On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 1:37 PM, aki <aki275@gmail.com> wrote:
In the meantime, 10 years from now and possibly when the US markets have gone to the lowest points and Google thinks of selling out, what happens to the Kenyan online data on Google servers? Does the buyer in say China inherit it and charge Kenyans a small amount to access it?! What are the legal obligations and consequences on such matters?
I think this is quite a pertinent point -- but reflects not so much on the vendor providing a service (i.e. google providing a platform to host such things .. ) but more on what seems like a shorter term vision for public data on the part of the government instead of having a longer term one. it would be fine if google (or any such provider) was a hosting point for government data *in addition* to an alternative owned by the government. the problem here is -- there appears to be no fallback. If you look at the google EULA (end user license agreement) -- much it is dependent on US law/regulations/sanctions. For example -- until recently (as recently as Jan 2011 ) people in Iran could not access many google services because of US export restrictions to Iran. Even now i believe specific iranian government IPs are blocked by google because of prevailing laws and sanctions on that country. You might say this kind of restriction may never apply to Kenya -- but you dont know what will happen 10 years down the line or 15 years down the line .. governments change everywhere and so goes foreign policy. Essentially, If you only provide access to your government's data to your citizens via a service whose availability is dependent on another government's foreign policy ... clearly there is a fundamental problem there ?