They died when their data host Nirvanix went bankrupt, they lost all of the media files (with no backups), but according to Wikipedia customers were given 14 days to move their data.
A lot of culture disappeared that day :(
14 days is not nearly enough for private customers to react. Often vacations can be longer than that, and people don't usually vacation with their laptops and external HDDs to places with fast broadband, just in case they need to make a spontaneous external backup of their cloud data. Imagine by the time you come home all your data is irrecoverably gone. That's fucking nuts.
Should be at least 30 days by law.
While not a backup-related issue, it forced a scramble on my end. I am sure hundreds of others didn't see it or couldn't react until well after the fact.
Shopify said this is allowed per its developer TOS.
Without any kind of legislation saying otherwise, these companies can put whatever the fuck they want in the TOS, which is the cheat code that allowed tech companies to extract obscene profits while completely skipping on customer support costs and legal liability.
But this could always come to an end if there's political will to legislate. In my home country a new law was passed that says companies can't keep you on hold for more than 10 minutes before you talk to a real human when you call customer support, and now companies are scrambling to hire enough customer support to deal with the new law because previously they'd leave you in a queue for 45 minutes on hold hoping you'd give up.
So it's definitely possible to not fuck over consumers, all it needs is the proper regulations in place since you can't always rely on the good will of for-profit corporations. Yes, that will make it more expensive for tech businesses to operate and reduce their profit margins, but if your business was supposed to be profitable only when skirting the law, not offering customer support, and fucking over your customers on a whim, then I don't need your business to exist in the first place.
The spectre of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit is probably going to be much more effective at encouraging "fair" behavior on these platforms than any sort of legislation could ever be. If legislation says 30 days, then 30 days it shall be. But if a court rules whatever is reasonable amount of time for a customer to act without suffering economic damages, then we might see some due diligence to ensure smooth migrations.
That's why the law baseline is important. It's how warranties must be 2 years across all EU.
It was a super active forum between 2001 - 2010. Really the only online meeting place for local hip-hop until social media took over. It was the launching place of many careers (including Action Bronson's albeit indirectly).
Sadly all seems to be lost to history too.