There's nothing right about this, but I honestly can't have much sympathy for people who store their only copies of work files at a site that's notorious for its association with illegal activity.
Not everyone has the same familiarity with the reputation of internet sites as you do.
I really don't have any idea if my webhost is complicit in hosting illegal activity. If they were to get shutdown to hosting child porn, that's all well and good, but I'd still want my sites back.
More importantly, what's the difference between your site (data) and an mp3 (data)? Your site was "taken from you" but you didn't take that artists mp3, just a copy?
> Your site was "taken from you" but you didn't take that
> artists mp3, just a copy?
If you copy an mp3, there are now two copies of an mp3. One in the original 'owner's possession, and one in yours.
If I take the hard drive that an artist is storing the only copy of his/her mp3 on, then I have 'stolen' the mp3 because I have deprived the artist of possession.
When the FBI took down MegaUpload, if the only copy of my files were on MegaUpload, the FBI has taken physical possession of them through the seizure of MegaUpload's servers.
What the FBI did would only be analogous to pirating if they copied all of the data off of MegaUpload's servers, but left the servers intact (thereby allowing the original owners to still have access).
I wasn't. However, you're comment is clearly a thinly veiled attempt to discredit my comment without actually contributing anything back. That you'll bite is you attempting to play the part of the "bigger person."
The reality is, you start off by being ill-mannered, insulting, and petty.
Don't bring that stuff to HN. You should know better.
> If I take the hard drive that an artist is storing the only copy of his/her mp3 on, then I have 'stolen' the mp3 because I have deprived the artist of possession.
Actually, no. In this case, the original had to come from somewhere. Data was copied from one location to another. What is up on MU is, in essence, a copy. If the original owner then removes that original copy, it doesn't bless the copy with special privileges. Hell, if you want to get technical, the artist never had possession of the only mp3 up on MU's server. MU had possession. The artist had access, but not possession. He has, effectively, given MU the right to possess the copy.
Regardless, this example, as much as yours, is silly, because it's data. We aren't talking about a physical thing. You're trying to argue that data, somehow, can be stolen (1s and 0s, something we've long argued can't be "stolen").
Honestly, I can't take any of these arguments seriously, if only because they are using the same arguments the MPAA/RIAA have been attempting to use against us for years.
> 1s and 0s, something we've long argued can't be "stolen"
> Honestly, I can't take any of these arguments seriously,
> if only because they are using the same arguments the
> MPAA/RIAA have been attempting to use against us for
> years.
What is being argued here, as I understand it, is that depriving the original owner of their only copy is being called stealing. As I stated in my original comment, the FBI confiscated the drives that those copies are being stored on.
Your camera is stolen.
If someone left you your camera, and merely deleted the pictures, and copied them onto their system, that would be copyright infringement at best (ignoring the act of hacking your camera, etc).
Whatever other philisophical argument you want to present is meaningless without an actual law backing it up. While it might feel like theft, it's not.
> is that depriving the original owner of their only copy is being called stealing.
That's the argument. It's flawed. If you make a copy of something an upload it to MU, MU now has a copy. If you delete your original copy, that doesn't bless the copy with special protection. Indeed, by uploading to MU, you probably gave them permissions to distribute the download, as well as other rights. In fact, I'd be surprised if any cloud service like what we are discussing gave you special rights over the hardware that was storing your devices.
MU is the bad guy here. They are the ones that were allegedly doing illegal things while accepting honest customers. It's a shame, yes, but the reason people are up in arms is because MU is the "little" guy fighting against the "evil" government and the vile "MPAA/RIAA." Sorry, but I don't sell out just because I don't like one side.
On the other hand, it seems that for many the distinguishing factor of legal vs illegal is that legal sites are financed by venture capitalists and illegal sites are privately owned.
People save their money at banks associated with illegal activity. Microsoft, Google, Apple... all associated with illegal activities.
Our governments are associated with illegal activity. Strike that. Our governments break laws. Cops break laws. Judges break laws. Legislators break laws. Soldiers break laws.
We just observed Martin Luther King day. He was associated with illegal activity and broke many laws.
How do you avoid association with illegal activity?
Worth noting that some of them were moaning that this was their backup. Not sure I see the issue there, just move them somewhere else - if it's a backup they still have originals presumably.
There's another submission on the HN fp that seems to tackle just that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3489313
I am also thinking about what happens in the case of a federal seizing -- I wonder if they would decrypt the data.
We generate a new 2048-bit RSA public/private key pair when our client is installed, store the public key on the local disk and transmit the private key to our datacenter via https. Then, for each backup session, we generate a new random 128-bit AES symmetric key which we use to encrypt the user’s data. We secure the 128-bit AES key by encrypting it with the user’s public key and transmit the encrypted file along with the encrypted key to our datacenter over https. We destroy the unencrypted 128-bit AES key at the end of each backup session and never write it to disk. To decrypt a file, the user’s private key is used to decrypt the 128-bit AES which is then used to decrypt the file.
http://blog.backblaze.com/2008/11/12/how-to-make-strong-encr...
With pictures and everything. I'm not one of their users, but that page was interesting to read.
So they can definitely decrypt your data.
But for the Megaupload users, I would like to quote one of the boards I saw held up by SOPA protesters: "Dear congress it is no longer ok to not know how the internet works". Dear users, that goes for you to. And trusting your valuable data to a provider who is suspected of all kinds of shenanigans is naive. You get what you pay for.
I agree with you, but think it's harsh to judge the users by it. It's not that long ago that it was nothing short of a miracle if the average home user - or small business for that matter - had any backups.
In a way, I'm heartened by the progress.
For example using a cloud application to actually do your work whereby all your data is saved by your app to their storage platform and there's no way to get it out.
If that cloud app gets shut down because of SOPA or whatever then what happens to your data?
Clearly we now see that cloud storage is not reliable at all and can not be trusted because even though my data is completely legal, just because someone else misused the service in violation of its TOS, everybody's data property gets confiscated by the feds. That's not safe at all. Cloud is not safe. Owning your own server, at least you have control over what else is on it.