6 ms·

What if they had thousands of logical copies, but implemented a de-duplicated storage back-end.

peeters 14y ago
Good point. Even adding a caching layer would turn the storage into largely write-only devices. Would adding that caching make it illegal?
- jrockway 14y ago
  IMHO, no. Once this ruling is through all the appeals, it's likely that they'll be able to do whatever they want. It's not like NBC can come in to your house to inspect your antenna. Similarly, it's unlikely that they'll be allowed to inspect this company's filesystem's algorithms. (Remember, disks do not write 1:1 what you tell them to write. If the disk's abstraction over the spinning magnetic platters is acceptable, I doubt the law could find a distinction when using hard links instead of identical files.)
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    Didn't courts already find a distinction between deduplication and storing identical copies of files in the semi-recent remote DVR case?
MBCook 14y ago
That came up in one of the court cases, I think the 'in the cloud DVR' service a small cable company made. I think it was ruled to be fair to keep it de-duplicated, but I'm not sure.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
Given that the ruling talks about each user having their own storage space that isn't accessed by others, I doubt they could do this. Further, the plaintiffs would be looking for any technicality to get them with, so I'm sure Aero wouldn't have risked it. Otherwise, it's as simple as using hard links to the files.
- wmf 14y ago
  Maybe there's a market for storage that is deduped but plausibly claims to not be.
  - trotsky 14y ago
    Deduplication is just an extremely efficient form of dictionary compression. Surely they're not storing raw ATSC.
  - rsync 14y ago
    I speak for all of us at rsync.net when I say that we will be happy to provide you with this. Operators are standing by!
thatthatis 14y ago
You'd first have to offer this as a cloud service to consumers. Once de-duplicating storage is something that is legitimately used by arms-length parties, then you can credibly make the argument that you're using "widely available technologies for data storage minimization" and have a prayer that it would get upheld.
bashinator 14y ago
Or better, leased the space from a third-party storage provider who may or may not be doing their own de-duplication.
ynniv 14y ago
That seems to be okay in light of Mp3Tunes. [http://www.grammy.com/news/artswatch-music-locker-service-wins-one-loses-one http://www.grammy.com/news/artswatch-music-locker-service-wi...] [http://www.wired.com/business/2011/08/cloudmusic-is-not-a-crime/ http://www.wired.com/business/2011/08/cloudmusic-is-not-a-cr...]

Good point. Even adding a caching layer would turn the storage into largely write-only devices. Would adding that caching make it illegal?

jrockway 14y ago
IMHO, no. Once this ruling is through all the appeals, it's likely that they'll be able to do whatever they want. It's not like NBC can come in to your house to inspect your antenna. Similarly, it's unlikely that they'll be allowed to inspect this company's filesystem's algorithms. (Remember, disks do not write 1:1 what you tell them to write. If the disk's abstraction over the spinning magnetic platters is acceptable, I doubt the law could find a distinction when using hard links instead of identical files.)
- nitrogen 14y ago
  Didn't courts already find a distinction between deduplication and storing identical copies of files in the semi-recent remote DVR case?

MBCook 14y ago

That came up in one of the court cases, I think the 'in the cloud DVR' service a small cable company made. I think it was ruled to be fair to keep it de-duplicated, but I'm not sure.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

Given that the ruling talks about each user having their own storage space that isn't accessed by others, I doubt they could do this. Further, the plaintiffs would be looking for any technicality to get them with, so I'm sure Aero wouldn't have risked it. Otherwise, it's as simple as using hard links to the files.

wmf 14y ago
Maybe there's a market for storage that is deduped but plausibly claims to not be.
- trotsky 14y ago
  Deduplication is just an extremely efficient form of dictionary compression. Surely they're not storing raw ATSC.
- rsync 14y ago
  I speak for all of us at rsync.net when I say that we will be happy to provide you with this. Operators are standing by!

thatthatis 14y ago

You'd first have to offer this as a cloud service to consumers. Once de-duplicating storage is something that is legitimately used by arms-length parties, then you can credibly make the argument that you're using "widely available technologies for data storage minimization" and have a prayer that it would get upheld.

bashinator 14y ago

Or better, leased the space from a third-party storage provider who may or may not be doing their own de-duplication.

ynniv 14y ago

That seems to be okay in light of Mp3Tunes. [http://www.grammy.com/news/artswatch-music-locker-service-wins-one-loses-one http://www.grammy.com/news/artswatch-music-locker-service-wi...] [http://www.wired.com/business/2011/08/cloudmusic-is-not-a-crime/ http://www.wired.com/business/2011/08/cloudmusic-is-not-a-cr...]