Update — Instagram now says it was all a huge mistake, that users own their pictures and there’s no way Facebook is going to sell them to anyone… but the company hasn’t yet revealed alternate legal language, which they should have been able to cobble up in an hour or two. The underlying problem of mean-spirited, self-serving, over-reaching terms of service is still with us at Instagram and almost everywhere else. Their revised terms of service were stupid and couldn’t stand. Let’s hope in their next attempt to grab rights (because that’s what this whole thing was about and probably still is) Instagram and Facebook treat their users fairly. Until they do, most of what’s […]
Instagram’s Exit Plan
Muhammad v. YouTube
Update — From reader comments below it sounds like many people think I am advocating some specific behavior from either YouTube or President Obama. That’s not true. I’m not proposing that either DO anything. I’m just explaining what I believe is happening and why, which is pretty much all I ever do around here if you haven’t noticed. I’m neither trying to hobble the First Amendment nor take any political or religious stand whatsoever. If people think I am doing ether, well they aren’t reading very carefully at all, because it simply isn’t in there. So settle down, everyone.
Moving on to any readers who […]
A belt and suspenders for your cloud storage
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak this week warned of the perils of depending too much on cloud storage and the general press reacted like this was: A) news, and; B) evidence of some inherent failure in cloud architecture. In fact it is not news (Woz never claimed it was) and mainly represents something we used to call “common sense.”
However secure you think your cloud storage is, why solely rely on it when keeping an extra backup can cost from very little to nothing at all?
No matter whose cloud you are depending on it will be subject to attack. Bigger targets get more attacks and something as big as DropBox, say, is a mighty big target, while that spare hard drive attached to a […]
