Technology

I think you succinctly described the problem the internet is facing. I am not even sure making it illegal to have information is really necessary anyway. Consider Googles Web Environment Integrity, DRM that can effectively control access to websites, a single company controlling the information we are allowed to consume. An economic system based on capital will always work against our interests.

This is why piracy is not only ethical, it is good for humanity to share information as widely as possible.

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.

They don't make things illegal. They just make them the default option and most people don't have enough knowledge to change it.

Stop giving them ideas!

Nah just kidding, I think they have been working on this idea for a long time already. It just isn't feasible yet. When it becomes possible to stream a screen in high quality, high resolution, relatively low bandwidth, to most of their customers, all big cloud providers will jump right on it. And I think it can be possible soon, if someone figures out how to make an AI-based streaming compression method that works better than streaming compressions we have today.

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.

I’ve come to terms with the reality that if you can think up something shitty that fucks end users and consumers, it will happen.

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.

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.

Source?

I have no idea if blu-rays or DVDs are still printed for sale.

Is this a serious take? It's a 5-second search on Google or any large store.

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.

Taking the logic too far, I think. There is also a business interest in selling you storage and storage devices, it's not just Hollywood calling the shots.

Of course, in a totalitarian system (North Korea style) the ownership of storage media will probably be tightly regulated and controlled, but that's a wholly different scenario.

Just one highlight of how this is ridiculous and an obvious slippery slope fallacy.

How can you even legally enforce this? In the US you can’t just walk into someone’s house and start searching for hard drives. You need a warrant and probable cause. Since it’s likely going to be a misdemeanor this is highly unenforceable. Nobody is willingly going to let their home be searched by the police for the gain of some corporate shithead.

Also you can’t retroactively make all drives illegal, so older devices like floppy’s, tapes, CDs and other storage media. Where do they fall into this spectrum? You would have to specify a lot of what is considered legal local storage and what isn’t. It would be a litigious nightmare.

I think bandwidth and data caps are a hindrance to this. Looking on the bright side, at least something would have to be better in this dystopian future.