What Happens in the Cloud Stays in the Cloud, or Why the Cloud's Architecture Should Be Transformed in 'Virtual Territorial Scope'

Abstract

The most common used adjective for cloud computing is “ubiquitous”. This characteristic poses great challenges for law, which might find itself in the need to revise its fundamentals. Regulating a “model” of “ubiquitous network access” which relates to “a shared pool of computing resources” (the NIST definition of cloud computing) is perhaps the most challenging task for regulators worldwide since the appearance of the computer, both procedurally and substantially. Procedurally, because it significantly challenges concepts such as “territorial scope of the law” - what need is there for a territorial scope of a law when regulating a structure which is designed to be “abstracted”, in the sense that nobody knows “where things physically reside” ? Substantially, because the legal implications in connection with cloud computing services are complex and cannot be encompassed by one single branch of law, such as data protection law or competition law. This paper contextualizes the idea of a global legal regime for providing cloud computing services, on one hand by referring to the wider context of global governance and, on the other hand, by pointing out several solutions for such a regime to emerge.