online storage, the cloud and Demotix servers in other parts of the world

Excellent points to note as we enter another year of cloud-computing hype.

Something we all use at the office to share files is Dropbox - it creates a directory on your hard drive which is synchronised with their cloud storage. So even if you have no connection or Dropbox is down for some reason, you still have all your files.

Of course, it's still a US-based company, so all the caveats Chris mentions apply.

Thanks Chris for this post. I am thinking aloud here. But if Megaupload was a legitimately registered company in New Zealand and therefor anyone who contracted their service had a legitimate contract this denial of service would be nothing else than misappropriation of property, theft and loads more stuff. I mean after all, if someone tries to launder some money through a bank or deposits stolen money no one closes the bank down and prevents legitimate clients from accessing their money. Maybe this will see the first global class action lawsuit against New Zealand and the US Justice Dept. Having said that, thank god I'm not a lawyer; I'd hate to be the guy who bankrupted the DOJ. best Lawrence

AFAIK the law applies where the servers are located. It may have been a NZ company but the company also had servers in Virginia and Washington, D.C., which allowed U.S. authorities to intervene. though it should have had no effect ton servers outside the USA.

So Demotix should not have Servers in the USA, China, Iran, N.Korea.

This is an interesting comment:-
SOPA and PIPA are the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), two pending (though now delayed) bills that would go after overseas "rogue" Web sites that traffic in counterfeit or illegal goods.

How would the bills permit them to go overseas? US law has no authority outside the US. The answer is that if the US does pass these bills we just disconnect the USA from the Internet, They can have filtered gateways though Canada and Mexico

reply posted for moderation as usual.

One day all the Internet will be sent for moderation!

And I'll probably be the one clicking through the queue... sorry guys, doing my best.

on a more serious point from my part, would be to create redundancies in the system by having the site duplicated in more than one location. however I still think that there should be a back up plan that does not involve the internet to collect images. the question then becomes when and for what to activate this plan. best Lawrence

Hi Tom, I'd hate having to deal or humour someone like me for work; you've got all my admiration for your patience! I just love having a go at the bots!!! But imagine if you did have the power to decide who gets clicked or not on the Internet. Best Lawrence

The bills referenced are not going after overseas rogue websites by going out of the country as someone seems to think. These bills are designed to block the domain names of websites that violate copyright, and intellectual property laws from being able to be accessed in the USA.

They are not designed in any way to go outside the USA to try to prosecute anyone in relation to the provisions in these bills. They are ONLY designed to block the domain names from being accessed in the USA, no more, and no less.

This is very easy to do, and does not require the US government, or anyone to go outside the borders of the United States to enforce these bills if they are put into law.

The ramifications of these bills if they pass, and are put into law, will have a worldwide impact on the internet. Try living without any search engines linked outside your country as most of their domain names are based in the USA. If they are blocked they don't go out either. Facebook, and most other social interfaces end.

When a search engine provides a link to a copy written news story, and all are copy written, then that search engine is in violation of these bills, and their domain name is blocked.

When any website uses, or allows to be used, a copy written piece of music as background music without permission, they violate these bills, and can be blocked.

The impact of these bills if they go into law will be far reaching all across the world.

Steve - it's even worse than that, because they also go after the advertisers and the payments processors. Try running a business anywhere in the world without Mastercard or Visa or Paypal - all of which are of course based in the US and have to comply if the DoJ tells them not to process payments for certain people.

Fortunately it looks like the bills are in the long grass for the moment, but there's ACTA to worry about now (just adopted by the EU) - I'll be blogging about it soon.

I agree with Tom... My other company deals with the US and ITAR quite a lot. IF you think these bills (and many others) only seek to control things in the US you are very sadly mistaken. The Reality is very different.

The sad truth is that the majority of the population do not know what is going on, or do not understand what is going, or feel too impotent to do anything and most important of all are too busy surviving the turmoil of their own life. best Lawrence

It's too bad that had to happen but even though part of the business was legitimate there was still a great proportion that was doing illegitimate business. Wars are usually between the governments of a country and not between the people of a country, yet no matter what any individuals belief, they are still affected by the war simply because they live in the country - It's sad, but simply how things work. The people who hosted files with megaupload may have been legitimate, but losing out on service was simply a risk of 'living in that country'. Forgive my seeming lack of sympathy, I wouldn't want my files to be deleted, but I know that no matter what online storage company I backup my files with runs the risk of going bankrupt one day (simply due to the large amount of competition in that industry). So if you care about your files then the lesson we can take away from the megaupload fiasco is that we should do a little research into where we back them up!

Clearly it shows you can't use US based on line storage.... or at least no storage from a company that is based (or has major assets) in the USA. Though of course there are other countries you can't trust either like Iran, China, N.Korea......

This is partly why Demotix is based in the UK... it does have better protection. I was reading a white paper on on-line storage that said compared to the US the European rules on privacy are restrictive. Which means in Europe your personal data is less open to [legal] abuse. That is assuming you trust the government and the security agencies