What is Cloudlaw?
Cloud computing + law = Cloudlaw.
How many bars of law do you have right now? Five bars? Check your cell phone.
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I am going to use this page and this post to develop and share my thinking about Cloudlaw.
Cloudlaw as a concept emerged out of discussions among me, John Clippinger (author of Crowd of One) and Oliver Goodenough (co-author of Law and the Brain) of the Harvard Law Lab, starting in December of 2008. I coined the term, but only as a generalization of and catch phrase for a deep body of insights being nurtured in a milieu that included not only John and Oliver but David Johnson (of NYU Law School) and Peter Early, a practicing business lawyer in Vermont. The inspiration for the concept grows out of the virtual corporation work started last year in Vermont and resulting in the passage of a number of important state laws enabling the formation of fully virtual companies incorporate in Vermont.
Today deeply engaged in the Cloudlaw project prototype website. Meeting with Oliver in a few moments. Working on technology strategy for iCard support, for secure conversations, other technical issues required for our work with the State of Vermont on the formation of digital companies. Are these nuts and bolts part of the emergence of “cloud business law”
Initially the vision of the Vermont project is to support entrepreneurs. The Kauffman Foundation is funding the project. Cloudlaw is dedicated to providing the benefits of effective, efficient law to people no matter who they are and where they live.
- Forming a corporation, making a contract, starting a company is difficult in many countries
- In many cases, what is missing is “rule of law” that permits small businesses to be easily created, and to thrive
- Just as cloud computing benefits people no matter where they live, so cloud law can do the same
- We are working with the State of Vermont to register new forms of corporations that exist primarily online, but can conduct activities anywhere
- Today, web services come with your cell phone, anywhere you are. Soon we can ask: How many bars of law do you have? Let’s make a company!
Who else can benefit from services provided by Cloudlaw?
A vast array of services are available to citizens through mobile phones and provided “in the cloud” managed invisibly and seamlessly on their behalf. Moreover, cloud computing makes possible linking together individuals into social networks and enables new forms of communities and organizations.
As someone who is active in the protection of human rights, I wonder what we might invent under the rubric of “cloud human rights law”. Can cloudlaw serve the people of Sudan and Darfur? What would be the steps to doing so? What can we learn from the notion of cloud services that would help us make better interventions to protect and nurture people in terrible situations at the fringe of world society?
How might we creatively think about this problem? People depend upon the protection of the law at all times. Human rights, freedom to think, worship, dream and hope are enabled by a rich fabric of laws, well-designed legal systems with educated and wise leaders, and a sense of respect and trust among citizens. We take for granted the system when it works, which is an indication of how fundamentally important it is. When it breaks down however we sense its absense acutely.
When effective, the law can be an embodiment of love, care and protection. Lawyers sometimes speak of “the light of the law” as a kind of invisible force field within which people confidently form relationships among each other. It is an invisible networks of ideas, rules and practices that reinforce our native sense of fairness and reciprocity and trust and security.
It is interesting to consider: What are the ideas that we might want to use cloud services to spread, and around which we might create cloud communities? What rules and practices do we want to establish, both online and offline, so that our cloud activities themselves are consistent with our values and vision? How do we get a start? How do we determine what cloud services might be helpful at the far end of our network, in the sands of Darfur? What cloud service access devices and methods will work? What cultural and social and professional patterns will we become involved in?
Some interesting work along these lines is Gillian Hadfield’s on “Law for a Flat World”.
I like to think of what is needed in terms of the love that parents feel for children. The love and care we feel for our children can and must extend to all persons and all creatures of our planet. Cloudlaw might help.
