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I like the idea of legally imposing some responsibility on data storage/hosting services. Not just minimum eviction notice but mandatory export functionality wo
by extension 18y ago
I like the idea of legally imposing some responsibility on data storage/hosting services. Not just minimum eviction notice but mandatory export functionality would not be unreasonable.
A site like Facebook should allow me to retrieve all of my data in a single action, in some reasonably convenient format, and should be required to give me notice if my data will become inaccessible to me.
The details of this legislation would need to be carefully thought out to avoid imposing absurd requirements on well intentioned sites.
- modoc 18y agoWhile I agree those features would be nice, I strongly disagree that the federal government should write laws requiring it. If you're putting your data on someone else's servers, it's up to you to have a backup, and to understand what export ability, if any, is offered.
- noonespecial 18y agoThat's what has worried me most about google docs. There's no easy way to just "do a backup". Wish they'd get around to that.
- DenisM 18y agohttp://code.google.com/p/gdatacopier/ http://code.google.com/p/gdatacopier/
- erik 18y agoI don't think that a new law is the correct way to address the problem. I think that such regulations would decrease progress and productivity by raising the bar to entry. Perhaps in the future web services will start to make user contributed content easily backupable and transferable as a form competitive advantage. This wouldn't protect users from the situation where the company unexpectedly pulls the plug though. Should blogger make users save a full backup of their blog to their local disk every time they write a post? Would users see this as a reason to use blogger vs some other service?