killmicrosoft
22-05-2009, 09:09 AM
The Fog over the Grimpen Mire: Cloud Computing and the Law
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol6-1/mowbray.asp
1. Introduction
This paper seeks to raise areas of potential legal disputes in cloud computing. Some of these will be resolved by technological means, standard agreements between buyers, venders and subcontractors or by standard industry practices. Others will end up in court. It therefore makes sense to think about the potential legal issues now.
In a 2008 article the journalist Bill Thompson, writing about the fact that cloud computing takes place not in an immaterial cyberspace but in physical computers in the real world, said:
In the real world national borders, commercial rivalries and political imperatives all come into play, turning the cloud into a miasma as heavy with menace as the fog over the Grimpen Mire that concealed the Hound of the Baskervilles in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story.1
The menace described in Bill Thompson’s article was the unreliability of cloud services, including possible inaccessiblity of data and access to data by foreign governments. In the rest of this article I will discuss these and other cloud computing topics for which there are foggy legal issues including subcontracting, rights to data use, lock-in to a service provider, and security loopholes.
more at link above
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol6-1/mowbray.asp
1. Introduction
This paper seeks to raise areas of potential legal disputes in cloud computing. Some of these will be resolved by technological means, standard agreements between buyers, venders and subcontractors or by standard industry practices. Others will end up in court. It therefore makes sense to think about the potential legal issues now.
In a 2008 article the journalist Bill Thompson, writing about the fact that cloud computing takes place not in an immaterial cyberspace but in physical computers in the real world, said:
In the real world national borders, commercial rivalries and political imperatives all come into play, turning the cloud into a miasma as heavy with menace as the fog over the Grimpen Mire that concealed the Hound of the Baskervilles in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story.1
The menace described in Bill Thompson’s article was the unreliability of cloud services, including possible inaccessiblity of data and access to data by foreign governments. In the rest of this article I will discuss these and other cloud computing topics for which there are foggy legal issues including subcontracting, rights to data use, lock-in to a service provider, and security loopholes.
more at link above