Legislators have had a spotty record of dealing with rapidly evolving technology. We all remember the oft-parodied “pipes and tubes” explanation one politician gave of net neutrality. Over at Forbes, Eric Goldman reports on one U.S. senator’s proposed cloud computing legislation:
Sen. Amy Klobuchar has introduced a new bill, the “Cloud Computing Act of 2012” (S.3569), that purports to “ improve the enforcement of criminal and civil law with respect to cloud computing.” Given its introduction so close to the election, it’s doubtful this bill will go anywhere. Still, it provides an excellent case study of how even well-meaning legislators can botch Internet regulation.
(Click here to read “The Proposed “Cloud Computing Act of 2012,” and How Internet Regulation Can Go Awry“)
Speaking of definitions of technology terms, here’s how the legislation defines cloud computing:
“the term “cloud computing service” means a service that enables convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (including networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or interaction by the provider of the service.”