Will the action against Megaupload harm the cloud storage model?
When Megaupload was shut down, it not only affected potentially illegal data, but also the completely legal files of users who had nothing to do with copyrighted material which may have been lost forever. Is this event going to cause serious damage to the acceptance of cloud storage and cloud providers?
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I don't think it will. I do think, however, that people will be more discerning in which services they choose. Services that have an explicit anti-pirating policy and stringent enforcement of those policies will probably draw in serious users of cloud storage services.
Reputation in this sense is going to matter a lot more in the future than it has in the past. Services like "megaupload" might appeal to the lowest common denominator, but the corporate and higher level individual users will gravitate toward more reliable and law-abiding services that don't risk government prosecution.
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Probably not, although it may reinforce the idea that the only copy of data should not exist only with one cloud storage provider. A business who cannot afford to pay for a private cloud would be prudent to spend some money for multiple cloud providers, even if there is residence from the "bean counters" to spending twice for the same thing. Asking them to quantify the monetary cost if all of your data is lost usually helps move that conversation along, plus the cost isn't really all that much.
It would be helpful if there were uniform international regulations on data ownership, so that you could rest easy knowing that even in the event of a problem with the provider, you could retrieve your data. Larger companies are probably going to deal with this by going the Hadoop route and establishing private clouds.
Lastly, a point specifically about Megaupload; I can't imagine many (if any) business choosing to use a provider that is focused on file sharing for cloud storage. Much more likely is a choice of someone like Amazon, where you can feel pretty confident there isn't going to be a multi-national police action against your provider.
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I agree, that this will probably not affect the use of the Cloud, though it is every person's responsibility to do due diligence in understanding who the vendor is, the services offered, and security used.
In the short-term, cloud services should be used as backup, not main data, and unless you are not 100% comfortable with the vendor, do not use the cloud for sensitive data, whether encrypted or not.
-Gus
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