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Building on what Kevin said, yes, it's very important for those of us
contracting to be aware of the potential issues: both technical and legal.
And so not too long ago, in preparation for doing my backups to the cloud
(because there's not really much safety in my external hard drive, given
that it's mere inches away from my primary computer) I started amending my
contracts, whether they were actually "mine" or versions presented to me by
clients and that I requested changes to, to specifically cover cloud
backups.
And there are a surprisingly large number of places in a contract where this
consideration is needed. For example, many contracts say that we must
surrender all material when a contract is over if so requested, but now I
have in the contract wording to the effect that the client understands that
due to the nature of backups it may not be possible to surrender all such
copies, and that this fact does not violate the terms of the contract.
(This isn't the only place to include such language, just one example, and
indeed an example of why I think it a worthwhile expense to have a lawyer
review all my contracts.)
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