클라우드컴퓨팅서비스 이용자 보호를 위한 규제와 표준계약서

Abstract

The “Act for the development and the user protection of the cloud computing”(the “Act”), enforced from May 28th 2015, is enacted for the purpose to give positive support to the cloud computing service, the latest high technology. The cloud computing service, compared with other online services, has much more necessity to regulate for the user protection, as it weakens the personal information control right of the users. The act sets various regulatory systems for the user protection on the cloud computing service, including the article 24, in regard to the enactment and revision on the standard form contract. As it seems there are no established opinions so far on the legal nature of the cloud computing service contract, the relationship between cloud computing service provider and users is bound only to the legal actions between the parties. The cloud computing service, which is the latest high technology appeared just 10 years ago, is in change and in progress with the growth of Smart phone, and has a variety of substance and number of categories depending on the requirements of each user. While the Service Level Agreement is applied to the substance of the services, it is desirable to regulate cloud computing service providers by standard form contract rather than by legislation or administrative guidance for the user protection. However, the standard form contract has its limit, as it is difficult to lead the cloud computing service providers, who are mainly foreign corporations, to use the standard form contract which is only a recommendation, and the matters such as return of user information due to suspension of operation or extinction of service providers seem to be beyond the legal boundary of standard form contract. Still the consumer choice could be significantly limited even with standard form contract, as it is difficult to ensure the technical compatibility with the other service providers. When enforcing the standard form contract, it is necessary to aware of the practical limitations and supplement the standard form contract to be more effective.