By retracing the stages of development of a 'peer-to-peer cloud' storage service, Francesca Musiani argues that decentralised network architectures are internet governance 'in practice'.
News and Research articles on Cloud
The increasing complexity of cloud services has created the opportunity for a new business model: Cloud Services Brokerage. The answer to the interest in policy-aware cloud-solutions is choice, argues Claus Schaale (Cisco) in his guest post for the Internet Policy Review.
A new expert group on cloud computing is to ensure trust in the internet cloud. In the meantime, users can already find privacy-enhanced cloud offers.
Tax avoidance has become a widespread practice on the internet. Online operators easily circumvent an aging taxation scheme that is designed around the concept of territorial jurisdiction and geographical settings. The French government now commissioned a study to find out how to effectively deal with internet giants that generate hardly any revenue for states they largely operate in.
With the growing tension between the cross-border internet and the patchwork of national jurisdictions, it becomes crucial to keep track of key global trends that drive the debate on appropriate frameworks. Based on the 2012 monitoring work of the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, twelve high-level patterns can be identified. Paul Fehlinger of the I&J project reports.
Cloud computing is an inherently international matter, because it usually involves storage and processing of data in different locations. However, regulatory frameworks in non-EU contries do not always live up to European demands, i.e. concerning data protection. Looking at the EU cloud computing strategy, three political mechanisms can be identified through which the EU might try to promote regulatory changes beyond its borders.
Cloud computing provides a large number of advantages to many internet users. Most of the perceived benefits are related to the concept of ubiquity, or the ability to access data from anywhere at any time, regardless of the device used. Yet, these benefits come at a cost. The widespread deployment of cloud computing services is source of growing concern as regards the fundamental rights of EU citizens.