Syndication
A good example of a business running on
dedicated servers is MegaUpload, the recently shut down online
storage service. MegaUpload is essentially a file sharing business,
with dedicated hosting to speed up everything, from bandwidth
to CPU usage, although for downloading and uploading even large
files, large CPU resources are not really required. MegaUpload
essentially had a simple business model – online storage, and it
was unfortunate that the US government decided to sut down its
operations on charges of violations of intellectual property.
And that is the biggest drawback of
dedicated servers – the location of your servers is static, unlike
working with cloud servers. If your servers are based in UK, then
your UK dedicated server should follow the laws of your host
country – a pretty simple thing, really, but not when the laws on
the Internet are always changing, reorganizing and rearranging its
priorities.
Internet Laws
There is the SOPA that recently was
silenced by the Internet community, and the ACTA, which is slowly
gaining ground in the European Community. Internet laws are beginning
to crack down on issues of online piracy, and if your business is
using dedicated servers, you might want to move your servers to a
friendlier host country if your business activities are on the line
with regards to intellectual property rights.
You could also choose cloud servers,
the way PirateBay operates. Using cloud servers cuts the strings that
hold your business down – you are no longer limited to a single
location, but anywhere the cloud server thinks it can function best.
There are issues of security when using the cloud server though, even
if you have virtually unlimited resources in CPU power, memory and
bandwidth.
The Anonymous Response
What is really striking about the
shutdown of MegaUpload facilities is the Anonymous response to the
situation. More than ten US government websites were subjected to
dDOS attacks from the Anonymous group. In so many words, while the US
government took advantage of the fact that MegaUpload used physical
servers for their business, the dDOS attack by Anonymous exploited
the very same weakness of the dedicated servers of several offices of
the US government.
Any website that needs to take user
input can be subjected to dDOS attacks, even if the website is
running on dedicated servers, as the Anonymous attack showed. What
should be common knowledge by now is that the Internet is, after all
is said and done, just a playground, and everybody needs to play nice
so everyone can have fun.
Playing Nice
If MegaUpload had kept at least a
semblance of obeying intellectual property rights, the US government
would probably never had bothered. On the other hand, if the US
government wasn't so blindly following the excuse of intellectual
property rights for the loss of income of large multinationals due to
piracy, the Anonymous attack would never had happened. It is
fortunate that Anonymous plays nice, because otherwise, no one wins –
and the price and prize is the Internet, after all.