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From now on, geographic replication will have a new-found importance. I think a lot of businesses think "our customers will understand if the site is down for a

From now on, geographic replication will have a new-found importance. I think a lot of businesses think "our customers will understand if the site is down for a few days after a giant natural disaster or bombing or whatever." But, how many customers are going to be understanding of the indefinite downtime that was caused by some other completely unrelated company not paying its AT&T bill? Imagine if this company had been hosting its service on Amazon EC2 or at Rackspace or on Google AppEngine. Would the FBI seize every one on Amazon's/Rackspace's/Google's data centers? Could you imagine all of Google's services being down for weeks or months because one of its customers is being investigated for maybe violating some contract for a few thousand dollars?

stcredzero 18y ago
Unfortunately, most judges don't understand these issues. They apply the same sort of thinking to a "server" as they would to a box of weapons or bags of coke. Bags of coke and boxes of machined metal can't be virtual like servers can. This needs to be addressed, and soon! Another consequence: cloud computing providers will be loath to host anything that vaguely resembles something that might be subject to seizure.
w1ntermute 18y ago
"Imagine if this company had been hosting its service on Amazon EC2 or at Rackspace or on Google AppEngine. Would the FBI seize every one on Amazon's/Rackspace's/Google's data centers? Could you imagine all of Google's services being down for weeks or months because one of its customers is being investigated for maybe violating some contract for a few thousand dollars?" Wouldn't happen. Google has the corporate muscle to make the government do what they want.
jerf 18y ago
"In a coordinated raid today, the FBI seized machines from the three data centers that Suspicious Enterprises, LTD. was using." Extends with little difficulty to the international case, too. I'm not sure geographic dispersion helps much with this.

stcredzero 18y ago

Unfortunately, most judges don't understand these issues. They apply the same sort of thinking to a "server" as they would to a box of weapons or bags of coke. Bags of coke and boxes of machined metal can't be virtual like servers can. This needs to be addressed, and soon! Another consequence: cloud computing providers will be loath to host anything that vaguely resembles something that might be subject to seizure.

w1ntermute 18y ago

"Imagine if this company had been hosting its service on Amazon EC2 or at Rackspace or on Google AppEngine. Would the FBI seize every one on Amazon's/Rackspace's/Google's data centers? Could you imagine all of Google's services being down for weeks or months because one of its customers is being investigated for maybe violating some contract for a few thousand dollars?" Wouldn't happen. Google has the corporate muscle to make the government do what they want.

jerf 18y ago

"In a coordinated raid today, the FBI seized machines from the three data centers that Suspicious Enterprises, LTD. was using." Extends with little difficulty to the international case, too. I'm not sure geographic dispersion helps much with this.