As more people look to the cloud for digital storage, such as the recently unveiled Google Drive, the era of being able to mindlessly click “OK” or “Agree” may be over.

When your stuff is stored on your computer at home, you alone are responsible for keeping it safe, secure and backed up. Your roof, your rules. But when you shift from local storage to remote, you live by terms set by someone else — and it’s best to read them.

This is true for any cloud service, not just Google’s.

First, there are two sets of word-dense documents you need to read before marrying yourself to a cloud-service: the privacy policy and the terms of service. Yes, the words will bleed together from all the legal jargon, but they’re important.

Every service has its own terms, and what’s in there and how it’s written vary widely.

Remember that when you upload content, you are essentially publishing it — even if it’s just for your eyes. For any cloud service to work as designed, you give the service permission to store and make copies of the content you upload — that’s how your stuff ends up everywhere you want it. The cloud copy is the master.

Google, for instance, clearly states in its terms of service that apply to all things Google: “You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.”

But where the Google policy may read a bit murky is what you entitle Google to do with your stuff: “When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

And that permission continues even if you stop using the services, according to the contract.

Google issued a statement, explaining why it, or for that matter others such as SkyDrive or SugarSync, would need to spell out its rights with your content. “Our Terms of Service enable us to give you the services you want — so if you decide to share a document with someone, or open it on a different device, you can.”

Competing cloud service Dropbox makes no claims to user content. “You retain full ownership to your stuff,” the terms of service read. “We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services.”

More: zen-haven.dk/who-owns-your-stuff-in-the-cloud/

I know very little about this cloud stuff, in fact I've only read what you've just put up and a thread that andyh had started over on the other place, so I still know little.

What I have read though, I don't like. Not even in the slightest.

Is it going to be a compulsory thing come time or will we still have the option to not use it?

I know which choice I'll be making.

psketti wrote:
The 'compulsion' part will come around as they redesign and release products which no longer have adequate storage onboard to run full programs and store the data generated by them.

Yeah, they'll phase out hard drives.

irrepressible wrote:
Slimmer, lighter devices and everyone's info held in central server farms.
Your personal device will be little more than a wifi connected controller.

featheredfish wrote:
Yep. I don't think it can be stopped now, the only thing I can do is buy as many physical books as I can, because they're being phased out too.
Books are the only thing I truly care about with all this cloud stuff. Movies, music, and games I'm not too bothered about. Books...that's serious shit. A world without physical books doesn't bear thinking about.
I'm not even a huge reader, but I can see the danger.

Yeah, irre, you're right about the books... mores the pity.

But books aren't my only concern with the whole cloud thing though. I want as much of what's mine, to stay mine and cloud clearly has other ideas.

there was a thread round here by some little green dude, saying privacy is dead..

also.. i put this up somewhere .. maybe the old place, but its fiersome.

After prolonged negative coverage in the press, the FBI changed the name of its system from "Carnivore" to the more benign-sounding "DCS1000." DCS is reported to stand for "Digital Collection System"; the system has the same functions as before. The Associated Press reported in mid-January 2005 that the FBI essentially abandoned the use of Carnivore in 2001, in favor of commercially available software, such as NarusInsight (a mass surveillance system).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NarusInsight#NarusInsight

,,back in 2005!

think of the advances since in hardware and software. not just off the shelf hardware, but the stuff in the back rooms.

and "cloud storage" makes it sound nice and fluffy and distributed.. but it's all funnelled through 1 channel.

maybe im just paranoid. and i wish i could say hey this is great. yay google and yay for facebook, it makes life fun. but its so intrusive and so i try hard to stay away and keep my secrets to myself.

irrepressible wrote:
Exactamundo.

Google will lead the market push and therefore profit motive towards cloud storage AND cloud processing.
Devices will just be 'dumb terminals' so to speak.

Its funny to see how we have gone from the mainframe, to standalone and we're heading back to the mainframe again.

All thats stopping it at the moment is crap broadband speeds.

Once you have around 100Mb+ everywhere then this sort of 'ubiquitous computing' becomes possible. An internet of things so to speak, all devices will be linked to the net.

irrepressible wrote:
I agree with what you say about books here, irrie. I like reading a proper book, with pages, a cover and a spine. There's no romance about a Kindle, even if it does take up a lot less room! I'm afraid I'm something of a Luddite when it comes to new technology - I still listen to audio books on cassette sometimes!

I don't know much about the Cloud, either, but I'm not too happy about all that information about people floating about for anyone to see, and as you say, who owns it?

Mandy

Cloud For Dummies

I'm not really sure what the 'cloud' is but if I have the jist, it's where you store stuff online rather than in your drive to prevent total data loss in case of some kind of failure due to virus or HD breakdown?

Many moons ago one night, my pals and I were driving around town and we passed a building. One friend said, "That's where the company stores its backups'.

We all worked for the same company.

I didn't understand and it was explained that in case of a catastrophic failure at the company, backup tapes were stored remotely.

Good idea, I thought.

Since then, I store stuff important to me on my email in addition to my drive. But that's a private thing, right? Not 'cloud'?

Here's a wee vid which should give you a clearer idea of what it's all about Coco.



On the surface it's not a bad idea with clear advantages and cost savings.
Scratch the surface though and you can clearly see large numbers of jobs disappearing and the potential for mahoossive security breaches.

featheredfish wrote:
Not to mention the implications for privacy, and infinite scope for tracking.

Censorship as well?

I don't like it.

It's a neccesary step toward the Borg like future for humanity that the transhumanists have planned.

dubmeup wrote:
Yep. It all ties in when you do a bit of poking around.

irrepressible wrote: That's exactly it. It's all heavily compartmentalised so often even those working in the sphere don't know the endgame. But those that are funding it all have long since gone public with their intent. Problem is that the public aren't listening are they...

They are hooked on tech like junkies. Hooked on pharma as a panacea, hooked on the nanny state, hooked on everything that is bad for them.

dubmeup wrote:
The public would think I was nuts probably, if I said it's all part of an agenda, the digital fascist technocracy as I, and others call it.
The masses would say "It's progress innit" Yes it is progress on one hand, progress towards total enslavement

It ties in with the smart grid too. Smart grid, more like total control grid. It ties in with the RFID chip. It all connects, and you only have to scratch the surface a bit to see it.

irrepressible wrote:
They're coming at it from pretty much every degree of the circle. Nanotech, molecular biology, genetics, all of it. I watched a BBC Click clip this morning of James May being used in augmented reality at the Science Museum. At the end he says he thinks it marks the beginning of the end for us as a flesh and blood species. Ok it was a quip but many a true word......

dubmeup wrote:
I agree. Scarey stuff.