Mar 15, 2013

Megaupload and Equinix Make History in Canada (?)

Megaupload and Equinix are in the news today. Apparently the Attorney General of Canada applied to the Ontario Superior Court for an order requiring them to turn over "cloud servers" on behalf was US Government (as reported by Chris Bennett of Davis LLP on Mondaq.com).

What's not clear to me yet is what is actually meant by "cloud servers" and how this could impact cloud computing in particular. We all know how the term "cloud" has been used repeatedly in cases where the service is not actually cloud computing (see my previous posts on the topic of cloudwashing and other posts on nomenclature). Are the servers actually IaaS and fit the NIST definition of cloud computing or are they simply hosted web servers and databases?

It appears that the judicial system could use some clarification as to what cloud computing actually is and the difference between cloud computing and cloud based services.

More to come as this story develops.