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Technology @lemmy.ml
Frank [he/him, he/him] @hexbear.net

Will Corpos try to force all computing on the to cloud and make privately owned local storage illegal?

Seems like the next logical step. Most big games are always-online Games as a Service where your local storage is useless if the company server doesn't handshake. A lot of business and productivity software already requires subscriptions and is partially online. Every single fucking company wants to have an app on your phone so they can watch you in the bathroom. And there's talk that MSFT might start moving Windows off the PC entirely and in to the cloud.

I figure at some point it's in the shareholder's best interests to prohibit users from actually storing anything locally. Storage is really just stolen subscription revenue, when you think about it. Every time a user accesses something on a local drive they're stealing the chance for you to extort them in to paying a subscription fee.

What do think, too distopian? Back when tapes, CDs, MiniDiscs, all the old generations of data storage that you could write to at home were first circulating the media industries tried real, real hard to make them illegal to privately own. We've been fighting an escalating battle against digital (and analog I guess) IP regimes ever since then. Streaming has pretty much killed physical media afaik. I have no idea if blu-rays or DVDs are still printed for sale.

Idk, just a thought. Let me know what you think.

32 comments

  • Maybe at some point. More practically from their perspective they will try to make hosting one's own data increasingly inaccessible and unaffordable. The Internet is the landlord's final frontier as there is no more physical space left to enclose on Earth.

  • They won't have to make it illegal.

    Data storage is going to become a niche. Apple and Microsoft will stop supporting data storage in their software, and once every business and the average person stop buying data storage mediums then the commercial availability will drop off a cliff.

    The only people who will store data will be Linux nerds that build custom machines from parts imported from other countries. For 99% of people data storage won't exist, no laws required.

    • Yeah, that's a good analysis. I've gotten in to it with friends over "consumer choice", where they tell me "Oh, the customers didn't want x thing that's why you can't get x thing" and I'll hit back with "The manufacturers decided they didn't want to support x thing for whatever reason, or that they could squeeze people for more money without x thing, and they have hegemonic control over the market share for that kind of product, so they can force the consumers to do what they tell the consumers to do" and they look at me like I have three heads. : p

      Makes me think of the guy who, afaik, is the only guy in the world who is a reliable source for working floppy disks. The little ones, the big ones, the really big ones that are from before even my time. He works really hard to track down any intact ones he can get, then re-sell them to people who have ancient, ancient systems running key infrastructure.

      Dammit someone turned on accessibility features and now there's confetti on my screen whenever I click.

      Ted stop messing with my machine!

    • You just gave me horror shivers, what a dystopian idea. But I can totally see devices coming with just 64-128GB of built in flash for the OS and system files and all storage for anything else just defaults to their own cloud services.

  • i dont think itll be possible to enforce esp in the globalised world.

    like piracy is supposed to be illegal but even in the west you can do it perfectly fine with a VPN/Seedbox. Outside west, you can do it without any protection.

    • FWIW the Canadian supreme court made piracy laws unenforceable on purpose, so you also don't need a VPN in Canada.

    • I've never used vpn even in the US. Private trackers and encryption have been enough for me. Also, it seems like my ISP doesn't care. Some basic caution is sufficient to avoid consequences.

  • They won't make it illegal, there's no point. But, it might become impractical.

    Imagine this, you have your whole desktop online, you pay for space as you use it, you don't need to buy drives, your space just expands for your needs. Do you want to play games just for a short time? Well, you can just pay for the time when using a vGPU. In fact, a game could even make requests for a certain amount of GPU power, and you get billed accordingly.

    Everything is on the cloud. So, what happens then?

    Well, people would instead of buying a PC just buy some low power ARM based terminal. In fact, it's likely many cloud services would include one at no extra price in the contract.

    When the majority of people are using this system. What happens to the now "niche" home computer builders? Well, first parts will become expensive. Making less of the home based stuff will make it more pricey. Choice will become limited. It will be prohibitive to build your own. But also consider that online games might well also prevent you playing on your own hardware. It's far easier to cheat on your own hardware than it is on strictly controlled cloud hardware.

    I don't think it'll come to this, or if it does, it won't be for quite a time even though this is entirely possible now (look at shadow PC for example). But if cloud computing in this form did take off in a big way, this is how it'd likely be and there'd be no reason at all to prohibit home setups. They would just become less practical and affordable all the time.

    • Sounds like a Chromebook with extra steps. Today you can install "Cloudready" to turn your desktop/laptop into something very much like a Chromebook.

      https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=cloudready

      News to me update: Looks like their next version is ChromeOS Flex and it is available at:

      https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/ Yay- Googleify me!

      • It would be similar. But would actually potentially need even less power. Since it wouldn't even need the web browser. Just enough to decode the live stream and encode hardware back. Which is generally included in a lot of SoCs and if not already, they would be.

        The main difference is going to be that the entire desktop of everything will be hosted remotely.

  • I'm no Nostradamus but I don't see this happening because the companies that make their revenue on storage would be crying foul. I don't see any successful pushes to make local storage illegal. Put it this way: I hope I'm right.

32 comments