BTW, the subject that’s being addressed is might be more broadly called “the ethics of ubiquitous computing.”

Does Google’s Chrome really meet the criteria to be called cloud computing, given the hairsplitting of IBM’s marketers? I kind of doubt it, but as it happens I’m temperamentally unsuited for understanding marketeers’ particular version of hairsplitting. So, as you say, why fasten on cloud computing itself?

Call me naive, but I assumed Zittrain’s argument here had something to do with the argument in the book he just published, where he links any schmoe’s being able to hack up some program and have the computer run it, with freedom per se and all the liberating things technology provides us. Which has nothing to do with when you could get a Java IDE for the Macintosh.

Well, look at the case recently of Amazon deleting copies of books (ironically enough, including 1984) that were stored on people’s Kindles. I don’t have one, so I don’t know if online access is necessary (presumably not, or it would render them useless underground or abroad) , but clearly if you do go online with one, your personal control over your stored data is not complete.

http://www.slate.com/id/2223214/

This doesn’t seem to take account of the way the cloud crosses jurisdictional boundaries. A lot of my data is now in the hands of US-based companies, and yet I’m in the UK. Of course there’s no reason why providers of internet services shouldn’t locate themselves in Liberia or Panama in order to avoid regulation, if they want to.

If instead they rely on some kind of permanent access to whichever book/app – hosted elsewhere – then I can’t see a problem, conceptually, with lumping those services into the ‘cloud’.

At the very least this would seem to accord with a general fear regarding the huge volumes of personal information and assets now held in digital form – especially those that are directly in the ‘cloud’, or at least intimately connected with some cloud-like service provider (Apple’s iStore or whatever, Amazon and it’s e-books).

I mean, I keep a lot of stuff on gmail, for example, and the only thing that keeps me at ease is my trust in google (there’s a dollar bill slogan) and my blind assumption that the safeguards necessary to protect my stuff exist, and are exercised.

re: the inappropriateness of the ‘cloud’ metaphor applied to Apple/Amazon, the distinction Zittrain makes is this:

…if your favorite music is rented or authorized from an online subscription service rather than freely in your custody

Where ‘favourite music’ might be replaced with ‘e-book’, ‘iPhone app’, etc. My emphasis on ‘or authorized’. There is a leap here, sure, but not an unreasonable one.

The issue I suppose is whether the Kindle/iStore services count as ‘online subscription services’ – my knowledge regarding these things is negligible. When you purchase an e-book/iPhone app, are they downloaded directly onto the Kindle/iPhone hard-drive/memory? If so, then perhaps the ‘cloud’ metaphor is inappropriate, since those goods would be ‘freely in [one’s] custody’. If instead they rely on some kind of permanent access to whichever book/app – hosted elsewhere – then I can’t see a problem, conceptually, with lumping those services into the ‘cloud’.