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This combination of "Nonprofit" and "Permanent" is an oxymoron. And the fact that the people who run this operation don't realize this means this initiative is

This combination of "Nonprofit" and "Permanent" is an oxymoron. And the fact that the people who run this operation don't realize this means this initiative is doomed. These people use museum endowment as an analogy, but especially judging from that analogy I don't think they have any idea how this thing works. Storing someone else's data forever is completely different from how museum is run. The analogy is so ridiculous that it's not even funny. Where this analogy may apply is sites like Waybackmachine, because they're at least doing it for the greater good. But I'm pretty sure these guys will throw away some random guy's private file archive the moment they run out of money. Normally I'm all for silly experiments that come from ignorance, and I'm fine with various consumer startups that come and go along with their user data, because sometimes this ignorance leads to success. But in this case these people are playing with someone else's data AND asking for money, and claiming to store these forever in my view is no different from a scam artist. Intentional or not, this to me is no different from a scam. I would say the companies who are at least honest about exploiting our data such as Google and Facebook are more ethical.

cycomanic 6y ago
What has a profit motive to do with permanent? Why (provided it doesn't work) would it it work it if it was for profit, but not if it wasn't? It seems you have some political beef with this being a non-profit.
rsync 6y ago
"I would say the companies who are at least honest about exploiting our data such as Google and Facebook are more ethical." Luckily, those are not your only two choices - there are cloud storage providers that are simultaneously privacy minded[1], technically sophisticated[2], and honest about their business practices[3]. [1] https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt [2] https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html [3] https://www.rsync.net/resources/regulatory/pci.html https://www.rsync.net/resources/regulatory/pci.html
ValentineC 6y ago
> This combination of "Nonprofit" and "Permanent" is an oxymoron. Nonprofit mainly means that they're not a company beholden to shareholders, and that they can't be sold or acquired.
atleta 6y ago
Nope. Non profit doesn't mean they do it for free. It means that the goal of the organization is not making profit. They'll still pay their employees and they'll still charge for their service (even if they'll call it a tax-deductible donation). At least this is my understanding.
harikb 6y ago
In today’s world though Google or FB decommissioning that product segment is just as likely. Just because it is Google doesn’t mean they will spend every last penny to keep it running. Once it stop becoming profitable, you better figure out what to do with your data. Hopefully one still has the primary local copy and not wondering how to do bulk download Apart from that I agree this non-profit competition should only be used to kill industries that charge an exorbitant amount for there services. At least many of the popular cloud storage companies are as “non-outrageous-profit” as it gets. They make money from efficiency/dedup or other management efficiency
- cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
  Yes, i am just pointing out a simple thing here. At least Google is not lying. They don't claim they will "permanently" store private data forever for free. These guys are. And while doing so, using companies like Google as the devil in order to present themselves as the savior. It's almost like a conman claiming to have invented a perpetual motion machine and asking people for money, and furthermore, going around criticizing all the other people who build and sell normal machines are the bad guys for selling inferior products.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > They don't claim they will "permanently" store private data forever for free. These guys are. No, they're not. They're claiming they will permanently store private data for a one-time fee.
    - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
      Yes you're right. In fact the fact that they are asking for you money is what ticks me off the most. Let me put it this way instead. They are essentially saying they will pay for the hosting and data access usage and networking costs forever, and you can enjoy all these things for free forever, if you "only" pay an upfront cost. And that's a lie. There's no such thing as forever, especially if it's run by beings that won't be around forever. The scammy people behind this initiative will all die in hundred years. Without an economically viable model, it will all go. In my eyes, what they are doing is essentially trying to make it big with a one time splash, and don't care what happens next. No different from all the scammy blockchain ICOs that promise "forever immutable storage".
Fnoord 6y ago
The word permanent itself is very relative. It always is. Because in the end, nothing is permanent. It just depends on your requirement of permanence.
TheCraiggers 6y ago
> These people use museum endowment as an analogy, but especially judging from that analogy I don't think they have any idea how this thing works. Storing someone else's data forever is completely different from how museum is run. The analogy is so ridiculous that it's not even funny. OK, enlighten me. Because to me (an admittedly financial layperson) it makes sense. I give them a one-time payment, they put it in the bank with lots of others' payments and live off the interest. I don't see where the problem lies. And yeah, I'm sure they will close down the minute they run out of money. That's no different than a for-profit doing the same as soon as it stops being profitable. To me though, this is way easier to understand how it could be around forever unlike the for-profit boys which have a totally different goal.
- cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
  I give them one time payment, store a gigabyte of video, and share with millions of people. People keep watching and using up all the network costs and hosting costs. How are these guys going to keep going "permanently"?
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    Okay, your previous post was pretty unclear, but given this explanation, I'm giving you a rare (for me) downvote. You're speaking way too confidently about things that are definitely more ambiguous than you're letting on. It's important to be right, especially when you're crapping on other people's work. I've also posted some skepticism about what they're doing, but the difference is that I'm asking questions rather than making assumptions.
  - santoshalper 6y ago
    They don't mention anything about hosting or streaming your data - just storing it. I assume the backend will be something similar to glacier or just slow, cold storage. Why are you making things up at this point?
  - ebg13 6y ago
    It says storage, not streaming. I think you're making an unsupported assumption about the nature of the service being offered.
homarp 6y ago
in your opinion, is archive.org permanent? and less ethical than Google or Facebook?
- cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
  archive.org is a different beast because it deals with publicly available data. This is why the museum endowment analogy may make more sense with archive.org. There will always be people who want to help the "greater good". But when it comes to private data hosting, for each repository there is exactly one person who wants it to stay alive. Lastly, archive.org never started out asking people for money promising something the impossible. These guys will hide behind the word "promise" when they want to exit scam or just give up after a couple of months after taking people's money. "Hey we only gave you a promise, we never said we will guarantee and even pay back money if we can't keep the promise", this is what they will say.
  - hosh 6y ago
    You know that the founder of the Internet Archive is on the governing board for the Permanent.org foundation right?
    - santoshalper 6y ago
      Lol. Read his post history today - he certainly did not know that. He has been firing from the hip left and right making shit up to trash this organization.
      - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
        tell me, what does that have to do with my argument? nothing changes at all. and all you're doing is making a logical fallacy appealing to authority.
calcifer 6y ago
> Intentional or not, this to me is no different from a scam. You don't get to redefine a word and then claim it fits the definition. Scam is intentional deception, which is most certainly not what's happenning here.
choward 6y ago
> This combination of "Nonprofit" and "Permanent" is an oxymoron. "Non profit" has nothing to do with it. Thinking any service is permanent is pretty naive.
- MVorlm 6y ago
  Not the original commenter but I agree that no service is permanent. That's why any service marketing themselves as such raises an eyebrow from me.
xenocyon 6y ago
I understand permanence is hard to achieve, but why do you claim it correlates with for-profit as opposed to nonprofit motivations? A subjective look at the world suggests that institutions which have preserved artifacts (including digital artifacts) over a long time scale have been likelier to be non-profit than for-profit.

cycomanic 6y ago

What has a profit motive to do with permanent? Why (provided it doesn't work) would it it work it if it was for profit, but not if it wasn't? It seems you have some political beef with this being a non-profit.

rsync 6y ago

"I would say the companies who are at least honest about exploiting our data such as Google and Facebook are more ethical." Luckily, those are not your only two choices - there are cloud storage providers that are simultaneously privacy minded[1], technically sophisticated[2], and honest about their business practices[3]. [1] https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt [2] https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html [3] https://www.rsync.net/resources/regulatory/pci.html https://www.rsync.net/resources/regulatory/pci.html

ValentineC 6y ago

> This combination of "Nonprofit" and "Permanent" is an oxymoron. Nonprofit mainly means that they're not a company beholden to shareholders, and that they can't be sold or acquired.

atleta 6y ago

Nope. Non profit doesn't mean they do it for free. It means that the goal of the organization is not making profit. They'll still pay their employees and they'll still charge for their service (even if they'll call it a tax-deductible donation). At least this is my understanding.

harikb 6y ago

In today’s world though Google or FB decommissioning that product segment is just as likely. Just because it is Google doesn’t mean they will spend every last penny to keep it running. Once it stop becoming profitable, you better figure out what to do with your data. Hopefully one still has the primary local copy and not wondering how to do bulk download Apart from that I agree this non-profit competition should only be used to kill industries that charge an exorbitant amount for there services. At least many of the popular cloud storage companies are as “non-outrageous-profit” as it gets. They make money from efficiency/dedup or other management efficiency

cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
Yes, i am just pointing out a simple thing here. At least Google is not lying. They don't claim they will "permanently" store private data forever for free. These guys are. And while doing so, using companies like Google as the devil in order to present themselves as the savior. It's almost like a conman claiming to have invented a perpetual motion machine and asking people for money, and furthermore, going around criticizing all the other people who build and sell normal machines are the bad guys for selling inferior products.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > They don't claim they will "permanently" store private data forever for free. These guys are. No, they're not. They're claiming they will permanently store private data for a one-time fee.
  - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
    Yes you're right. In fact the fact that they are asking for you money is what ticks me off the most. Let me put it this way instead. They are essentially saying they will pay for the hosting and data access usage and networking costs forever, and you can enjoy all these things for free forever, if you "only" pay an upfront cost. And that's a lie. There's no such thing as forever, especially if it's run by beings that won't be around forever. The scammy people behind this initiative will all die in hundred years. Without an economically viable model, it will all go. In my eyes, what they are doing is essentially trying to make it big with a one time splash, and don't care what happens next. No different from all the scammy blockchain ICOs that promise "forever immutable storage".

Fnoord 6y ago

The word permanent itself is very relative. It always is. Because in the end, nothing is permanent. It just depends on your requirement of permanence.

TheCraiggers 6y ago

> These people use museum endowment as an analogy, but especially judging from that analogy I don't think they have any idea how this thing works. Storing someone else's data forever is completely different from how museum is run. The analogy is so ridiculous that it's not even funny. OK, enlighten me. Because to me (an admittedly financial layperson) it makes sense. I give them a one-time payment, they put it in the bank with lots of others' payments and live off the interest. I don't see where the problem lies. And yeah, I'm sure they will close down the minute they run out of money. That's no different than a for-profit doing the same as soon as it stops being profitable. To me though, this is way easier to understand how it could be around forever unlike the for-profit boys which have a totally different goal.

cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
I give them one time payment, store a gigabyte of video, and share with millions of people. People keep watching and using up all the network costs and hosting costs. How are these guys going to keep going "permanently"?
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  Okay, your previous post was pretty unclear, but given this explanation, I'm giving you a rare (for me) downvote. You're speaking way too confidently about things that are definitely more ambiguous than you're letting on. It's important to be right, especially when you're crapping on other people's work. I've also posted some skepticism about what they're doing, but the difference is that I'm asking questions rather than making assumptions.
- santoshalper 6y ago
  They don't mention anything about hosting or streaming your data - just storing it. I assume the backend will be something similar to glacier or just slow, cold storage. Why are you making things up at this point?
- ebg13 6y ago
  It says storage, not streaming. I think you're making an unsupported assumption about the nature of the service being offered.

homarp 6y ago

in your opinion, is archive.org permanent? and less ethical than Google or Facebook?

cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
archive.org is a different beast because it deals with publicly available data. This is why the museum endowment analogy may make more sense with archive.org. There will always be people who want to help the "greater good". But when it comes to private data hosting, for each repository there is exactly one person who wants it to stay alive. Lastly, archive.org never started out asking people for money promising something the impossible. These guys will hide behind the word "promise" when they want to exit scam or just give up after a couple of months after taking people's money. "Hey we only gave you a promise, we never said we will guarantee and even pay back money if we can't keep the promise", this is what they will say.
- hosh 6y ago
  You know that the founder of the Internet Archive is on the governing board for the Permanent.org foundation right?
  - santoshalper 6y ago
    Lol. Read his post history today - he certainly did not know that. He has been firing from the hip left and right making shit up to trash this organization.
    - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
      tell me, what does that have to do with my argument? nothing changes at all. and all you're doing is making a logical fallacy appealing to authority.

calcifer 6y ago

> Intentional or not, this to me is no different from a scam. You don't get to redefine a word and then claim it fits the definition. Scam is intentional deception, which is most certainly not what's happenning here.

choward 6y ago

> This combination of "Nonprofit" and "Permanent" is an oxymoron. "Non profit" has nothing to do with it. Thinking any service is permanent is pretty naive.

MVorlm 6y ago
Not the original commenter but I agree that no service is permanent. That's why any service marketing themselves as such raises an eyebrow from me.

xenocyon 6y ago

I understand permanence is hard to achieve, but why do you claim it correlates with for-profit as opposed to nonprofit motivations? A subjective look at the world suggests that institutions which have preserved artifacts (including digital artifacts) over a long time scale have been likelier to be non-profit than for-profit.