1. 6 July 2011
Cloud
Contract Terms
Kuan Hon
Cloud Legal Project
Centre for Commercial Law Studies
Queen Mary, University of London
www.cloudlegal.ccls.qmul.ac.uk / w.k.hon@qmul.ac.uk

2. Introduction
Cloud Legal Project
Personal

3. CLP terms of service analysis
US & European providers
31 web-based sets of standard T&Cs
Terms and Conditions
Acceptable Use Policies
Privacy Policies
Service Level Agreements

4. Categories of contract provisions
Contract Term Legal Framework
! Notice ! Choice of Law
! Grounds for Termination ! Jurisdiction and Venue
Service Credits Indemnification
Availability Exclusions and Limitations
Data Assurance ! Warranty of Fitness or Quality
! Direct Liability
! Integrity
! Indirect or Consequential Loss
! Preservation
! Limitations on Liability
! Disclosure
Acceptable Use
IP Rights
Variation of Terms
Consent to Monitoring

5. Key findings include -
Predictability
Inappropriate / unenforceable / illegal
Complexity & multiple dependencies

6. Complexity
Cloud Infrastructure Cloud Infrastructure Cloud Infrastructure
IaaS Software as a Service
PaaS PaaS (SaaS)
SaaS SaaS SaaS Architectures
Cloud Infrastructure Cloud Infrastructure
IaaS Platform as a Service (PaaS)
PaaS PaaS Architectures
Cloud Infrastructure
IaaS Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Architectures
From
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/cloud-computing-v26.ppt

7. General findings
-
Liability
Disclaimers
Guaranteed provision or continuity of service
Confidentiality, Integrity or Availability of data
Change/terminate service, terms
Conduct of customers eg Wikileaks
Choice of law and jurisdiction
Data disclosure
Data recovery following termination of service limits
(grace; portability; deletion)
Subcontracting
IP rights

8. Custom cloud contracts?
CSC / Google / City of LA transaction
terms, eg:
email and Google Message Discovery (GMD) data only
in the continental United States. As soon as it shall
become commercially feasible, Google shall store and
process all other Customer Data, from any other
Google Apps applications, only in the continental

9. Negotiated agreements research
Interviews
Offers, suggestions?
FOI requests

10. Data ownership
Data protection
Competition law
Lock-in vs interoperability / portability
Standardisation efforts
Others
Consumer protection law
Running software in the cloud - eg software patents; export
control (cryptography)
Tax
Derivatives? (cloud markets)

11. By Oliver Widder, Geek and Poke.

12. Practical questions for cloud users
Procurement process
Layering?
Physical location and legal / regulatory obligations
Critical infrastructure
Differences in cloud service providers
Third party access
Insolvency of contracting party, their
Data migration & backup
Regain data & remove copies
Contract terms (all sources)
Governance

13. Further information
Cloud Legal Project
http://cloudlegalproject.org/Research
Contracts
Contracts for clouds: comparison and analysis of the terms and
conditions of cloud computing services
The Terms They Are A-Changin'..., Brookings Institution, Issues
in Technology Innovation Number 7, March 2011 (mentioned in
2011 World Economic Forum report on cloud computing)
Other papers
Data ownership
Data protection 2 papers, 3rd on way
Law enforcement access to cloud data
Competition law

14. Thanks for listening!
Any questions
Kuan Hon
Cloud Legal Project
Centre for Commercial Law Studies
Queen Mary, University of London
cloudlegalproject.org or
bit.ly/cloudlegal
w.k.hon@qmul.ac.uk
@cloudlegalteam