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Cloud

The End of Content Ownership 247

Posted by Soulskill from the provisionally-renting-a-license-to-borrow-transient-ephemera dept.
adeelarshad82 writes "In recent weeks companies like Amazon, Sony, Google, Verizon, 24symbols and others have started to roll out 'cloud-based' content streaming and on-demand services (or plans) for movies, music and even books. Video on demand is nothing new, nor is streaming. The difference now, though, is that companies like Amazon want you to stream your own content. This article sheds some light on how the cloud, along with subscription and on-demand services, will transform our perception of content access and ownership."
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The End of Content Ownership More

The End of Content Ownership

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  • Use more bandwidth to enjoy media? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by theVP ( 835556 ) * on Monday April 11, 2011 @03:19PM (#35784750)
    At a time when ISPs are moving to cap bandwidth usage, and these companies are moving to streaming-only ideas, am I the only one cringing?

    Don't get me wrong, I love my streaming media, but ISPs seem to really hate it.

    • Streaming is nice for when you are on the go. It seems ideal to keep a copy on the remote server, and one on your home device, so you don't have to stream except when on the go.

      3 my ISP. No caps. My home device is where I get my content from any location.

      • The lack of caps is probably the only thing that's good about Qwest. Well, that and it's not Comcast.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tivoKlr ( 659818 )
          This is exactly why I've kept Qwest DSL and not switched back to Crapcast, even though my speeds would be faster with a cable modem, in my area.

          Fuck caps. Same reason I'm still with AT&T for the iPhone...have had that unlimited data plan since day 1 and won't give it up.

          • I have Wide Open West cable.

            Apparantly they do have a 5GB cap... But only for newsgroups. I don't use newsgroups, let along 5GB worth of newsgroup use...

            It's expensive, but IMO, worth it.

          • I signed up for a Comcast for Business plan. I pay about what you'd pay for residential internet+TV (minus HBO and the like) with them for just internet. I get 22/5 speed + $10 for 5 static IPs for no reason really. I do host stuff so "set & forget" is nice.

            I could do residential for less at similar speeds, but the extra money has been worth it. No caps, no throttling, local number I call for tech support (with scheduled service appts, not "between 12 & 5", and they'll send a tech @ 3am if necessary

        • Glad I don't have either of those from what I've heard.

          I just checked, there is a bandwidth cap with my ISP, but only for newsgroups (5GB). Outside of newsgroups, I don't have one. I pay an arm and a leg though (Wide Open West).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luyseyal ( 3154 )

          The lack of caps

          It's also the best thing about "Make CapsLock an additional Ctrl [google.com]".

          -l

          • I have only ever found one good use for capslock. The run-lock in Duke Nukem 3d, in the era before FPSs went mouse-control and the runlock became obsolete.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 )

        > Streaming is nice for when you are on the go

        Except wireless networks are crap, expensive and have bandwidth caps.

        Meanwhile storage densities continue to increase. If you don't have a fetish for a particular fetish, you can easily find devices with 10 times the amount of local storage. When you go off the grid or the network goes to crap, that extra local storage comes in very handy.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Altus ( 1034 )

            How long do you think that will keep up if people are streaming full motion video on their phones?

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by praxis ( 19962 )

              That depends more on how cash greedy the carriers get than how bandwidth greedy the users get.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Smauler ( 915644 )

          I've been surviving on mobile broadband at home for over a year. The reason for this is cost - £15 a month for 15gb. I don't have a landline, or television... so I went for the cheapest option. It's tear you hair out annoying sometimes, not because you can't get connection, I have a good connection to the tower, but just the service is so bad. I've gotten used to disconnecting and reconnecting very often, because that (sometimes) fixes it. Currently I'm downloading something from Steam at about

      • Yeah, caps put a kibosh on the whole thing for now.

        I'm actually interested in something where I pay a monthly fee, and I can stream ANY movie or television show ever made.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Altus ( 1034 )

        For a lot of commonly accessed stuff though, local is fine. Music for instance. You might not be able to fit your entire music collection on your phone (though most people probably can) but you could have a chunk of it that you are most likely to listen to locally and have streaming available for the other stuff.

        It just seems like such a waste of bandwith. Nice to have available but not the sort of thing I would want to be using all the time. At least not when I am paying by the GB.

      • Actually been doing precisely that - when Amazon Cloud Drive launched, I uploaded a ~5GB selection of my music collection and use it as my main media player at the office. [I'm glad I have the same local hard drive media repository that I did before; internet connection at the house sucks compared to the one at the office. :)]

        Some of the stuff I got in .mp3 or .m4a form to begin with; for some of the stuff I keep in .flac, I had already made a 256 or 320kbps .mp3 copy for my regular portable player anyways.

      • "Streaming on the go" is a sham. Buy it once then load it onto your Device. With modern capacities, you can hold 40 hours of TV is you scrunch it enough.(If not today, try next year - concept holds.)

        It rarely makes logical sense to only receive a 1-shot usage vs a saved usage of media. This whole streaming thing is the ultimate sham.

        • Actually, as I get older, I find i rewatch and reread less and less. It has to be pretty spectacular to warrant watching or reading again.

          Music i most just stopped listening too. I think I got fed up with the music industries attitude. If it's not free (add on to cable TV or via ads) I just pass.

          I have so many DVD's and CD's which I haven't listened to in years. It would be boring to do so again.

          Right now at my desk, I'm not listening to any music and haven't.

          When I go skiing- my buds listen to music bu

    • Re:Use more bandwidth to enjoy media? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Monday April 11, 2011 @03:31PM (#35784896)

      Don't get me wrong, I love my streaming media, but ISPs seem to really hate it.

      Don't worry, your ISP will start loving it once again when it's "forced" to pay the rightsholder $0.25/GB - while charging you $1/GB - for overages. Don't want MTV^WThe Music Streaming Service or ESPN^WThe Sports Streaming Service with your cable TV^WInternet? Fine, you can have throttled-to-dialup-speeds^WBasic Cable!

      From TFA: "The parent whose child wants to watch "Dora the Explorer: Big Sister Dora" over and over and over again doesn't have to own the DVD or even the digital file. Cloud-based ownership and access means that their child can see Dora play big sister at home, on the iPad, in the car, and on mommy's smartphone. They own the movie or, more likely, have an all-you-can eat subscription service, so each viewing costs nothing except the price of Internet access."

      Indeed, your ISP is counting on it. Cloud-based ownership and access means that their child can be charged for each viewing, tracked for each viewing, and have customized banner ads sent to each device.

      From TFA: "For the majority of consumers, however, they will come to fully trust the cloud and believe in subscription pricing for everything. Ownership will become an anathema as consumers realize they don't want to risk losing content as they switch services, and they tire of finding requisite space on their own local storage for all those digital files. "

      The Right To Read [gnu.org] is also relevant here. Unless the bits are stored on a device that you control, the content provider can flush them down the memory hole and there isn't going to be a damn thing you can do about it.

      (Seriously? "Tire of finding requisite space on their own local storage for all those digital files?" A 1TB drive costs less than $100 today, never mind in 10-15 years. Or is the business model going to be that since everything is "streamed" to dickless workstations, that 640GB oughta be enough for everybody?)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      ISPs will have to get over that. Actually they should even embrace it. Bandwidth really is cheap ISPs should start offering things like DropBox to their customers. If you think about it ISPs have really sort of pushed themselves into being just dumb pipes by not offering any service but email and usenet and even then they are dropping usenet.

    • I live next to the Interstate (I95) Where one of the biggest Fiber pips in the country runs. I live under 3 miles from the brick and mortar Version building. And there are Pop sights underground much closer. But all I get is DSL The phone lines that where run in the 60's

      Hulu set at the lowest setting, 240p, maxes out the line. If I want the next setting up, I wait for data to load close to half the time.

      So media streaming will have to wait until we get access thats better then the greedy ISP's we are

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by theVP ( 835556 ) *
        Speaking as an ISP employee (Wireless), you are almost certainly looking to the wireless folks to save you. We are almost exclusively servicing customers that will NEVER be served by cable/DSL providers. And it has a lot less to do with greed, and a lot more to do with return on investment. Some of the towers we put up, we don't start profiting on until a good 4-5 years after we've done so. I can't even imagine what the rate of return would be for other technologies. Obviously not enough for them to fe

        • We are almost exclusively servicing customers that will NEVER be served by cable/DSL providers.

          I live in the middle of a big city and have Clear wi-max just because I refuse to deal with Comcast or AT&T.

    • The big content-owning ISPs are looking at the profit margin on cell phone text messages and trying to figure out how to carve up the entire online experience that way.

    • Re:Use more bandwidth to enjoy media? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Wiarumas ( 919682 ) on Monday April 11, 2011 @04:00PM (#35785226)
      On the bright side, streaming media corporations can be a valuable ally against ISP bandwidth caps - which they should be if they want a viable business model.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Yvanhoe ( 564877 )
      I'll trade bandwidth in exchange for sane stance on content ownership any day.

    • Good, so I'm not the only one to notice this??

      ISP's LOVE streaming media! Then they can hold you slavering at the bit for your one new episode per day.

      Weird thing - music can be played over and over, I don't know many people who watch a tv episode more tha twice (once for the overall, once for the awesome scenes).

  • I keep documents I want to access from multiple computers in the cloud. But I see no reason to store 30 gigabytes of music on a pay service when I have a perfectly serviceable 2TB drive and a 30 gig iPod.

    • That's my reasoning (except for the iPod... don't have one of those). You can buy a 2TB external hard drive from Amazon for $100. You can also buy a 2TB home NAS drive for under $200. That $200, meanwhile, will buy you a year of 200GB backups or 2.4 months of 1TB backups. The external hard drive is portable and data will transfer back and forth a lot faster than to Amazon's cloud. Add a second hard drive (up to 4.8 months of 1TB backups now) and you can get offsite backups going. Personally, I'd rathe

      • You pay for it AT LEAST 3 times for a proper backup. You have your data to be backed up, the actual backup and the offsite backup. Mirroring data onto one other hard drive at the same physical location is not 'backed up' in any meaningful way. You also pay for (in labor) for setting it up all up and testing it at least yearly. Cloud services have their place, as does local storage. Whats wrong with one physical backup and the cloud backup as your offsite backup?

        • Couldn't you build a small concrete/metal bunker in your basement (or buried in your backyard) with a mirror set of your data? Sure it's not going to protect against a meteor (in which case you probably won't care anymore...) but you'd be fairly safe from natural "disaster" damage if you build it right. Even flood damage could be mitigated by making the case watertight and using external water cooling with shutdown precautions if water is lost (the line is broke) or power is cut off.

          For personal data, I d

  • This is like the end of history, right? (Score:3)

    by lxs ( 131946 ) on Monday April 11, 2011 @03:21PM (#35784764)

    A fine idea, but then reality sinks in when people start losing data and lawsuits are filed and the whole thing gets shelved for the next round in one or two decades.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mlts ( 1038732 ) *

      Don't forget copyright/patent/trademark/other IP law that potential litigants may step in with. The lesson of mp3.com is a good example of this.

      Best solution? A private "cloud". Perhaps a way to stream from a computer or a NAS one's MP3 stash over an encrypted connection to one's smartphone or MP3 player. I'd love to see an app that does this, where I can have a backend part on my file server, while a frontend player app exists on my phone that groks dynamic DNS, uses a VPN or encrypted connection, and

      • Best solution? A private "cloud".

        Dropbox already is a private cloud. I believe there are mobile clients already, not tailored to a specific data type but they simply let the system handle playing of different types of media.

        The only line between what Amazon and Dropbox is doing, is that (a) Amazon uploads a digital copy to the cloud storage for you, and (b) Amazon makes an interface tailored to a specific media type.

        Amazon would be OK with (b) but I think they will get spanked because of (a), which seems t

        • Legally if you just hold what the user uploaded directly you cannot be liable.

          A lot of colleges and universities believed that, too. At least until they found out otherwise.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mlts ( 1038732 ) *

            This is why I like the idea of having one's personal PC or a NAS do the streaming via an encrypted protocol. Someone monitoring traffic will be pretty sure that what is going from the user's server to their phone may be music, but the contents would be almost [1] impossible to discern.

            [1]: I state almost -- there are always side channel and timing attacks that might be able to tell if one song ended and stuff like that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

        Best solution? A private "cloud". Perhaps a way to stream from a computer or a NAS one's MP3 stash over an encrypted connection to one's smartphone or MP3 player.

        For the iPhone, PlugPlayer will stream music from any UPnP source on your network. AirTunes will transcode video on-the-fly to a compatible format and stream it to you (there is a server component to it that needs a reasonably-powerful machine; in my case, a WinXP VM running on a MythTV backend is sufficient). Open the appropriate ports on your r

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by MarkvW ( 1037596 )

      That's pretty naive. The "cloud" will essentially require you to waive your right to sue if you use the cloud.
      Wrap your head around that.

  • TFA is all and good... but (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mlts ( 1038732 ) * on Monday April 11, 2011 @03:28PM (#35784830)

    Having licensed content available in the cloud is nice, but there is one issue, a major one:

    Owning stuff in this manner is an investment can be easily turned off from a remote source, and there is absolutely zero one can do about it. With books, someone would have to enter my residence unauthorized with a fairly large truck and haul stuff out. Similar with DVDs. All a cloud provider can do is just click a button or enter a SQL statement, and the many thousands of dollars in a game/book/movie/music library are now rendered inaccessible. Lawsuit? Good luck. There have many people who threatened Valve with litigation because VAC banned them, but there has yet to be a single case that goes to court. EULAs are proven and are completely supported by precedents, so a cloud provider essentially states that "we are not responsible if you lose access to a product or your library", and someone with a large library does not have a leg to stand on.

    Even if a lawsuit was successful, a bankruptcy of the cloud provider can render all the licensed content gone.

    This is why people should have local, un-DRM-ed copies of their media they have purchased. It would take a lot more than just a delete to remove access from a library of physical media.

    • When you think about it, what corporations are really really trying to be able to do is sell nothing, because nothing has by far the best marginal profit.

      Some examples of companies selling nothing:
      - Insurance companies who routinely deny claims on the flimsiest of pretexts.
      - Banks tacking on fees and surcharges without notice.
      - Cell phone companies charging exorbitant fees.
      - Almost everything credit card and payday loan places routinely do to their borrowers.

      Media companies w

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Draek ( 916851 )

      Owning stuff in this manner is an investment can be easily turned off from a remote source, and there is absolutely zero one can do about it. With books, someone would have to enter my residence unauthorized with a fairly large truck and haul stuff out.

      Purposefully? yes. Accidentally however, all it takes is some bad luck with a roof leak and your books are all gone, nevermind a natural disaster of the scale of Katrina.

      The ideal rather is a "cloud" service you can make local copies of, like GMail or Impulse. If they go belly up or get purchased by Gamestop (yes, I'm bitter) you still have your local backups available, but if a disaster hits your city and you're forced to evacuate your home, you can at least have the comfort that you'll be able to return t

  • Bad idea. Content dies in five years (Score:3)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday April 11, 2011 @03:32PM (#35784906) Homepage

    The problem is that content stored on someone else's server, or authorized from it, seems to go away within five years. Often less. That's happened with Circuit City's DIVX (1998-1999), Microsoft's PlaysForSure (2004-2008), WalMart Music (2007-2008), and seems to be about to happen to Microsoft's Zune. Yes, there's usually some way to pry the content loose, but it's usually difficult, unsupported, and won't be done by most consumers.

    Of course, you can't sell used "cloud" content, and you can't play it on an unapproved device. You're caught between the service going bust and your devices becoming obsolete.

    Bad idea.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kisielk ( 467327 )

      That's why I think subscription services are the way to go. I have no qualms with using a service like Netflix or Rdio, even though the content isn't "owned" by me and could disappear at any time. If that happens, who cares? I'm paying a few dollars a month for the access. If either service were to suddenly vaporize, I'd simply start using another service or just do something else with my money.

      For the few dollars spent each month on their streaming services I no longer have to worry about storing my media

      • I only own a few DVDs, most of what I watch comes from Netflix. If they die tomorrow, I really don't care. And my video library is effectively infinite.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by afidel ( 530433 )
      With Amazon it's just another way to access the mp3's you bought from them, not the only way.

  • This article sheds some light on how the cloud, along with subscription and on-demand services, will transform our perception of content access and ownership.

    If you put your stuff in the cloud you dont own it. Period. Full Stop. You're just licensing it. If you stop paying, your stuff will disappear. That's the opposite of ownership.

    Furthermore, none of his supposed points are actually advantages of the cloud, just advantages of digitized content, the cloud is just one of a myriad of storage and distributio

  • Inevitable with zero-cost duplication (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AcidPenguin9873 ( 911493 ) on Monday April 11, 2011 @03:43PM (#35785012)

    When IP can be reproduced and distributed at zero cost, ownership and property rights have little to no meaning. People who use the term "imaginary property" have been saying this for at least 10 years, especially on Slashdot.

    Well, this is now content creators agreeing with them. "Imaginary property" advocates have been saying for years that IP rights holders are free to exercise their exclusive rights to that IP by not selling it to anyone, thus maintaining their exclusive copy of the IP. (Implied there is that no one will get to actually experience the IP, making it useless as a source of income). Well, this is them doing half of that. Because copyright (i.e. exclusive distribution rights) is impossible to enforce, they are simply going to stop distributing the IP in "here's a copy of it, please don't copy it again and give it away" form, which basically stopped working over 10 years ago. They are instead providing access to their IP behind these cloud-based services which, in addition to providing the content itself, provide added value in ways such as organizing the content and allowing access from many devices/places/times. For most people, the content plus the additional value offered by these services is enough to get them to subscribe (i.e. pay). This allows the IP creators to continue making money from their IP. By the way, this goes for software too: think Steam.

    This is in opposition to the "imaginary property" advocates that maintain that all content should be free-as-in-beer because it doesn't cost any money to duplicate, damned be the (sometimes significant) creation costs. Most of them use free-as-in-freedom arguments like "I own this, I should be able to do what I want with it", or arguments such as "I hate the RIAA/MPAA so I'm screwing them." Personally, I hate the RIAA/MPAA as much as the next guy, but what I hate even more is justifying pirated content by saying "well I'm just screwing the RIAA/MPAA". Guess what? You're also screwing the content creator, whose work you apparently want enough to pirate.

    • When IP can be reproduced and distributed at zero cost, ownership and property rights have little to no meaning. People who use the term "imaginary property" have been saying this for at least 10 years, especially on Slashdot.

      Well, this is now content creators agreeing with them. "Imaginary property" advocates have been saying for years that IP rights holders are free to exercise their exclusive rights to that IP by not selling it to anyone, thus maintaining their exclusive copy of the IP. (Implied there is that no one will get to actually experience the IP, making it useless as a source of income). Well, this is them doing half of that. Because copyright (i.e. exclusive distribution rights) is impossible to enforce, they are simply going to stop distributing the IP in "here's a copy of it, please don't copy it again and give it away" form, which basically stopped working over 10 years ago. They are instead providing access to their IP behind these cloud-based services which, in addition to providing the content itself, provide added value in ways such as organizing the content and allowing access from many devices/places/times. For most people, the content plus the additional value offered by these services is enough to get them to subscribe (i.e. pay). This allows the IP creators to continue making money from their IP. By the way, this goes for software too: think Steam.

      This is in opposition to the "imaginary property" advocates that maintain that all content should be free-as-in-beer because it doesn't cost any money to duplicate, damned be the (sometimes significant) creation costs. Most of them use free-as-in-freedom arguments like "I own this, I should be able to do what I want with it", or arguments such as "I hate the RIAA/MPAA so I'm screwing them." Personally, I hate the RIAA/MPAA as much as the next guy, but what I hate even more is justifying pirated content by saying "well I'm just screwing the RIAA/MPAA". Guess what? You're also screwing the content creator, whose work you apparently want enough to pirate.

      I agree with the majority of what you posted except for the very last statement. Time and time again, it has been shown that the content creator receives very little for their efforts. The publishers, though, whether in the music industry, print industry or film industry, receive most of the reward. It's very similar to the plight of a farmer. Even when a bushel of wheat goes up in value, it is the middleman who receives most of the benefit, not the actual producers/farmer.

      All that said, I do not condon

      • they are simply going to stop distributing the IP in "here's a copy of it"

        They might have stopped saying that, but you can't exactly avoid distributing the actual bits if you want the user to listen to music / see the video / play the game. Even when it's streaming, it's still a copy. It's just more technically complicated to make further copies, but not by much.

        Furthermore, it's not clear that the direction is strictly towards preventing copying. If Amazon offering is anything to go by, it may well be the other way around - with iTMS, and with Amazon MP3 before they introduced

    • damned be the (sometimes significant) creation costs.

      Uh, no.

      Anyone who's thought about it seriously knows that what's needed is the development of economic models that don't rely on distribution fees to make up for production costs after the fact.

      There are a bunch of alternatives, like the ransom model (release to the public domain after enough money has been paid into an escrow account), the subscription model (sell "subscriptions" to serialised content, similar to magazine subscriptions or cable-tv subscriptions), the loss-leader model (make the generic ver

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by npsimons ( 32752 ) *

      Well, this is now content creators agreeing with them.

      Not really.

      Well, this is them doing half of that.

      Sure, if by "doing half of that" you mean "locking down content even more and abridging fair use by not allowing timeshifting or spaceshifting." Oh, wait that's exactly /against/ fair use principles.

      This is in opposition to the "imaginary property" advocates that maintain that all content should be free-as-in-beer because it doesn't cost any money to duplicate, damned be the (sometimes significant) creatio

  • this is a classic problem (Score:3)

    by Dan667 ( 564390 ) on Monday April 11, 2011 @03:44PM (#35785026)
    separating content from the application is the best design as you can improve the application. Look at all the different programs and innovations that happened with the mp3 file format. Now when you get vendor lock-in formats or only streaming you don't get any of this innovation.
  • I got a bit annoyed at Amazon because it would not let me download my content from the clouddisk thingy. This effectively means that I am buying content for a personal streaming radio station. Compare this to netflix wher for $10 a month I access to all sorts of movie streaming, and many more on physical disk. I don't know where the value is. I pay for retail music, but cannot put it where I want. For those who say that content ownership is not in jeopardy, this is clearly an attempt to get users to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aenea ( 34844 )

      What are you talking about? Amazon allows you to download content from the clouddisk thingy.

  • When The Cloud matches my HD-based content serving home cloud I might consider it, but until then it's just so quick, easy and customizable to rip and stream my own stuff than to navigate all the content hosting websites. I do use NetFlix and their so-called instant streaming, but as of yet it's no match for a physical DVD (or ISO of same) quality and feature wise, so much so that I generally grab a torrent for a better viewing experience the next time I watch it, even though I already pay via subscription

  • They're offering that as an alternative.

    You can still download it if you like. But if you download it, you have to upload it again to be a part of your amazon cloud collection.

    • Unless they changed it in the last day, the content you download from Amazon's cloud is still on the cloud to download again.

  • There is no reason to own this kind of content. When access is ubiquitous, and cost is negligible, ownership becomes kind of redundant.

  • The Cloud, and my handy Peta-Byte drive (Score:3)

    by paulsnx2 ( 453081 ) on Monday April 11, 2011 @03:54PM (#35785138)

    Somewhere around 2015 to 2020, at our current rate of advances over the last 40 years, we can expect to have storage devices that hold Peta-Bytes of storage. (http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/20/petabyte-disks-coming-in-5-years/) That's a 1000 TB drives for the same cost as your TB drive today.

    Yes, streaming from the cloud is critical to this transformation. You have to be able to share information.

    But who says we will not be able to back up the cloud? That we will have to rely on the cloud to exchange truly *huge* amounts of data?

    By 2020, $100 should buy you a drive that would hold as much as **14 years** of HD Video. That's very likely to be more content that I will ever own, even should I manage to collect all my home videos and all the home videos of all my relatives and their friends.
    (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jaDcJXMqSL0/SvtiByNVLFI/AAAAAAAAALQ/oEUZfyV3IY8/s1600-h/FutureStorage.JPG)

    The attempts by the telecommunications companies to restrict the internet to low quality videos of kittens, and by the MPAA and RIAA to eliminate content from the internet are doomed. It cannot happen. Even if the internet is destroyed by these forces, kids will pass around hard drives (or whatever tech replaces hard drives) that contain all useful content (indexed and searchable at high quality) by physically handing them off between each other if they have to.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Yaa 101 ( 664725 )

      The kids already do that, never underestimate sneakernet is my advice to all.

    • Somewhere around 2015 to 2020, at our current rate of advances over the last 40 years, we can expect to have storage devices that hold Peta-Bytes of storage.

      Here's what I was *going* to say:- As this is a new technology, past performance of existing technologies isn't necessarily an accurate prediction, even assuming we can accurately extrapolate those. Plus there have been very many cutting-edge and well-hyped technologies that have fallen by the wayside or failed to deliver the miracles promised- this article is the guy's own claims for the technology, so I'll take them with a pinch of sa...(Reads linked article more closely and checks date)

      That article da

  • 'My' content? (Score:3)

    by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Monday April 11, 2011 @03:58PM (#35785214)
    You guys don't read the small print, do you? Once you upload, it's no longer your content unless you have a few hundred thousand dollars sitting around to convince a judge otherwise.

  • Sometimes there isn't a cloud in the sky (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dcnjoe60 ( 682885 ) on Monday April 11, 2011 @04:01PM (#35785236)

    The problem with everything being in the cloud is that the government can make the cloud go away. Didn't slashdot just have a discussion on how the internet helped with the changes in Egypt? Once everything is in the cloud, what is to stop some government from cutting off its people from the cloud?

    This proposal is a lot more than being able to stream Avatar to any device you want. It is really about who controls your access to information (your own or licensed).

  • But with Amazon's cloud, you DO own the content.. it's all your content that you are streaming... and you can download any of the items there.

    (BTW, I have only played with it for a few minutes, and had Amazon put a couple of free songs of the day there.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dahamma ( 304068 )

      Argument that you don't actually own the content itself (just a license to use it) notwithstanding - you're right, Amazon's model has nothing to do with "cloud-based ownership" of content, etc, it's really just a backup of stuff you (can) already physically have (unless you trust them enough to delete the original source and/or not actually download content you bought from them).

  • Only buys things you can actually OWN. Everything else can go to hell.

  • Am I the only one detecting the obvious astroturfing in a story purporting to equate some ebook generator called "24symbols" with Amazon, Sony and Google?

  • Let me have it both ways..... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by scharkalvin ( 72228 ) on Monday April 11, 2011 @04:37PM (#35785648) Homepage

    I don't WANT to own every book, CD, or DVD in the world, but I'd sure like to be able to access them all (well maybe not ALL, but I'll pick and choose LATER). I would consider the cloud to be a library (perhaps a library for hire, at least for some of the titles). I do own my favorite books, CD's and DVD's and you can try to pry them from my cold dead hands (and NOT till then!), and I also borrow books, CD's and DVD's from the public library. I can see extending this to some provider in the cloud as well. But I'll still want physical copies of some things......

    • For a monthly subscription fee, you get one free download a month, and they have sales where you can buy books for very cheap. They store your books in your "library" in the cloud, you can download them in their proprietary format, or burn them to DRM-free CDs. It would be nice if they had an uber cheap listen-once or this-book-will-self-destruct-in-30-days format. There aren't many books I want to listen to twice, so owning them forever isn't a big deal for me.
  • How many mediated-access DRM schemes have to come and go, leaving the unwary screaming about how they paid for something and now it's gone, before they wake up?

    This is big media's wet dream. Up to now, it's just been, "Uh, I guess I have to buy the White album again," when it's released in a new format, a new mix, a new cover (sic). With these schemes, big media is setting up to collect every time you listen to part of the White album.

    Ownership? What's that? You are a mere licensee, subject to a li

  • Joel Spolsky had a Joel on Software [joelonsoftware.com] post pertinent to this subject back in 2002, except then it was applied to understanding just why numerous large companies were jumping on the open source bandwagon. (Hint: it's not due to a sudden shift to a Stallman-esque viewpoint.) Joel talks a bit of economics, lays out the details, and provides a number of examples, like the one below.

    Headline: IBM Spends Millions to Develop Open Source Software.

    Myth: They're doing this because Lou Gerstner read the GNU Manifesto and decided he doesn't actually like capitalism.

    Reality: They're doing this because IBM is becoming an IT consulting company. IT consulting is a complement of enterprise software. Thus IBM needs to commoditize enterprise software, and the best way to do this is by supporting open source. Lo and behold, their consulting division is winning big with this strategy.

    Seen in this context, these providers are rapidly commoditizing an entire marketplace as a complement to increase the demand for th

  • This article sheds some light on how the cloud, along with subscription and on-demand services, will transform our perception of content access and ownership.

    Apparently, the hope is we'll stop perceiving that we own the things we buy.

    When they say "the end of content ownership" they mean "by consumers".

    I'm waiting for the announcement that anything we write or make ourselves will no longer belong to us. I'm actually sort of surprised that there isn't some effort to limit programs like Garage Band or Logic o

  • I bought Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl, I want a refund for the CD. And I want the scratched ones streamed too. I bought the music, right?
  • The cloud is great for my Steam save games, but I'll continue using my own software on my own hardware. I trust my 2TB hard drive more than some company that only cares about my data as long as I'm paying them a subscription fee..

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