Hello, I'm Christopher Millard, Professor of Privacy and Information Law at Queen Mary University of London, where I lead the Cloud Legal Project. I'm delighted to welcome you to this course on cloud computing transactions, which is the first in our series of courses on Cloud Computing Law. Together with colleagues from the Cloud Legal Project, I look forward to exploring with you the legal implications of cloud computing. But first, do you know who this historic figure is? If you think it's Thomas Edison, then you're right. Edison's famous for inventing the phonograph for recording music and other sounds, for developing a break-through improvement to the electric light bulb, and for many other innovations. This picture shows the Pearl Street power station in New York City. In the early 1880s, Thomas Edison had the inspired idea of generating electricity centrally and then distributing it to customers through a grid of power lines. At the time, access to electricity was very limited. It was typically generated in the basements of a few factories, offices, and apartment buildings. By the way, this was actually the world's second public electricity service. Edison had already opened a power station at Holborn Viaduct in London in 1882, not far from our campus in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Anyway, initially, many people on both sides of the Atlantic thought that Thomas Edison's central electricity service was frankly a crazy idea. Why would anyone trust an outside provider for something so critical as their electricity supply? Well, we all know how that turned out in the end. What does this have to do with cloud computing? Whether or not you're aware of cloud computing, like electricity, you probably use it every day. If you store a document in Office 365, check your messages on Gmail, stream a movie on Netflix, or indeed take a course on Coursera, then cloud services are there in the background providing the computing infrastructure and other resources that make all of these things possible. During the COVID-19 pandemic, billions of people shifted to working, studying, shopping, and socializing from home. In most cases, this would not have been possible without heavy reliance on cloud services. Unlike your own devices such as a smartphone or tablet or a laptop, the servers and software that make up the cloud are usually located at remote data centers operated by cloud service providers. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google offer cloud computing resources as a utility service. This is a major shift in how computer systems work. Some say it's a fundamental as the move to providing electricity via a grid. Indeed, if Edison were launching his service today, he'd probably sell it as Electricity as a Service. What does the law have to do with cloud computing? The shift to computing as a service means that users now rely on third-party service providers for critical IT needs such as storing and processing data. This raises questions as to who can access the data and for what purposes, as well as what happens if a service goes down or data are lost? Many of these issues are covered by contracts between providers and customers. Specific data laws may also apply. For example, when a customer uses a cloud service to process personal information about individuals such as the customer's employees, the customer and the provider will also need to comply with data protection laws. Further, as cloud computing becomes essential to everyday life, cloud services are increasingly regulated. For example, in the European Union, they may be treated as a form of critical infrastructure, which by the way is another similarity with the supply of electricity. These are just a few of the many legal and regulatory issues arising from the dramatic shift to cloud computing. What's the future of cloud computing? Cloud will drive innovation for years to come. It's key to many of today's most prominent technology trends. For example, take machine learning or ML, a key technology underlying artificial intelligence or AI. ML often involves statistical analysis to find patterns in massive amounts of data. In many cases, cloud computing provides the storage capacity and processing power that drive AI. Or consider the Internet of Things or IoT. Networks of physical objects with sensors and software that can exchange information and activate processes. Many of these 'things' are in fact simple, small devices that collect data for processing in remote cloud data centers. As other examples, cloud providers offer Blockchain as a Service and at the forefront of developing systems that give individuals a provable digital identity. What will this course cover? This course on cloud computing transactions consists of four weeks. Each week, you will spend around 4-6 hours learning. That includes watching videos, reading materials, answering quiz questions, and exploring case studies. We'll start by looking at what cloud computing is and how it works. That's the focus of this first week. Then we'll explore some of the legal issues relating to the use of cloud services. Our particular focus will be on cloud contracts, which we cover in weeks two and three, and intellectual property rights in week 4. We hope you enjoy this course and have as much fun exploring cloud computing as we do.
