If your data is in the cloud... where's your privacy ?

Another story which has been doing the rounds this week, has been stories that has been the rounds this week has been about a crack for HD DVD content...

Catching up on my reading I found Sharon's post Who controls your data. There are a couple of issues in this

(a) The AACS have a system of intellectual property to protect, but choose your phrase.  "The internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it", Or Eileen's  "The internet has no delete key" or "You can't put the genie back in the bottle." The Wired post Sharon links to has be visited by "blog-spam" bots posting the key which is central to the crack.

(b) Sharon's post and the Wired one were about Google looking through your information and deciding what you may keep and what you may not. One of my correspondents was extolling the virtues of lodging data with Google. Sharon puts the counter case in this scenario.
" I use Gmail for email. Someone sends me an email containing content that might infringe copyright. Google receives a notification from the copyright owner and issues notices similar to the one above with 3 days to comply. I happen to be on holiday and don't check my email, so have not even read the alleged offending email, let alone seen the takedown notice. When I return to work, my entire Gmail account has been deleted. What if I ran my entire business using Google services?"

And no, this isn't a swing at Google per-se. I've no reason to think that Microsoft would react any differently to a "take down" notice under the DMCA (for which see another of Sharon's posts). Being outside the US the DMCA doesn't apply to me... it will be interesting to see if

Sharon replied to a comment in yet a third post,
"I'm not too comfortable with the idea of my master copies being in the cloud, but I know the next generation behind us views the world differently.... [They] have fewer privacy/ownership concerns. That approach too will have a dark side for them, likely in how the content is exploited by less altruistic motives."

And what was the quote from Caspar that I included yesterday
"It is very easy to collect all of our data and the fact that it is there means governments will come up with a good list of reasons as to why they need access"

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