Earlier this year, Steve Wozniak spoke about the newest darling in
the IT industry: cloud computing. The engineering mind behind the first
Apple computers spoke openly about his concerns for cloud computing
during a recent public appearance.
“I really worry about everything going to the cloud,” he said. “I
think it’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot
of horrible problems in the next five years.”
He added: “With the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away.”
He is referring to the huge terms and conditions documents computer users must agree with when accessing a cloud service.
“I want to feel that I own things,” Wozniak said. “A lot of people
feel, ‘Oh, everything is really on my computer,’ but I say the more we
transfer everything onto the Web, onto the cloud, the less we’re going
to have control over it.”
Some argue cloud computing is a reaction to music and film privacy
because it overcomes the need for people to own files, thus eliminating
their desire to BitTorrent or reproduce copyrighted content.
Take a look at Spotify and its worldwide popularity with more than 20
million users. Spotify founder and creator, David Ek, has publicly
stated that Spotify is a reaction to piracy.
“I was born in Sweden, and in Sweden we are known for the piracy services,” Ek said in an interview with ABC News.
“I decided I wanted to create a product that was better than piracy.”
Ultimately, Ek said his goal is clear: “For us it is about getting it
out to more people. We launched in the U.S. one year ago. We want to
bring music to every single person and bring it to every moment of their
life.”
It’s ambitious stuff from the tech pioneer, but it supports the ‘fair
access fair price’ argument that Internet evangelists and content
pirates have been belting out at the top of their lungs for years.
Though it does need to be examined, what happens when we no longer own our files?
Apple’s iCloud service has struck out the need for audio content on iOS devices when paired with their iTunes Match service.
With even the quickest glance at the GUI of iTunes 11, it’s design
clearly encourages iTunes Match usage over loading your own content onto
iOS devices. Sure, it’s easy to see the improvements of accessing your
content across multiple devices and saving storage space, but
obstructing content management in exchange for pushing cloud services?
I think there’s some bad Apples in this cart.
Looking at cloud computing services more broadly, the service
presents huge problems with user authentication and digital certificates
not exactly reaching the end game on privacy and data protection. The
potential for malicious access and harvest of personal data is scary,
especially when vendors lease a server from another service provider.
Rather than acquire new servers, a cloud vendor can take leases out
on servers as a more cost-effective and flexible solution. This creates
vulnerabilities that could result in customer data theft, a worrying
prospect for anyone using cloud services for business sensitive data.
If the vendor lost access to the servers for whatever reason, the
users have lost access too, a potentially catastrophic situation for
customers and vendors alike.
Cloud computing also presents a range of regulatory challenges for Australian consumers.
At the Global Access Partners Workshop on Cloud Computing, Deputy
Chairman of the ACCC Peter Kell, detailed its efforts in consumer
protections from unfair cloud service agreements. The presentation
detailed potentially anti-competitive contract terms, protection from
data use in marketing and advertising practices and complaints
resolution.
“The ACCC will be closely watching key areas of interest as cloud
computing becomes more widespread. The ACCC’s aim in consumer protection
regulation is to ensure that consumers can benefit from innovation and
competition through minimizing the impact of market failures,
information problems and rogue traders,” said Kell.
When stored on a cloud, personal data can be used to gain marketing
insights to inform campaigns. This is because cloud computing blurs the
definition of ‘personal data’ so much that arguing ownership would be
nearly impossible.
It’s a slippery concept so let me explain: Let’s say you put your
couch into storage. A month later when you come to collect your couch,
you find it sitting in their reception area. When you ask why your couch
has been supporting anonymous butts in their waiting room for the past
month, they throw a service agreement in front of you stating they have
access and usage for the agreement period. You’d be furious, if not a
little creeped out.
Would you let the company holding your belongings rent it out to
other people? Perhaps furnish their own homes? Do we own a couch in the
same way we own our personal data? It’s important we start asking these
questions before our loss of data ownership becomes legally enshrined
in service agreements.
As our personal data becomes more valuable in a digital age, we must
start taking the right measures and protecting our data from abuse. New
technology brings new regulatory challenges that find themselves in
unknown territory. Keeping yourself informed and up-to-date on these
emerging issues is the first step in protecting your business or
personal data.
Article by Belinda Darling.
Post from: SiteProNews
Head in the Clouds? Computing Out of its Mind