The Legal Regime of Cloud Computing Contracts

Cloud computing represents a delivery model for information technology (IT) services, allowing users to access and store information, and utilize software functionality, on remote servers owned or operated by third parties typically over the internet or private networks. A considerable number of contracts are the Terms of Use that are available on the provider’s website for review by the customers and are offered on a standard-form take it or leave it basis with little or no scope for negotiation. However, In the case of large commercial or government cloud contracts, such Terms of Use will sometimes be negotiated. In this study, more than 30 foreign Terms of Use and 14 Iranian Terms of Use have been surveyed and common terms in cloud contracts have been divided into three categories, based on their subject: data handling; liabilities and responsibilities; and other terms. Then, the ubiquity and validity of each term have been explored in the legal system of Iran and in some cases from the perspective of the European Union and the US legal system. Our results demonstrated that the form of these contracts is somewhat the same in different legal systems. However, they have different approaches to cloud contracts in terms of description and validity. Furthermore, there are certain similarities between the Iranian and foreign Terms of Use and these contracts could be construed as free contracts.