Beyond the Clouds, Part 1: What Cloud Contracts Say About Who Owns and Can Access Your Content

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of provisions commonly found in the terms of service (‘ToS’) of consumer cloud services, with a focus on issues of ownership of and access to content and accounts. In December 2018, we surveyed the ToS of 35 services, including storage, messaging, email, and social network services, as well as content services for e-books, music, and video content. We reviewed terms impacting copyright in content uploaded to the cloud service; copyright licence terms for content ‘purchased’ from a cloud provider; and terms affecting users’ rights of access, including assignment and post-mortem access.

JEL Classification: K1, K10, K11, K12, K36, D18, O34, P14