down on Jan. 19, 2012, following a shutdown order by the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI and the arrest of the company’s executive team in New Zealand. Any customer with data stored at Megaupload, legitimate or not, is now unable to get at it. So now that the dust has settled a little bit, it’s time to take a closer look at the uncomfortable questions Megaupload’s shuttering raises for the cloud storage market.
First, here’s the background: Megaupload was shut down for its alleged part in promoting media and software piracy worldwide. “Founder Kim Dotcom and three others appeared in court Friday (Jan. 20) and were denied bail,” wrote PCWorld Magazine. Police seized the Megaupload team’s assets, including 20 luxury cars with personalized license plates including GOD and HACKER. Okay, yes, it sounds like something out of a movie (specifically, the 1995 Angelina Jolie movie “Hackers“.)
But this raises a disturbing precedent: If you’re a cloud storage provider, and one of your customers stores an illegal MP3 on your site completely without your knowledge, are you liable? Where’s the line drawn? Is there a line? I don’t mean to scare anyone, and I doubt black-uniformed stormtroopers are going to be forcing a shutdown of Dropbox anytime soon, but this is something you need to be aware of. And maybe having a contingency plan isn’t the worst idea.
It’s almost funny: We keep coming back to these same issues over and over again. Megaupload is an extreme example, but this calls to mind the curious case of Wikileaks. In late 2010, Amazon Web Services actually ejected Wikileaks from its hosting under pressure from the U.S. government. At what point are service providers responsible for the content hosted with them? And what steps constitute due diligence to keep pirated material from getting hosted?
I’ve asked a lot of questions here. Keep watching TalkinCloud for potential answers.
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Hi Matthew.
Thanks for raising an important question. I personally think as a cloud storage provider it is your obligation to scan your network and delete obvious copyright infringements. In the warez scene there are obvious file names used to tag the uploaded data that this process can be automated quite easily. The problem is: illegal file hosting is very lucrative, so all I see today (with some notable exeption) are some puffy statements saying that “we do no support illegal file sharing”, yet little is being done.
I think the major problem is on the user site: how can you be sure that your data is safe and is not being deleted or the service taken down by the regulators?
I am an advocate for having multiple backup solutions and I think this is the way to go. If one service fails you can still rely on your secondary backup.
Regards,
Mauricio
Mauricio,
You just explained why I will always use a combination of on-premises backup and cloud backup. Can’t put all my eggs in one basket.
-jp