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3.3
Cloud and th Law
3.3.1
Introduction
As everywhere else, legal aspects play an important role in any Cloud
migration project. Except for rules prohibiting disclosure of information to
third parties (e.g. attorney‐client‐privilege), however legal aspects are hardly
ever are a major hurdle to a Cloud migration project.
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The relevant legal aspects can be divided into two main categories:
a.
Compliance topics
:
Compliance is an umbrella term that refers to
regulations that must be adhered to by certain professional groups or
industries, or by anyone. Typical examples are data protection
regulations, industry specific requirements (e.g. rules setting out
banking secrecy obligations, etc.).
From a very high level perspective, the question regarding whether a
Cloud provider has the required licenses to be able to offer a Cloud
service, can be dealt with as a compliance topic, although it is not
customarily implied when discussing compliance issues.
b.
Contract Drafting Issues
:
In addition to this, a user needs to be aware of
the rules governing the intended project: Project costs, costs in case of
exceeding maximum limits, security measures, server locations, post
termination assistance, data portability etc. Once the compliance hurdle
has been taken, these are the core topics that must be addressed.
Not all of these topics will be relevant for every user. And not all of these
topics will have equally serious implications to each specific user. Ultimately,
the assessment of legal issues will need to be made on a case by case basis.
Legal counsel must reflect the risk situation. The "Risk Map Law and Tax"
provides a typological view of where the most frequent risks are found and
how they should be weighted:
3.3.2
Choosing the Appropriate and Applicable Law
While cases are becoming more international, states continue to keep their
own legal systems. In case of cross‐border cases, it will always be necessary
to specify the pertinent jurisdiction for each legal question.
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An expanded version of this chapter can be found under
