The infrastructure and standardisation basket
Will cloud computing close the circle? Are we going to have a few big central computers/server farms and billions of dumb units in the form of notebooks, monitors, and mobile phones? The answer to this and other questions will take time. Currently, we can identify a few Internet governance issues which are very likely to emerge in parallel with the development of cloud computing. 1
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With more services delivered online, modern society will increase its dependence on the Internet. In the past, when the Internet went down we weren’t able to send e-mail or browse the Net. In the era of cloud computing we may not even be able to write text or do calculations. This higher dependence on the Internet will imply higher pressure on its robustness and reliability. It will inevitably lead towards a stronger Internet governance regime and greater involvement of governments.
With more of our personal data stored in clouds, the question of privacy and data protection will become central. Will we have control of our text files, e-mails, and other data? Could cloud operators use them without our permission? Who will have access to our data? With a growing volume of social assets going digital, countries may become uncomfortable with having national assets outside national ‘borders’. They may try to create national or regional clouds or make sure that existing clouds are managed with some international supervision. Nationalisation of clouds could be further accelerated by the fact that all main operators in this field are based in the United States. Some argue that the current ICANN-centred debate may be replaced by an Internet governance debate on the regulation of cloud computing.
With diverse operators of cloud computing, the question of standards is becoming very important. The adoption of common standards will ensure a smooth transfer of data among different clouds (e.g. from Google to Apple). One possibility that is being discussed is the adoption of open standards by the main players in cloud computing.
When it comes to cloud computing there are more See Section 6 for further discussion on the questions than answers. The Internet governance Safe Harbor of cloud computing is likely to emerge through Agreement the interplay of various actors and bodies. For example, the EU is concerned with privacy and data protection. The Safe Harbor Agreement, which was supposed to solve the problem of different privacy regimes in the USA and the EU does not work well. With more digital data crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the EU and the USA will have to address the question of protection of privacy according to EU standards by US companies, the main operators in cloud computing. When it comes to standards, it is very likely that the main companies will 63