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• Service Level Agreement (SLA)—the SLA details the level of service
to be provided, often in the form of specific quality of service (QoS)
metrics, and the mechanisms for auditing service delivery and QoS,
and compensating clients for underperformance.
• Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)—sometimes called a ‘fair use policy’,
the AUP is a policy to protect CSPs from the actions of clients, and
in the case of enterprise clients, their end users, by detailing prohibited uses of the contracted cloud service.
• Privacy Policy—this details the CSP’s policy for handling and protecting personal data, in line with data protection law requirements.
Click-wrap contracts are part of a common cloud service subscription
procedure made over the Internet. As part of this procedure and before
payment, prospective clients are typically presented with either (1) a scrollable agreement, or (2) a link to a webpage or downloadable agreement,
based on the specific cloud service and configuration that they have
selected. They are encouraged to review the text of the agreement, and
asked to communicate assent to the terms and conditions by clicking on
an interactive ‘I agree’ button. For the overwhelming majority of CSP
clients, these click-wrap contracts are standardised wholly electronic contracts giving the clients little or no opportunity to negotiate specific terms
and conditions. Bradshaw et al. (2013) notes three distinctions within
cloud computing contracts—(1) free vs paid services, (2) US v EU jurisdictions, and (3) IaaS v Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). First, they note that
some terms and conditions for paid services are more likely to be open to
negotiation depending on the bargaining power of the prospective client
e.g. large multinational corporations or Governments. In these cases,
depending on the standing of the CSP in the market or the specific segment, there may be a relationship of interdependence rather than dependence (McKnight et al. 2002). This is particularly evident cloud application
and API marketplaces (Paulsson et al. 2020). Second, contracts offered
under US law have more extensive disclaimers of warranty and limitations
of liability than those offered under European Union (EU) law (Bradshaw
et al. 2013). Thirdly, terms and conditions offered by IaaS providers
would seem to be more similar than those offered by SaaS providers
(Bradshaw et al. 2013).
In contract law, the so-called ‘informed minority’ hypothesis has been
used to justify the avoidance of regulation of standard form contracts
(Bakos et al. 2014). This hypothesis posits that there is generally a
2 DEAR CLOUD, I THINK WE HAVE TRUST ISSUES: CLOUD COMPUTING…
• Service Level Agreement (SLA)—the SLA details the level of service
to be provided, often in the form of specific quality of service (QoS)
metrics, and the mechanisms for auditing service delivery and QoS,
and compensating clients for underperformance.
• Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)—sometimes called a ‘fair use policy’,
the AUP is a policy to protect CSPs from the actions of clients, and
in the case of enterprise clients, their end users, by detailing prohibited uses of the contracted cloud service.
• Privacy Policy—this details the CSP’s policy for handling and protecting personal data, in line with data protection law requirements.
Click-wrap contracts are part of a common cloud service subscription
procedure made over the Internet. As part of this procedure and before
payment, prospective clients are typically presented with either (1) a scrollable agreement, or (2) a link to a webpage or downloadable agreement,
based on the specific cloud service and configuration that they have
selected. They are encouraged to review the text of the agreement, and
asked to communicate assent to the terms and conditions by clicking on
an interactive ‘I agree’ button. For the overwhelming majority of CSP
clients, these click-wrap contracts are standardised wholly electronic contracts giving the clients little or no opportunity to negotiate specific terms
and conditions. Bradshaw et al. (2013) notes three distinctions within
cloud computing contracts—(1) free vs paid services, (2) US v EU jurisdictions, and (3) IaaS v Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). First, they note that
some terms and conditions for paid services are more likely to be open to
negotiation depending on the bargaining power of the prospective client
e.g. large multinational corporations or Governments. In these cases,
depending on the standing of the CSP in the market or the specific segment, there may be a relationship of interdependence rather than dependence (McKnight et al. 2002). This is particularly evident cloud application
and API marketplaces (Paulsson et al. 2020). Second, contracts offered
under US law have more extensive disclaimers of warranty and limitations
of liability than those offered under European Union (EU) law (Bradshaw
et al. 2013). Thirdly, terms and conditions offered by IaaS providers
would seem to be more similar than those offered by SaaS providers
(Bradshaw et al. 2013).
In contract law, the so-called ‘informed minority’ hypothesis has been
used to justify the avoidance of regulation of standard form contracts
(Bakos et al. 2014). This hypothesis posits that there is generally a
2 DEAR CLOUD, I THINK WE HAVE TRUST ISSUES: CLOUD COMPUTING…