Word came out this week that U.S. prosecutors in the MegaUpload case plan to destroy all of the data stored on the company's servers by the end of this week--in spite of the fact that there is plenty of legitimate content mixed in with some of the allegedly stolen stuff. If my data were on there I would be mad as hell.

Last week, we ran a story about the MegaUpload case and suggested that it wouldn't have an impact on enterprise cloud services that store data. As CEO of Box Aaron Levie pointed out, while they occasionally get a DCMA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, take-down notice, enterprise services are very different from consumer ones like MegaUpload.

That's true, but the problem as I see it involves public perception. If the federal government follows through on its threat to destroy all the data, the only thing that most people will understand is that the government shut down an online storage service and destroyed the data. Many folks won't have the sophistication to understand the difference between enterprise and consumer services.

That's bad for cloud computing in general on a couple of levels. First of all, it promotes the perception that all online storage is in danger of the same fate. Secondly it puts forth the idea in the minds of less sophisticated users that all file sharing services are havens for copyrighted content.

It's worth noting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is working to help users retrieve their content.

While this case shouldn't have any bearing on cloud computing in the long run, it could tarnish its reputation, at least in the eyes of some users in the short term and that would be unfortunate if that were the result.

For more information:
- see the Mashable story on the government's plan to destroy MegaUpload data

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