We use cookies to give you the best online experience. By using our website you agree to our use of cookies in accordance with our cookie policy. Learn more here.Close Me
A recent Gmail outage reminds us that the cloud is not always
up. What goes up must come down. Servers crash. Companies go
bankrupt. When a cloud service provider fails or the technology
falters, what happens to the servers that house the data? Think of
where your cloud-based data is hosted... and then try to imagine
what it would take to get that data back. In these cases, questions
of jurisdiction and bankruptcy law quickly come to the fore.
In the ongoing case involving Megaupload, a court
battle is being fought over the servers: who will take conduct of
them and what's to be done with the data on those servers?
The Canadian case of Stanford International Bank Ltd.
(Syndic de), 2009 QCCS 4106 (CanLII), also
involved a dispute over servers of a bankrupt company. In the
Stanford International case, the bankrupt company was
offshore. A liquidator acting for receivers based in Antigua sought
an order from a Canadian court to confirm the winding-up order.
However, the court objected when it discovered that the servers,
located in Canada, had been erased by the Antiguan receivers, the
data had been copied, and the copies were stored in Antigua.
Essentially, the Antiguan receivers removed all the electronic data
from the Canadian servers to Antigua, thus removing the data from
the jurisdiction of Canadian courts and regulatory authorities.
The number of servers in that case was small enough to permit
copying; compare that to the Megaupload case which involves some
1100 servers. No-one wants to incur the cost to house and maintain
such a large number of servers, so they are in legal limbo until
the court makes a ruling.
In some cases, the data sits on identifiable servers - you could
in theory (if you know where the server farm is located) point to a
box and say, that's where my data is stored. In other cases,
such as Amazon's "Elastic Compute Cloud" Service,
high levels of redundancy mean the same data may appear in multiple
instances across multiple servers, located in multiple geographical
areas. It would be impossible even in theory to determine where the
data is physically located. When negotiating mission-critical
cloud-computing agreements, take time to consider the issues of
what happens when the cloud comes down, and get proper advice for a
soft landing.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.
To print this article, all you need is to be registered on Mondaq.com.
Click to Login as an existing user or Register so you can print this article.
This Guide answers many frequently asked questions we receive from our international clients as they look at acquiring Canadian companies or their assets.
In our January Employee and Labour Relations bulletin, we reported important amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada that will significantly impact all Canadian workplaces.
Bill C-45, also known as the Westray Bill in honour of the deadly explosion at the Westray mine in Plymouth, Nova Scotia in 1992 that prompted legislators to review occupational health and safety law, comes into force on March 31, 2004.
Technology startups need to know how to raise capital, protect their inventions, access government technology support programs, develop commercialization strategies, and navigate federal and provincial legislation and regulations.
Organizations are increasingly leveraging shared services and outsourcing initiatives to reduce costs, increase efficiency, achieve greater agility and improve compliance.
The explosion of social media over the past few years has not only revolutionized the way we communicate with each other personally and professionally, it’s also transformed the business environment.
