By Stewart Tongue

YNOT – The impending release of Microsoft’s Windows 8 may be both a blessing and curse for adult content viewers — and, in fact, almost everyone else. SkyDrive, the company’s cloud storage solution, will be tightly integrated with the new operating system, and recent changes to the product’s terms forbid the use of the cloud for storing materials that are even remotely titillating.

Microsoft recently showcased the new Windows 8 Release to Manufacturing build. As expected, a herd of tech journalists crawled under the hood. What they found concerned them. Among the types of user-uploaded content SkyDrive’s Code of Conduct forbids is anything depicting “full or partial human nudity” or “vulgarity.” The limitations are simultaneously vague and overreaching.

SkyDrive is connected to Windows’ users existing Windows Live accounts, making matters even worse. If Microsoft locks a user’s SkyDrive for violating the rules, other Windows Live services like email, XBOX Live, Office applications and even native Windows 8 applications could be blocked as well. Windows 8 is more platform than operating system, so the gray area in the Code of Conduct attached to even one of the ancillaries should have end-users approaching the update with caution.

SkyDrive already faces stiff competition from more permissive Dropbox, Google, Apple, Amazon and others, so Microsoft’s decision to install the most restrictive content terms of any service in its market segment is curious, at best. Though a number of journalists have contacted Microsoft seeking clarification on the record, so far each has been rebuffed with boiler-plate legalese that sheds little light on the nature of what is actually allowed or restricted and where the lines may be drawn.

The full Code of Conduct, which seems to restrict just about everything a user might want to upload, is here.