No Expansion = Deal Breaker

[sadievan]

Originally Posted by GoSharks

If only my life were interesting enough to not want my 'stuff' being accessed by court order or injunction!

Karma to you.

Carol

[macminer]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

So you don't use a bank, or have an insurance company, or use email, or post on forums right?

BOb

Don't you really notice a difference, security-wise, between using a bank and cloud storage?

If someone comes with a court injunction, to investigate your bank account, the worst you could suffer is the loss of money you owe someone (but didn't intend to pay). Money itself won't incriminate you, neither will it break your privacy or allow unwanted people to have a look at your trade secrets.

As concerns cloud storage, imagine a situation when you keep all your (important and unimportant) stuff in the cloud. Suddenly there comes a court injunction allowing any law enforcement agency or similar one (police? CIA? RIAA?) to have a look at whatever you keep there.
For example, someone, as a joke or revenge, accuses you of pedophilia. The police, fulfilling the court injunction, look around your stuff and don't find any sexually inappropriate material on your account. However, they can see all the other stuff - perhaps your business secrets, your next masterpiece awaiting publication, whatever you had there - and some corrupted policeman leaks the knowledge to your competition. You might even not know who was there, what they found and what they did with your stuff. Even worse, what about a situation when you keep any kind of illicit material? Even though original court injunction concerned something else (pedophilia in our example), won't they use their knowledge to charge you on the basis of what they find in your cloud account?

[pilotbob]

I'm not sure a bunch of eBooks in my amazon personal document storage are going to be very incriminating.

BOb

[Jessica Lares]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I'm not sure a bunch of eBooks in my amazon personal document storage are going to be very incriminating.

BOb

I don't think that's what he means.

There are going to be problems where people are just going to use the cloud to stash music they've downloaded all over the internet. It's going to become the haven for people to catalog it all, keep it in one place, and download when needed for sharing, etc.

You can already do this on many, many upload sites, but they get taken down all the time. Amazon is just making it more legal.

The RIAA will go after Amazon accounts soon enough. Amazon won't cover for them either, especially when it means they're losing out on their share of revenue too. Music isn't free. The artists might be fake and all, but someone got paid $5,000 to lay their record down and the label would LOVE to get that financial splurge back.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

I don't think that's what he means.

There are going to be problems where people are just going to use the cloud to stash music they've downloaded all over the internet. It's going to become the haven for people to catalog it all, keep it in one place, and download when needed for sharing, etc.

You can already do this on many, many upload sites, but they get taken down all the time. Amazon is just making it more legal.

The RIAA will go after Amazon accounts soon enough. Amazon won't cover for them either, especially when it means they're losing out on their share of revenue too. Music isn't free. The artists might be fake and all, but someone got paid $5,000 to lay their record down and the label would LOVE to get that financial splurge back.

If people are doing that, it's entirely proper that they should be prosecuted in accordance with the law. If the cloud makes such prosecutions easier, that's a benefit.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I'm not sure a bunch of eBooks in my amazon personal document storage are going to be very incriminating.

BOb

Well actually Bob, we had a case here locally where the authorities attempted to force the local book store owner (The Tattered Cover) to provide a list of books purchased by a certain customer.....

http://www.tatteredcover.com/newsletter/165901

also:
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offi...courtcases.cfm

[macminer]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If people are doing that, it's entirely proper that they should be prosecuted in accordance with the law. If the cloud makes such prosecutions easier, that's a benefit.

Well, the cloud may make prosecution easier, but what about legit music you can't prove you rightfully own?

I have been buying CDs for so many years it's no surprise I no longer have the receipts neither do I actually remember when and what I bought. Then, when mp3s came, I converted most of my CDs (and some tapes, too) to mp3 for convenience. Worse still, I bought mp3s through online music stores which no longer exist. I have mp3s which were given free as promotions or perhaps were inside a magazine. All in all, I have a huge mp3 collection, about 2/3 of which I could possibly identify as to when and how I bought, but about 1/3 makes me wonder how it got there.

Now, assuming RIAA comes to browse through such (hypothetical) music collection in the cloud, how am I going to prove I legitimately own these files? Luckily, I live in a country which RIAA doesn't reach with their tentacles (yet?), but I can see this can be a problem for people in the country that seems proud of its civil liberties...

If you still cannot see the problem here, let's imagine some agency gets the right to come to your house and screen all your possessions. Now try and prove to them that you legitimately bought every item you have at home. If it is sensible to assume that you haven't stolen material property unless someone can prove you did, then it is also sensible that RIAA has actually to prove you have downloaded music illegally and can't just be allowed to browse through your collection, pick out items and make you prove you have them legitimately.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by macminer

Now, assuming RIAA comes to browse through such (hypothetical) music collection in the cloud, how am I going to prove I legitimately own these files?

You don't have to prove anything - "innocent until proven guilty", etc. It's for the person taking the legal action to prove that you've committed a crime.

But we are straying into P&R territory here; I'd suggest starting a separate thread in the P&R forum to continue this discussion.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You don't have to prove anything - "innocent until proven guilty", etc. It's for the person taking the legal action to prove that you've committed a crime.

But we are straying into P&R territory here; I'd suggest starting a separate thread in the P&R forum to continue this discussion.

I disagree, it's neither politics or religion, it's law - copyright and DRM we're discussing. Unless the "new paradigm" is to shuffle any controversial subject off to P&R and if that's the case then it needs to be renamed to "The Cesspool" or some such.

It appears on several occasions this is actually what is happening - Book Banning, Global Warming, ... I can't say I agree with it, but if that is the direction of the Owner and Moderators then it should be explicitly stated.

[Jessica Lares]

Originally Posted by macminer

Well, the cloud may make prosecution easier, but what about legit music you can't prove you rightfully own?

I have been buying CDs for so many years it's no surprise I no longer have the receipts neither do I actually remember when and what I bought. Then, when mp3s came, I converted most of my CDs (and some tapes, too) to mp3 for convenience. Worse still, I bought mp3s through online music stores which no longer exist. I have mp3s which were given free as promotions or perhaps were inside a magazine. All in all, I have a huge mp3 collection, about 2/3 of which I could possibly identify as to when and how I bought, but about 1/3 makes me wonder how it got there.

Now, assuming RIAA comes to browse through such (hypothetical) music collection in the cloud, how am I going to prove I legitimately own these files? Luckily, I live in a country which RIAA doesn't reach with their tentacles (yet?), but I can see this can be a problem for people in the country that seems proud of its civil liberties...

If you still cannot see the problem here, let's imagine some agency gets the right to come to your house and screen all your possessions. Now try and prove to them that you legitimately bought every item you have at home. If it is sensible to assume that you haven't stolen material property unless someone can prove you did, then it is also sensible that RIAA has actually to prove you have downloaded music illegally and can't just be allowed to browse through your collection, pick out items and make you prove you have them legitimately.

I get what you mean. I myself have loads of promo CDs. They most likely wouldn't go after you for those, nor the tapes. They obviously know their own material and how it sounds too. That, ID tagging, and things that separate the rips vs officially downloaded versions will be some of the ways they'll be sniffing. A ripped vinyl/tape sounds different to that of ripped CD audio/DRM.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

I don't think that's what he means.

There are going to be problems where people are just going to use the cloud to stash music they've downloaded all over the internet. It's going to become the haven for people to catalog it all, keep it in one place, and download when needed for sharing, etc.

You can already do this on many, many upload sites, but they get taken down all the time. Amazon is just making it more legal.

The RIAA will go after Amazon accounts soon enough. Amazon won't cover for them either, especially when it means they're losing out on their share of revenue too. Music isn't free. The artists might be fake and all, but someone got paid $5,000 to lay their record down and the label would LOVE to get that financial splurge back.

I don't know if I agree. There is no way to share your music through Amazon's cloud player. Amazon would not give up the accounts either easily they're not just gonna hand it over to them without just cause. A lot of people rip their own CDs to add their music to their mp3 players. There really is no way to track those and know what's legit and what isn't. I think Amazon can only tell what is their own mp3s and what is user made.

[leaston]

Hi,

Better late than never, I'll chip in too

Having many gigabytes of data available via cloud storage is great and all that, but the integration with other services is just illustrative of one technology playing catch-up with another. Until we have more comprehensive and much faster mobile coverage, relying on the cloud to supply files just doesn't work for me.

I experienced the limitation of having cloud storage available to a mobile device recently. I was out and about with my (fairly new) SLR camera and couldn't figure out a couple of the features (being a noob to SLR). As I have the pdf manual stored on DropBox, I decided to grab it on my mobile and have a read. Great idea, but there was no mobile coverage near me and so it fell flat. It was frustrating as hell at the time.

In that context, any tablet without the option of external storage in the form of an SD card slot or similar, is an instant deal breaker for me.

All the best,
Leaston