Abstract
The essay focuses on the problems of privacy and data security in european law and italian law from the perspective of cloud computing. The article aims at contributing to the better comprehension of the considered technology and to clarify the actual legal framework. Legal certainty is the only way to face the main issues cloud-related, such as contracts, data protection, IPRs, consumer protection and competition. The specific object is data protection for at least two reasons. On the one hand, even if there is not an organic discipline that answers all the legal relevant questions, the majority of normative acts on the cloud concerns data protection. On the other hand, the worries for the security of the data stored on the cloud are the main brake to the spread of the considered technology. Despite of the importance of cloud, legislators and institutions are confused on what the cloud really means for the society of information. Therefore, the legal scholars are called to build without delay a legal framework which is adequate to the new challenges, in order to resist to the digital tsunami, at the same time preserving the coherence of the system.
Coud computing is raising very fastly, as one can infer from the proliferation of programmes like Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, SkyDrive (now OneDrive) and new cloud providers popping up everywhere. It is of a so great importance that mark a new era, that of the web 3.0 and it gives fuel to an EUR 6200 billion market. Up to now, however, cloud computing has been the focus more of computer scientists and engineers, rather than of legals scholars, as stated by the European Commission and by a part of the literature.
After having given more detailed definitions and decriptions, I pass to study italian (national and regional) law and, in particular, the decisions of our DPA (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali), of the Bank of Italy (that sees the cloud as an instrument for disaster recovery) and of the Digital Italy Agency, while no italian judge has stated on cloud-related issues. I will not say anything on the italian law here, also because it is largely dependent on the european law (it is sufficient to think to the italian Digital Agenda, “daughter” of the european one) and on the international trends.
Coud computing is raising very fastly, as one can infer from the proliferation of programmes like Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, SkyDrive (now OneDrive) and new cloud providers popping up everywhere. It is of a so great importance that mark a new era, that of the web 3.0 and it gives fuel to an EUR 6200 billion market. Up to now, however, cloud computing has been the focus more of computer scientists and engineers, rather than of legals scholars, as stated by the European Commission and by a part of the literature.
After having given more detailed definitions and decriptions, I pass to study italian (national and regional) law and, in particular, the decisions of our DPA (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali), of the Bank of Italy (that sees the cloud as an instrument for disaster recovery) and of the Digital Italy Agency, while no italian judge has stated on cloud-related issues. I will not say anything on the italian law here, also because it is largely dependent on the european law (it is sufficient to think to the italian Digital Agenda, “daughter” of the european one) and on the international trends.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | Rochester, NY |
| Pages | 1-16 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Publication status | Published - 17 Apr 2014 |
Keywords
- cloud computing
- data protection
- privacy