Too bad they don't tell more details. Their software can withstand lots of problems: network partitions, data center outages, failing routers, etc. This time, a new piece of of algorithm apparently did not do a very good job at redistributing data at the time of the data center failure. I'd like to know what it tried to do? Did it try to push too much data to one single location, causing that location to become unresponsive, in turn causing it to start redistributing data as well? I'm glad they didn't loose my email. But I think now is a good time to start making backups using IMAP.

But who will do this cracking? Not the average Joe. And more important, will future hardware be more restrictive and a requirement to consume DRMed media? Of course there will always be crackers, but not everyone is willing to go through all the trouble. The popularity of the iTunes store proves that statement. And with that, DRM is at least for a large part effective.