What should they learn? That one can not rely on cloud hosting?
Every hosting service can and will be used for copyright infringement - Google's Blogspot is a nice example. They host(ed) hundreds of "piracy" blogs (and took them down on DMCA notice, like Hotfile/MU did), so do I have to fear my blog being taken down because some idiots sue Google?
The only thing that protects me/my data from this scenario is that Google is Too Big To Be Sued.
The "cloud": Some one else's hard drive which you cant physically access, can only access with an internet connection, and is wide open to the abuses of authorities.
"What should they learn? That one can not rely on cloud hosting?"
Correct. Only an utter mug trusts and / or "relies" the cloud. Great for utility, but trust? Secure? Rely? No. Never. At the very, very least users should back up anything valuable saved on a "cloud". No, you cannot rely on "cloud" hosting. Use it by all means, dont rely on it though.
"The only thing that protects me/my data from this scenario is that Google is Too Big To Be Sued."
No copies of your own?
After Mega and so forth, if you keep data on a cloud, and a government takes it away, but you have no back up of it, its you own fault. While I might understand a normal mug users being caught like this, a reader of HN should be literally de-HNed for being in such a situation. If a hacker does not accept the compromise of the cloud, then there is no hope.
For the sake of mere mortals who are not geeks or hackers, I think its about time cloud providers were made to state the clear limitations and risks of their services. Ordinary users trust these services, and such ordinary people can lose very valuable, deeply personal things like family photos. A cloud service can be a part of a backup strategy, but never ever the whole thing.
The cloud is a trade off between free or cheap easy utility, and reliability and security. Know that, then choose and act appropriately.
> What should they learn? That one can not rely on cloud hosting?
For a start, yes. Never trust data solely to a 3rd party and never assume data hosted solely by a single 3rd party is going to be reliably available. It doesn't matter how redundant their systems are internally, to an external user they are still a single point of failure.
The other thing to learn is that if you use cloud hosting avoid the ones that openly attract (or are know to turn a blind eye to where-ever possible) unlicensed copyright covered material. Also avoid most things that are "free" which includes ad-sponsored upload+distribute sites - they always attract iffy content often could not survive without the add revenue from it. Those that offer to pay you for impressions are even worse on all these counts. You can't expect more than what you pay for, and to be honest unless you are careful about your provider selection you can't reliably expect what you have paid for half the time...
Most of the people who really are affected by the provider shutdowns are "ordinary" people who may occasionally download stuff from youtube but don't know much else about computing. They just see the facade of the hosters and don't know about the "back side" - and when the fuck-up happens, they're caught cold.
"We", as in "tech-savy population", know about SPOFs, backups and such - but not an everyday person.
There is nothing much we can do about that though, other than beat people with the clue-stick until such time as they grow a protective layer of cynicism.
I'll help by educating people where I can, but there is a point beyond which I refuse to take responsibility for people doing the wrong thing because they don't know any better and don't take a second to think: often it is down to things looking too good to be true (to the point where zero/little techie skills/experience are needed to see this) or things quite obviously being dodgy - if people lose data in either case I have little sympathy. Maybe losing important data is the only way they'll ever learn.
Give a user a good fish and they'll be fed without poisoning today.
Teach a user to fish safely and they'll potentially be fed safely for life.
Users who refuse to engage their brain and learn to fish safely? Let 'em starve or get poisoned.
Of course if you see data you might want in future hosted in an impractical manner, take a copy now and make sure you put it somewhere (or several somewheres) more safe.
Don't prosecutors ever learn? Megaupload blew up in their faces and now the next one...