The Fog over the Grimpen Mire: Cloud Computing and the Law

Abstract

This paper is about legal questions connected with cloud computing, the business trend in which computation is carried out on behalf of a user on remote machines, using software accessed through the Internet. The user may not know where these machines are; they are “somewhere in the cloud”. Some of these legal issues will be resolved by standard agreements between buyers and vendors. I will give some examples from current agreements from prominent cloud service providers. Other issues will probably end up in court. It makes sense to consider these questions now, before they become urgent.