Will on-line backup be evil, too?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "David Lesher" <wb8foz () panix com>
Date: March 26, 2009 1:59:24 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net (David Farber)
Subject: Will on-line backup be evil, too?

Prof. F:

I'm looking at a program called CrashPlan; it allows you to make
Blowfish-encrypted backups to a variety of locations: a second local
drive, another machine on your LAN, a machine elsewhere in the world, or
storage rented from them.

It's interesting in that it looks to be well thought out, has M$, Mac,
Linux, and OpenSolaris versions, and flexible. (And free, in home
versions...)

Besides all the core issues of on-line backup storage, [Is their
encryption & key management solid, what happens if they fail either
technically or fiscally, will you even know if the Feebees/MPAA hit them
with a NSL, etc..], another came to mind.

It hammers on your upstream connection, at least during the initial
seeding stage. That got me wondering. Will Comcast and friends label
such as dangerous; and start deploying measures to sabotage it and its
competitors as they did with Peer-to-Peer?

I can hear the arguments now. "We never designed our system for this  
kind
of abuse." [Read "Someone else is making money we want."]. And maybe
"It's enabling terrorists.." etc. etc. But what it really amounts to is:
may we use our upstream bandwidth or not?







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