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Gervais, Daniel J. --- "Copyright, Culture and the Cloud" [2012] ELECD 689; in Pager, A. Sean; Candeub, Adam (eds), "Transnational Culture in the Internet Age" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Transnational Culture in the Internet Age

Editor(s): Pager, A. Sean; Candeub, Adam

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857931337

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Copyright, Culture and the Cloud

Author(s): Gervais, Daniel J.

Number of pages: 24

Extract:

2. Copyright, culture and the Cloud
Daniel J. Gervais*

Imagine for a moment that electricity was used only to power one kind of
computer known as an electricity computer. That is what computer power is
like now: it mainly powers devices that sit on our desks with qwerty keyboards
attached. As computing becomes a utility, it will power many more devices,
many of them with no user interface, more of them mobile and handheld. The
Cloud should also encourage collaboration. Different people, using different
devices should be able to access the same documents and resources more easily.
(Charles Leadbeater, Cloud Culture)1



2.1 INTRODUCTION

Everything digital will be in the Cloud. Almost every bit of human culture,
every song, book, document and movie ever made.2 This portentous change



* The author wishes to acknowledge the significant contribution of Daniel J.
Hyndman (J.D., Vanderbilt) in particular to section 2.2 on the technical and infra-
structural aspects of cloud computing. All errors are my own.
1 Charles Leadbeater, Cloud Culture, 15­16 (2010).
2 Access to media on the Cloud, particularly music, has become one of the

most popular uses among normal users. Services like iTunes (http://www.apple.
com/itunes) allow for users to pick and choose which tracks they want to buy and
download, while Grooveshark (http://www.grooveshark.com) allows for direct
streaming of many tracks directly from the user's Internet browser. Most banks
have their own sites for online banking (for example, http://www. ...