Issues in regards of Cloud Computing : Intellectual Property

What is Intellectual Property?

Intellectual property is property which is deemed to be the “creation of the mind”. It is an intangible creation of through intellectual process. Looking from the angle of law, intellectual property is property which is intangible creation which resulted from intellectual and creative process of human mind and the end result of the thinking being reduced to material form which is assigned certain rights of property. There are eight type of work being protected under Malaysia Copyright Act 1987 that is literary work, artistic work, musical work, film, sound recording, broadcasting, performer rights, and derivative work. An example of literary work would be books, musical work will be music sheet, film such as The Avenger, sound recording such as CD’s Album, derivative work such as translation of an original language of a book to malay language (eg. Harry Potter).

Ever since the beginning of Internet Era, infringement of intellectual property had been done in massive production throughout the Internet. Before the idea of Cloud Computing is made popular, P2P(peer to peer) sharing had been utilised and landmark case of P2P is Napster which is a  music-focused online services. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer to peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files, typically music, encoded in MP3 format. The original company ran into legal difficulties over copyright infringement, ceased operations and was eventually acquired by Roxio. For literary work, books are being scan page by page and being upload into the internet and can be download free of charge. Worst still, seven out of eight work that is protected under Copyright Act basically infringe the exclusive right of owner to reproduce the work.

Issues of Intellectual Property regarding Cloud computing

Sovereignty on the internet: location and use of data

In most cloud-based services, data(specifically intellectual data) will potentially be stored on hardware located in a country outside Malaysia. Storage of data outside of Malaysia will make the data susceptible to legal process instituted in the country in which it is stored and subject to the laws of that country. It will, for example, be susceptible to interception warrants issued in that country or, in the United States, come within the bounds of the Patriot Act, which gives the United States government broad powers to access data stored anywhere within the United States or passing across telecommunications infrastructure located in the United States.

What if the hardware of cloud-based services is located a communist country such as North Korea or country that had political turmoil or any instability? It would be unfair to the cloud-user especially to those that paid premium to the cloud-based services as other country government can gain access to the data.

Infringement of Intellectual Property by User in Cloud Computing

With cloud-based services such as an example, Microsoft hotmail Skydrive, the perpetrator able to store the infringe works such as songs, ebooks, documents, or photos.  Normally, the perpetrator will download the infringe works and save it in his hardware but through the improvement of internet bandwidth, cloud-based service able to accommodate a large storage for storing files (music,ebooks, etc), and the user able to upload their files over the cloud-based service with two benefits mainly time saving and cost cutting (cut the cost of buying pendrive or print out paper or laptop[can see files in any computer provided there is Internet] and etc). Another situation is that if a person own a CD album or any things that is protected under copyright 1987, the person only own a single licence of the data or things and he transferred the data and make multiple copies of data in the cloud, there could be issue whether he has the “right to store an additional copies” in the cloud.

Conclusion

Base on the issue above, we can see that sovereignity plays an important role especially to those people that would want to keep their intellectual property as data in the cloud. Issue such as “additional copies data” in the cloud is also yet to be solve. As to the matter of intellectual property infringement over the internet, legal mechanism must keep in pace over the technology to prevent the downfall of intellectual creation.


References


Journal

Internet Law Bulletin (newsletter)/2011/Volume 14 No 2 -- May 2011/Hidden in the cloud -- the dangers of keeping your data where you can't see it

Privacy Law Bulletin (newsletter)/2010/Volume 7 No 3 -- November 2010/Legal issues in the cloud

2008 Mich. St. L. Rev. 1 WHAT IFS AND OTHER ALTERNATIVE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND CYBERLAW STORY: WHAT IFS AND OTHER ALTERNATIVE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND CYBERLAW STORIES: FOREWORD

36 J. Legis. 395 RAIN OR SHINE: FAIR AND OTHER NON-INFRINGING USES IN THE CONTEXT OF CLOUD COMPUTING

10 J. on Telecomm. & High Tech. L. 53 CLOUD COMPUTING: CLOUD CONTROL: COPYRIGHT, GLOBAL MEMES AND PRIVACY


Website


http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/webmaster/intellectual-property-copyright-and-the-cloud-more-details-on-the-law-for-web-masters-and-developers/480

Name: Benjamin  Goo Koon Wern A132312

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