20TB for a home user is likely to be media data. It doesn't change much and it 's usually possible to recover - rerip, red/l, etc. so it's probably OK to live with a higher risk of loss than a business would need for their backup of 20TB of data. With those assumptions, I'd focus on minimizing the risk of loss and opt for snapshot raid. (If he wants true backup, backup to disk is my preferred option, using a decent backup program. If offsite is needed, carry the data that doesn[t change offsite and arrange to send to web the stuff that changes daily.) True raid 5/6 seems like a good way to minimize the risk of loss, but it's not nearly as good as snapshot raid for media data. True raid is too likely to fail during a recovery when the disks and controller are heavily stressed. I've lost raid arrays from both controller failure and multiple disk failure. Plus, a loss beyond the redundancy level loses everything with true raid. Snapshot raid with pooling software is much better for media backup. You only lose the data on the disks that actually die if you have more than the redundancy/parity number of drives that fail. You can add additional parity drives at any time to increase redundancy. For windows or *nix systems, Snapraid is a free snapshot raid option that works great. It comes with pooling capabilities that will make the entire array look like a single drive or, for more advanced pooling needs, there are multiple 3rd part options. Liquesce is free for Windows and there are even more free options for *nix systems that need pooling.

The *AA lawyers would only have been able to go after you for civil copyright infringement. Criminal copyright infringement means there is the chance of going to jail and having a criminal record. Only the federal government (U.S.) can go after you for criminal copyright infringement, and they seldom do. Civil copyright infringement is where the owner of the copyright goes after you for damages (or "statutory damages"). They can't put you in jail in a civil case, but they can take your money.

Why on earth would they want to do that, in a world without copyright?

For the same reason TiVo locks down their code with encryption/authentication, etc. - so everyone, including me, has to buy my work to get access to any improvements they make to it. Getting rid of copyright won't prevent companies from using DRM and other technological measures to lock down the code. The only way to make sure that my code stays free for all is to use copyright to require others to keep it free.

As pointed out; without copyright there would be little need to have the GPL.

You don't understand the GPL. I wrote code last week and contributed it to a GPL project. I don't want some big company taking my code, building on it and refusing to let me and others see the changes. That's why I used the GPL. The GPL lets me require that big company to do what I want them to do with my code - let others use it under the GPL. Without copyright, I can't require them to do anything.

A quote I like:
If you want to give away your code: use BSD.
If you want to share your code: use GPL.

I wanted to "share," not "give away."

This method is a solution to the problem known in cryptographic circles as "Traitor Tracing." The patent sounds awfully similar to the traitor tracing method used in Blu-ray discs and the old HD-DVD discs. It's a capability of the system licensed by the AACS Licensing Authority for encrypt those discs. Basically, they can substitute one of multiple short chunks of video at multiple places in the movie. After a decrypted movie is released, they can figure out what system was compromised. Interestingly, the traitor system has never been implemented, even though all licensed players must be able to handle it. That's probably because the AACSLA knows what system was compromised - it's one of the software Blu-Ray players.

The software players are all identical. The hardware players can be tracked down to a specific player. Isn't that nice to know.

What should have happened: You can't patent something you didn't invent. The patent issued to the "US pharmaceutical(?) company" should have been declared invalid under 35 USC 102(f) because the "inventor" named in the U.S. patent application "did not himself invent the subject matter sought to be patented". (himself/herself: the U.S. laws are not written with politically correct wording.)

What might have happened: The US pharmaceutical(?) company developed a new method of bulk production and patented that. The original inventors felt that anyone who wanted to make penicillin should be free to do so, and the US pharmaceutical(?) company took them at their word, but didn't want others to use their new bulk production method. The inventors were free to use the original production method the they had "shown to a US pharmaceutical(?) company," but not the new bulk production method.

It's just like Tivoization of Open Source Software. If you want to prevent this sort of thing, you need to protect the original (software via copyright or penicillin via patent) then use a GPL v3 or equivalent license that prevents the Tivoization. Once the original is released to the public domain, people can do anything they want with it, even things the original inventor/author doesn't like.

People here pretty clearly don't know much about design patents. Take a look at what a lawyer who specializes in this type of law thinks about this patent. http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/09/googles-patent-on-its-googlecom-home-page.html

To summarize, he says:
1) No design patent like this has ever been enforced
2) It basically provides rights very similar to a copyright (not a utility patent).
3) Even Google's own search page of Sept 3, 2009 "clearly would not infringe because of the differences between layout in the patent and the layout on the site."
4) Their own web page from a year earlier is prior art to this page, which severely limits its scope of protection.

The bottom line is that the word "design" dominates the word "patent"- it's not much like a patent at all.

I regularly go to meetings where management asks the engineers for ideas to get around some competitor's patent. The company would just copy the competing product if possible, but the legal suits say it's too risky. The engineers absolutely love these meetings. Half the time, we come out with some fresh idea on how to make it better or cheaper. The next question the boss asks the suits is whether WE can get a patent. You can't convince me that management would ever have taken the risk to improve the product or do something new without the driving necessity of a competitor's patent.

If I paraphrase this argument I get:
(1) a law of nature cannot be patented
(2) all physical principles are a law of nature
(3) all machines are constructed and operate according to one or more law of nature or physical principle and so follows that machines cannot be patentable.

Simple logic is too simple to rely on (unless you think that nothing should be patentable). I know I'm in the minority, but I don't see any fundamental difference between an electrical circuit, a mechanical machine and a computer program. At one level each can be abstracted into its fundamental physical and mathematical principles and at another level it takes a tangible thing - a machine, a computer or a circuit board - to use it for anything.

The article says only 14% exceeded the cap in several months of testing. Some of the posts argue that complaining won't work because 50% of capacity is used by 5% of an ISP's users, so the ISP would be thrilled to have them leave. The problem with these comments is that they both assume that the 14% or the 5% are the same people over time, but this isn't necessarily true. The 14% may well be distributed from month to month so almost every user will eventually get hit with a surprise overage charge. This pisses off the customer, who may well leave for a provider who doesn't hit them with surprise fees. Similarly, the 5% who allegedly use 50% of bandwidth aren't necessarily the same next month, so another 5% may be using 50% bandwidth next month. Sure, it's true that some users do use more, on average, than others, but usage can vary quite widely.

I will give you a copy of my money if you will give me a copy of your game. See - there's a difference between a tangible and an intangible.