I'm very much in the camp of not wanting my data in the cloud. I don't autoupload photos, for example, because I want control over them.
What I would like is a home cloud server which would handle all the services I could get from the cloud with explicit sharing with chosen people (e.g. my family).
I think (hope) that there is a distinction that can arise between "cloud" applications and services and "offsite" or "online" applications.
If you plug together a handful of off the shelf Amazon components, slap a label on it, and open the doors, perhaps that is rightly called a "cloud" service ... the end provider has no accountability to you (or your users) and you have no idea what's going on behind the curtain. It's all just magic happening many layers of abstraction away.
But if you build systems, own the platform, write the architecture and provide something that you understand and have accountability for, end to end, I think it can satisfy the skeptics (of which I am one).
So in this case, the researcher that can't store the documents on dropbox ... hopefully he could upload them with duplicity to an online storage platform that was built and run like this[1].
And I hope that this would be possible because such a distinction could be made ...
SpaceMonkey stores your data on your home device, and then replicated across other users' devices for redundancy. If you have liability problems using something like Dropbox, SpaceMonkey may not solve them.
It's not only about protection from hacking, it's often also about protection from access by authorities – in particular American authorities. Non-disclosure agreements, data privacy laws and attorney-client privileges are not compatible are simply not compatible with most hosted services, especially not abroad where your local law cannot protect your local legal obligations.
I think the people here suggesting things like bittorent sync and owncliud missed the commenters request, i. e. a personal cloud that works with all these other services. Owncloud etc are just clunky implementations of drop box that offer less uptime and features. They don't offer slick, out of the box integration with other apps/services
Synology is doing good things in this area. They offer a "private cloud" backup and file-sharing solution, served from a (linux based) NAS, with client programs for Mac, Windows, Android and iOS. I have a home/small office model and I love it.
What I would like is a home cloud server which would handle all the services I could get from the cloud with explicit sharing with chosen people (e.g. my family).