What’s wrong with the “cloud”?

THIS is what’s wrong with the cloud.  Companies that have “Terms of use” statements like Amazon’s current one. Here’s an excerpt:

1. 5.2.Our Right to Access Your Files.You give us the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files: to provide you with technical support and address technical issues; to investigate compliance with the terms of this Agreement, enforce the terms of this Agreement and protect the Service and its users from fraud or security threats; or as we determine is necessary to provide the Service or comply with applicable law.
2. 5.3.Security.We do not guarantee that Your Files will not be subject to misappropriation, loss or damage and we will not be liable if they are. You’re responsible for maintaining appropriate security, protection and backup of Your Files.

That is what’s wrong with the cloud.  That, “misappropriation” word is even scarier when they’re referring to your personal files.  I wouldn’t put any nude pictures of yourself on there, nor bank info, or something that personally identifies you, or shows your location, or well, anything really.  How about those mp3’s you ripped and someone wrongfully identifies them with pirated copies?  How about actual pirated music?  Anything and everything will and is viewable by Amazon’s employees and whatever government / authority figure that wants to. Now, think about the possibility that someone finds a software vulnerability in their systems (pretty much inevitable) and gains access to everyone’s files and decides to download everything?  Ever hear of the PSN hack?  Who knows if your data is encrypted, and even if it was, Amazon has the keys; not you.

So, this is the “future” eh?  Cloud computing.  What a crock of sh**.

Now, I like the idea of having data stored “centrally” so that if a machine is lost, broken, or stolen, data can simply be accessed from elsewhere and work can resume immediately, sort of like how Google’s Chromium OS works. How much of our data needs to be “trusted” in another’s hands though?

I say we revolt against companies that give themselves exclusive rights to our files and instead, work on our own open source “cloud” software and run them ourselves (I think I’ve seen a few already and I’ll try to link them in this article when I find them again).  Sure, it won’t be as easy, and only techie’s will be able to do it, but we could at least offer our servers to family and friends and not have to worry about what disgruntled employee has access to all of our photos, documents, music, videos, and everything else we might want to be available everywhere.

Update: Possible “self-hosted” cloud softwares:  http://www.tonido.com/

http://www.iomegacloud.com/landing_page.php

http://www.pogoplug.com/

http://www.ubuntu.com/business/cloud/overview

And several of my the softwares that I listed in a previous article could pose as “personal cloud” services as well, depending on what you deem as a “cloud”.