The upcoming Emerging Law & Policy Issues in Cloud Computing conference, sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, provides an opportunity to explore the legal and policy questions that will have to be addressed as software services move more and more into the cloud.
Cloud computing – defined as computing delivered as a service over the Internet – has the potential to offer governments, enterprises and individuals significant efficiency gains, lower IT costs, as well as create incentives and online platforms for innovation. These web-based technologies move us further away from running software and storing information on our own PCs toward doing everything online –also referred to as in “the cloud” –using any device that has web-connection functionality.
TAP academics offer some insight into the many privacy, cybersecurity, and policy issues around cloud-based services. Jonathan Zittrain delivered an opinion piece to the “The New York Times,” Lost in the Cloud in July, 2009. In this piece, Professor Zittrain explores some of the real dangers inherent in cloud computing.
In Competition and Privacy in Web 2.0 and the Cloud, Randal Picker looks at how privacy affects competition with online services. John Palfrey examines privacy rights involving data collected by communications firms in his article, The Public and the Private at the United States Border with Cyberspace. And with Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Immunity: An Application to Cyberspace, Keith Hylton considers our duties and rights in cyberspace.
For a broad perspective, Jacques Cremer explores how the Internet affects businesses and consumers in Public Policy Towards the Internet and Development. And The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Software-as-a-Service: Historical Perspectives on the Computer Utility and Software, by Martin Campbell-Kelly and Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz, provides a business history of software and computing, including a review of computer power shifting from central computing to individual PCs and users, and now with the Internet moving back toward central computing.
