David Sirota: Property Rights In the Cloud

from In These Times:



Property Rights In the Cloud
How much of you is really yours? In the age of cloud computing, it’s a crucial question.

BY David Sirota


When you hear the phrase “property rights,” you probably think of farmers fighting environmental regulators and homeowners arguing with oil drillers. But in the Information Age, you should also be thinking about your computer–and asking, how much of you is really yours? It’s not a navel-gazing rumination from a college Intro to Existentialism class–it’s an increasingly pressing question in the brave new world of social networking and cloud computing.

Last week’s big technology announcement spotlighted the thorny issue. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Google’s announcement of its “Google Drive” came with the promise that users will “retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content.” But when you save files to Google’s new hard-drive folder in the cloud, the terms of service you are required to agree to gives Google “a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute (your) content” as the company sees fit.

When asked about this, Google argued that its provisions merely “enable us to give you the services you want–so if you decide to share a document with someone, or open it on a different device, you can.”

As reassuring as that seems, though, it’s not that simple when considered in a larger context. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13143/property_rights_in_the_cloud