Cloud policy : a history of regulating pipelines, platforms, and data / Jennifer Holt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Holt, Jennifer, 1968- author.

Series:

Distribution matters

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cloud computing--Law and legislation.

Cloud computing.

Telecommunication lines--Law and legislation.

Telecommunication lines.

Data sovereignty.

Physical Description:

viii, 318 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2024]

Summary:

"This book is a history of U.S. regulations governing media and distribution infrastructures that support the cloud"-- Provided by publisher. How the United States’ regulation of broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and data—together understood as “the cloud”—has eroded civil liberties, democratic principles, and the foundation of the public interest over the past century.Cloud Policy is a policy history that chronicles how the past century of regulating media infrastructure in the United States has eroded global civil liberties as well as democratic principles and the foundation of the public interest. Jennifer Holt explores the long arc of regulating broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and the data centers that serve as the cloud’s storage facilities—an evolution that is connected to the development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century media and networks, including railroads, highways, telephony, radio, and television. In the process, Cloud Policy unearths the lasting inscriptions of policy written for an analog era and markets that no longer exist on the contemporary governance of digital cloud infrastructure.Cloud Policy brings together numerous perspectives that have thus far remained largely siloed in their respective fields of law, policy, economics, and media studies. The resulting interdisciplinary argument reveals a properly scaled view of the massive challenge facing policymakers today. Holt also addresses the evolving role of the state in the regulation of global cloud infrastructure and the growing influence of corporate gatekeepers and private sector self-governance. Cloud policy’s trajectory, as Holt explains, has enacted a transformation in the cultural valuation of infrastructure as civic good, turning it into a tool of commercial profit generation. Despite these current predicaments, the book’s historical lens ultimately helps the reader to envision restorative interventions and new forms of activism to create a more equitable future for infrastructure policy.

Contents:

Cloud policy : genealogy of a regulatory crisis

Designing the cloud

Visualizing the cloud

The path dependencies of cloud policy

The stakes of cloud policy

Pipeline principles

AT&T and the blueprint for cloud policy

Cloud policy for the convergent era

The information superhighway and beyond : digital pipelines

Pipeline principles revisited

Cloud royalty

Platform governance

The survival of news

Alternative visions

Data (im)materiality and (in)visibility

Locating control

"The abyss from which there Is no Return . . ."

Private control/public data

Data sovereignty, data localization, and national clouds

Epilogue : preserving the cloud's future

Activism and the way forward

Creative solutions

We could have been a contender . . .

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Holt, Jennifer, 1968- Cloud policy

ISBN:

9780262548069

0262548062

OCLC:

1415748020