It seems like the ideal scenario is: 1) Your data is stored, encrypted by you, in the cloud 2) In a standards-based service which you pay for 3) And federate

It seems like the ideal scenario is: 1) Your data is stored, encrypted by you, in the cloud 2) In a standards-based service which you pay for 3) And federated to other services by you Mozilla Weave was an instance of a narrow application of this: http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2007/12/introducing-weave/ http://mozillalabs.com/blog/2007/12/introducing-weave/ There is still the issue that once you grant access to a third party you can't revoke it, but that's unsolvable through technical means in somewhat the same way DRM is unsolvable.