Sometimes I think I am becoming unpopular on some educational technology websites. I have a keen distrust of free hosted services that are touted by so may web evangelists and those that frequent such sites. Some edtech sites almost seem like clearinghouses for free Internet based services. I have often challenged the use of such site citing student privacy and (less often) data control and ownership.
Today I came across a link to a provocatively worded blog post condemning these free cloud services offered so widely today. Before you click, I want to warn you that this post uses strong language. Jason Scott is an archiver of old BBS data and producer of a five hour documentary on Boston area Bulletin Board Services. He clearly has a larger historical perspective than most who use the Internet today.
Jason warns:
You are going to have to sit down and ask yourself some very tough questions because the time where you could get away without asking very tough questions with regard to your online presence and data are gone.
We increasingly rely on online repositories for our work and can no longer do so thoughtlessly. He isn’t talking so much about data you have so much as data you have created—our photographs, blogposts, videos, etc. Many are relying on cloud sites to store this data. He further states:
Because if you’re not asking what stuff means anything to you, then you’re a sucker, ready to throw your stuff down at the nearest gaping hole that proclaims it is a free service (or ad-supported service), quietly flinging you past an End User License Agreement that indicates that, at the end of the day, you might as well as dragged all this stuff to the trash. If it goes, it’s gone.
The larger perspective shows us that these services have abruptly disappeared in the past and that relying on these services puts our data at peril. Jason Scott does not say we shouldn’t use the cloud, rather we should not rely upon it to store our only copy of content that we created. They let you store your stuff for free in their cloud. Why should they put themselves in legal peril by guaranteeing the safety of the data?
This issue of data safety will be exasperated by our current fiscal climate. Banks and large financial institutions that appear solid one day are collapsing the next. Liquidity is drying up and investors are reluctant to risk money in businesses that do not have a reliable revenue stream such as firms that offer free Internet services.
I’ll go a step further than Jason in regard to the license agreements on such sites. Not only do these sites relinquish responsibility for the safety of the data, they often also tell you that you are giving up the ownership of your data.
This all is made even worse when teachers have their students rely so heavily on these cloud solutions for storing their content. Both students and teachers have begun to take these resources for granted with little regard for the safety of using such sites. Is this the behavior that teachers should model?
The solution is to take responsibility for your data. In most cases that means paying, either for a service that provides a guarantee and a clearly articulated back up plan, or for inexpensive server space that you personally back up. Anything less is folly.
Related Posts
Tags: cloud, data, free services, privacy, safety
-
I love it when people read that essay and get it!
-
Hi Steve,
I agree that the user should proceed cautiously when it comes to cloud computing – but not all could computing is equal. Google makes it possible to export files in other formats and Gears allows off line work. Jason quickly flamed Google for the recent demise of Google Video, but can you blame them considering that Google now owns YouTube? The fact remains, services like Google for education provide schools with unparalleled collaborative capability while giving students and teachers access to files anywhere and anytime. Not a bad deal, in my opinion.
-
Nobody can argue that Google doesn’t have an impressive tool set–many difficult to replicate (believe me–I have tried and will continue to do so). The point is that if you store your data with them, there are no guarantees about the data:
15.1 SUBJECT TO OVERALL PROVISION IN PARAGRAPH 14.1 ABOVE, YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT GOOGLE, ITS SUBSIDIARIES AND AFFILIATES, AND ITS LICENSORS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR:
(A) ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES WHICH MAY BE INCURRED BY YOU, HOWEVER CAUSED AND UNDER ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY.. THIS SHALL INCLUDE, BUT NOT BE LIMITED TO, ANY LOSS OF PROFIT (WHETHER INCURRED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY), ANY LOSS OF GOODWILL OR BUSINESS REPUTATION, ANY LOSS OF DATA SUFFERED, COST OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSS;
Now if you had the option of paying for services that had some kind of guarantee and enforceable contract, that would be another thing altogether.
Furthermore, Google can pull the plug on any service that it sees fit:
13.3 Google may at any time, terminate its legal agreement with you if:
(E) the provision of the Services to you by Google is, in Google’s opinion, no longer commercially viable.
I don’t believe that Google is driven by altruism, rather they are driven by profit motive. Not that this is inherently a bad thing, but they would use more diligence if there was a profit motive keeping data safe. Also, looking at their past behavior in terms of Chinese dissidents, they clearly choose profit rather than to “do no harm.”
In addition, Google Video is not the only service they have withdrawn abruptly. They have also just closed Google Notebook.
-
All very true, Steve. It is a dilemma and I see your point. Google Notebook closing was an unfortunate thing. Of course, they didn’t terminate Notebook, they closed it to new users, which is very different. If you use Notebook you can continue to do so. As for trusting the cloud to your data, I think Google Gears answers that. All of my data is backed up locally. I can work on a document whether or not I am on the internet. If Google Docs were to blow up, I could export my documents to another format. All this said, our district also installs open office. Between the two services, we have a robust and collaborative set of tools.
All business is driven by the bottom line. So is education, unfortunately, as we are about to discover in the upcoming budget year (I am not saying it should be.) Google has been very generous to education. Of all the companies in the cloud computing arena, I think Google is one of the better bets. I hope I’m right.
-
-
-
Google Video was portrayed as being a number of new things: a platform for selling video, a place to upload your work (not general media, that was prohibited by copyright, even if they didn’t enforce all that much) and then, ultimately, they have frozen it in favor of youtube. The thing is, this was all done mostly with the space of two years.
You’re still in the wow phase, and that’s cool; there’s a lot of wow in Google. But their behavior shows that when “something” inside them decides a service shouldn’t continue, the warning is in less than a couple months and the retrieval policies are minimal/non-existent.
-
Good Stuff. I myself have been around since fidonet connecting at 1200 baud.
Cheering as we downloaded our first 50k packet. Do people remember Waffle?-
I hopped on when when the modems were a little faster, but I do remember fidonet. I subscribed to several BBSs. Most used First Class rather than Waffle.
-
-
Pingback from Dark clouds | openedweb.com on February 3, 2009 at 11:50 am
This work by Stephen J O’Connor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
8 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link: http://openedweb.com/blog/2009/01/27/beware-of-cloud-freebies/trackback/