| Megaupload did not hold itself out as a repository for original work. Megaupload is not run by Google, with the stated mission of organizing the world's information. Megaupload is bankrupt. Google is one of the richest technology companies in history. This is not Megaupload throwing away its hoard of 90's B movies. This is Google, knowingly and literally throwing away coding history. We don't even know what might be thrown away. What if some currently unknown researcher wrote his first code and uploaded it to Google code and forgot about it, and turned out to be the next Zuckerberg or even Turing? What if some valuable research that was entrusted to Google from a deceased researcher suddenly disappears? There are likely many more unintended consequences stemming from such an act, and I don't think we should give Google a pass, especially since Google controls possibly the largest collection of computers on the planet. (besides, source code tends to compress pretty well!) Seems like the least they could do is stick it in an 'unlimited' Google Drive and lock it as read only. |