CLOUD COMPUTING
HIGH IN THE SKY
Cloud-based services such as Google Drive, Dropbox and Microsoft’s OneDrive make it easy to share stored content with internet users all over the world. But this convenience presents opportunities for copyright infringement, whether intentional or unintentional, and who is liable? TBO investigates.
T
he phenomenon of cloud computing has taken off in recent years, as accessing stored fi les across multiple devices becomes a
business necessity, as well as a personal luxury.
Many cloud subscribers now use these services as their personal hard drives, and the potential for infringers is correspondingly growing. But just what constitutes an infringement in the cloud, who owns the content and who is accountable? T ese are just some of the interesting questions to consider.
Sharing
Every time a subscriber accesses a fi le stored in his or her ‘cloud’, they’re connecting to the cloud service provider’s remote server. According to www.howstuff
works.com, the US state of Oregon hosts Google’s data centre, a group of buildings each the size of an American football fi eld.
Users have the option of storing any kind of digital content they like here. However, as the server is technically making copies of the fi le, the user may be liable for infringement if he or she sends a link to someone else’s copyrighted content to another person without permission.
Jenevieve Maerker, an associate at Foley Hoag LLP in Boston, says that in the US there is a
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diff erence between sharing a fi le via the cloud and sharing a fi le from a hard drive via email.
“T e law has been set up to try to look beyond the technical diff erence, or surface diff erence.”
An individual may be liable for copyright infringement if he or she shares copyrighted content without permission, and the cloud service provider may also be liable for authorising infringement if it doesn’t have safe harbour exceptions in place, such as those under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US, or the Ecommerce Directive in the EU.
In the UK, it’s deemed an infringement to store a fi le in the cloud unless you have a licence to it, explains Adam Rendle, associate at Taylor Wessing LLP in London.
However, from June 1 the private copying exception, which will be introduced into UK law, will allow individuals to make a private copy for their personal use. As well as relaxing rules on cloud computing, the exception will also let people copy CDs to an MP3 player for their own use.
Rendle notes that the new legislation does not expressly state the cloud-based service provider’s position. “It says that the individual does not infringe copyright if those conditions are
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