I have to admit it: I’m not a huge fan of the cloud computing concept. I do understand its utility, and I can certainly see why some companies, such as Google and Sun/Oracle, might be excited by it. But the cloud model strikes me as terribly non-resilient: Wonderful when it works but disastrous when it fails–and recent headlines demonstrate quite clearly just how brittle cloud computing may be.
(If you’re still not quite sure what “cloud computing” is, Wikipedia has a rather detailed discussion of its particulars, but in short: cloud computing is a system in which computing resources are provided “as a service” over the Internet to users who do not need to have control over the technology infrastructure, or even a firm grasp of how it works. The most commonly-used example of cloud computing is probably Google Docs, offering a relatively full-fledged office suite via a Web browser.)
Cloud computing offers individuals access to data and applications from nearly any point of access to the Internet, offers businesses a whole new way to cut costs for technical infrastructure, and offers big computer companies a potentially giant market for hardware and services. All well and good, but it requires a great deal of centralization to function properly–and here’s where trouble sets in.
You couldn’t have spent more than a few seconds online over the past few days and not have heard about Amazon remotely deleting copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from the Kindles of people who had purchased them. It turned out that the publisher selling this Kindle version didn’t have US rights (the copyright on the books has expired in most countries, but not in the US), and the current rights holder demanded that Amazon do something about it. Since Amazon is in constant communication with the millions of Kindles out there, they did what any centralized provider of a service could do–they zapped the infringing copies not just from the storefront, but from any Kindle on which they could be found.
Now, the Kindle is not a cloud computing system, but the Amazon-Whispernet-Kindle infrastructure mirrors many cloud features. More importantly, this incident is indicative of what kinds of trouble can emerge when we reframe “content” as “service.” As numerous pundits have noted, the physical book analogy would be Amazon breaking into your home and taking away a book you’d purchased (leaving you a refund on your desk, of course). But a Kindle book isn’t a physical book–it’s a service, one that (as the Kindle license makes clear) you don’t really own.
