JURISDICTIONAL ISSUES in the Cloud, in Greece and the E.U.

Abstract: Cloud Computing has brought fundamental changes in the way IT Services are designed, implemented and generally perceived today. The very nature however of Cloud Computing, which is to provide data access to everyone, from anywhere in the world, creates many legal issues, including privacy, intellectual property, and jurisdiction to name a few. Those legal issues create an uncertainty to many potential Cloud customers, which prevents them from moving to a Cloud solution.

The purpose of this study is to identify those legal issues, and in particular analyze the jurisdictional issues that arise from the Cloud’s usage in Greece and the European Union. We will address those problems in regards to the present Greek and European Legislation in order to create a level of certainty and a feeling of cloud “safety” to the potential Cloud customers in Greece and the EU.

We used a systematic literature review to categorize and analyze all of our literature creating the Theoretical Framework. We also performed interviews and gathered results from questionnaires to confirm, update and enrich our theoretical framework. We used the mixed-method approach.

On the basis of the results of this research, it can be concluded that the present Greek and European legislation can, in most cases, deal with jurisdictional issues within the E.U. There are however, some cases that need better clarification. It is therefore imperative that the E.U. legislation (and the Greek as a result) is updated, in order to minimize those problems and make people feel safer when using Cloud Services.