Steve Wozniak: Regulate The Cloud

In a column published today by Gizmodo, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak calls for federal regulation of internet data storage services.

"I've had too many personal experiences get messed up just because companies change things on the cloud. I've come to a depressed state of feeling that I own nothing on the cloud and have no ability to keep things working the way they do. Features change and get dropped, things you depend on disappear, etc. And no company will ever take responsibility. It's rare to ever get told what really happened. [snip] It does suggest a responsibility of service providers to recover from such events, whether caused maliciously or accidentally, or by bad software. Our 'freedoms' come from regulation. The Bill of Rights reads "[some party] shalt not [do bad things]". Regulation is the only way we'll own a bit of what we trust to the cloud. I believe that regulation applies to banks and that money lost due to no fault of your own is replaced, at least for large amounts. Why not for the cloud, as well? And it would be better for this regulation to begin now, not in 30 years, when it may be too late.

Have you ever lost personal data "safely stored" in a cloud service?