Mike Shatzkin is the Founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Company, Inc.
Cloud computing is the term for using computing resources that don’t sit on your desktop, but reside somewhere out on the Internet. The computer resources in “the cloud” could be storage capacity—hard drive space where you are storing data bits that you “own”—or they could be programs or content which you access through the net rather than having it reside in a hard drive or DVD or CD that you physically possess.
Companies that own a huge amount of computing capacity—like Amazon.com and Google—offer cloud computing services. Gmail is a cloud application, for example, as are the word processing and spreadsheet capabilities Google offers in competition to Microsoft Office. But the cloud concept is executed on far more sophisticated levels by enterprises that are using it to add scale: the ability to add computer resources to handle peak demands. The marginal cost of storage capacity to Amazon or Google is a fraction of what it is to you or me or even many companies of great size, but less size than Amazon or Google.
So, many believe—and I am among them—that we are living in what will be viewed as a transitional period in computing history where large amounts of decentralized storage capacity exist in the hardware of every computer owner and user. This was a necessary path to development when computer capabilities grew faster than connectivity and bandwidth. But for anybody who is persistently connected in broadband, there is little, if any, incremental value to actually “possessing” the bytes that drive your content and applications. And as we work with more and more different devices, there is actually greater value in not having this data resident on any particular machine. Any e-mail user who has logged into the server to get their mail from somebody else’s computer has benefited from “the cloud.”
When it “all” goes to the cloud and nothing, or at least very little, is “held” on individually distributed hard drives, it will definitely change content delivery models. DRM will likely become unnecessary (although thieves are imaginative and may yet prove me wrong here). If you don’t actually “possess” the eBook, but only gain access to it from whatever machine you like through your personal ID, then there’s a much reduced threat that you will pass it along to somebody else who isn’t authorized. It is actually irrelevant to the end user that some material you use in the cloud is “yours” and kept in your “virtual locker” and other material is being served to you by the owner or lessor of the program or content. It all looks and works the same on your PC or device. So the music or books you’ve “bought” and own, perhaps even with the right to allow others to use or look at them, are indistinguishable from other programs or content that you may have purchased more limited access to or rented. The purchase or rental rules become easily enforceable in ways they are not now.
One would also assume that a reduction in concern about piracy will make it easier for publishers to post more content on the Net for marketing purposes.
Obviously, the cloud raises new issues. The possibility of a locally based catastrophe, like a hard drive that fails, is replaced by what could be even more frustrating, a system failure in the cloud. It has happened with Gmail and AOL. It happens all the time with Twitter. It will always happen.
And the questions of privacy become even more complicated although the “security” of content on any hard drive exposed to the Internet is already open to question.
We’re all moving to the cloud. And when we’re all there, the conversations about DRM and the threats from piracy will have to be replaced. They will no longer be relevant. When? Depends mostly on the ubiquity of reliable broadband. Maybe a decade, but very likely somewhat less.
