How about certified law-abiding ... and still not fine?

SkyDrive EULA: You will not upload, post, transmit, transfer, distribute or facilitate distribution of any content (including text, images, ...) or otherwise use the service in a way that: ... facilitates the purchase and sale of ... firearms.

Like many law-abiding Americans, I'm a federally licensed "cuiro and relic" firearms collector. I have a formal certificate stating my FFL number and other relevant information, acquired after undergoing a criminal background check (FBI records, fingerprints, citizenship docs, etc.); if anything amounts to a "certified law-abiding citizen" proof, this is it.

To make a purchase under this license, I must supply the seller with a copy of the license; this copy may be electronic, so it's natural I place a copy in my "cloud drive" for convenience. So I fire up SkyDrive to upload and...

...checking the EULA, realize that not only am I not allowed to upload this federally issued license in full compliance with national and state laws for the sole purpose of engaging in common lawful (even protected) activities, not only may Microsoft check my stored files for such a violation, upon discovery MS can, and I presume will in full accordance with further EULA wording, delete all my files, close the account, terminate all other MS licenses I use (my very desktop OS included), and refuse to deal with me at all ever again.

Wait, what? I'm as far from a "law breaking jagaloon" as can be right down to the 3-year-renewal background-checked license, yet it's not "fine".

Does anyone know of any stories of Google engaging in this kind of content inspection on Drive? I haven't heard any.

Pretty interesting that Microsofts competitive FUD is that Google is reading your email when it appears that they are doing similar here.

> Don't be a law breaking jagaloon and you should be fine.

Yeah. That makes it perfectly fine for them to peek into your files, watch your home movies...

So you want to use a free service where the facilitating corporation has an obligation to uphold to the standards outlined in their terms of service...without actually looking at it? Are they suppose to guess what's stored?

I mean, I get it, you don't want strangers at an evil corporation looking through your stuff...then don't store it there then complain about it when you get caught...or complain that they shouldn't be looking through your stuff.

The expectation of privacy on anything you put online is a false one.

It's also foolish to expect a crime free society, but that doesn't excuse the robber.

It does not indeed, but one is wise to not get pissed off when privacy is breached. It's fighting the current, and hopeless.

Much wiser is to not upload anything anywhere that you would not like to see posted publicly or read by someone; or at least strongly encrypt stuff and deal with the inconveniences that it brings.

My point is not that privacy breaches are excusable, rather that they will happen eventually, even if privacy was promised/assumed/implied.

Exactly. Like Google peeping into your inbox.

Hyperbole much? They seem to be using a automated scanning program to flag content. Didn't Google do something similar that became a big issue on HN?

Not hyperbole. There's a legal concept in the USA of "common carrier", holding an agent transferring information not accountable for the information transferred. As in: Verizon is not a culpable party if you use their cellular network to arrange a capital (or other) crime.

By stating content limitations in the EULA, and by actively searching for violations, MS is now legally culpable for content which is in criminal violation of the law.

Whether they are prosecuted may be a different story, but the legal culpability remains.

My mother taught me at a young age that "they did it too" is not a valid excuse.

> They seem to be using a automated scanning program to flag content.

And when the content gets flagged, what do you think happens next? Don't you think that, at some level, there will be a human involved?

Yes, it's not the flagging that bothers me. An inability to upload certain files the computer doesn't like is annoying at best. But the chance that they will go around humanly inspecting my files based on that? Dealbreaker.

Can you cite a source regarding the human involvement? I don't recall ever hearing about that. All the previous stories just indicated that the account shutdown was due to an automated scan.

Since when are nude photos stored on a personal storage service breaking the law?

Welcome to the cloud, where your personal data is no longer personal.

Microsoft may have made a mistake doing this, it may look like a relatively small issue but they have taken on the burden of being responsible for the data stored on their systems now.

Edited my original message.

Maybe MSFT should allow to flag your content as mature, but who knows what other jurisdictions they run under.

"Edit: My take: just because a folder is private doesn't mean you couldn't suddenly make it "public", making Microsoft the proud host of illicit pornography. I say illicit because I'm sure there are, depending on the state, laws to abide by which you must have a "18+" warning/prompt in order to access it."

Wouldn't the Safe Harbor provisions that cover online forums and the such negate the need for that worry?

(Sidenote: I want to down vote you since the "don't break the law and you don't have to worry" is such a flawed line of thinking but at the same time I want to up vote you for introducing me to the word "jagaloon".)

The problem with this is that I'd like to use the service at work, but if people are inspecting the content, we probably can't use it since the drive would contain proprietary information.

>making a private folder public

They have just as much opportunity to scan it when the folder is declared public as they would if you directly uploaded to the public folder. There is no reason to scan the private folder.

the "nothing to hide" argument: http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127...