The legalities of cloud (infographic)

17 Apr 2012

While cloud computing, which enables the use of files and applications over the internet, offers many benefits to companies, one of the biggest concerns surrounding the technology pertains to copyright and intellectual property. More specifically, who owns cloud copyright?

An infographic published by Click Software on Visual.ly examines the legalities surrounding cloud computing.

Laws governing the ownership of data cover copyright, confidentiality, and contract law, and they differ from country to country. With cloud computing, data that is created in one country may be stored in another country.

According to the infographic, data is based on intellectual property, therefore owned by the creator of the content. Hardware, applications and operating systems belong to the cloud provider.

There is still no universal decision as to who holds the rights to copyright materials when it comes to cloud computing, according to infographic.

The infographic also examines where the data is created (before it went into the cloud or created in the actual cloud), how countries fare with cloud issues (ranked on their handling cloud computing in various areas), business and technology priorities by country, and countries doing well with cloud policies.

Legalities of cloud

Tina Costanza was a journalist and sub-editor at Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com