The introduction below was originally written by Berin Szoka, but now that I (Adam Marcus) am a full-fledged TLF member, I have taken authorship.
Adam Marcus, our exceptionally tech-savvy new research assistant at PFF, has published his first piece at the PFF blog, which I reprint here for your edification.
Today Google’s DC office hosted an interesting panel on cloud computing. What was missing was a good definition of what “cloud computing” actually is.
While Wikipedia has its own broad definition of cloud computing, many think of cloud computing more narrowly as strictly web-based for which clients need nothing but a web browser. But that definition doesn’t cover things like Skype and SETI@home. And just because PFF has implemented Outlook Web Access so we can access the Exchange server via the Web, doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve implemented what most people might think of as “cloud computing.” Yet these are all variations on a common theme, which leads me to propose my own basic definition: any client/server system that operates over the Internet.
To understand the potential policy and legal issues raised by cloud computing so-defined, one must break down the discussion into a 4-part grid. One axis is divided into private data ( e.g., email) and public data (e.g., photo sharing). The other axis is divided into data hosted on a single server or centralized server farm and data hosted on multiple computers in a dynamic peer-to-peer network (e.g., BitTorrent file sharing).
| Examples | User Data is Public | User Data is Private |
| Centralized Server(s) | Blogs Discussion boards Flickr | Web-based email servers Windows Terminal Services |
| Peer-to-Peer | BitTorrent FreeNet (article) | Skype Wuala |
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.