Any service providers have to see how they can fit themselves into the exception of service providers for the selling of personal information because their customers want to rely on the cloud service provider for a solution that covers also California residents.
We're the fifth largest economy in the world.
If we were a separate country and most cloud service providers want to do business with people in California or with companies who have somebody in California.
So they want to offer a solution that the California residents cannot opt out of using as a back-end for their providers who is using in turn the cloud provider as a sub-processor.
And so it's in the interest of the cloud providers to make sure that they fit into this exception of not involving selling.
Now cloud providers to sell infrastructure, storage as a service are probably not in a particular bind here because their contracts don't involve any terms usually that would imply consideration for data and therefore a sales transaction.
In fact most of them will sell space on their systems which have many tenants on them and the less data they're being sent the better it is for them in a way because then they can rent out more space to other people particularly if they have these dynamic models.
So many infrastructure as a service provider may not have to do anything but the ones that do software as a service and use the data that is being sent to them also to create efficiencies , new products, insights, improvements and many contracts say this today they will have to think about whether they can change their contract terms in a way that accommodates the customers urgent need to not have these transfers be qualified as sales.
I will hope and place good expectations into the leading software as a service and cloud companies that they foresee this and will come to their customers rescue and say hey we've got this all figured out here are new terms and the way we're serving you we can fit under this exception for service providers under the California law and soon under many other state laws and we have you covered but they will probably also be some that are watching what the bigger ones are going to do and wait a little bit and see whether they can still rely on some data usage licenses or clauses and existing agreements and they I think will not only find this will be a compliance challenge but also competitive market challenge because it It will be harder for them to sell their services when customers are all hoping that they're getting an offering that will not involve the selling of personal data under this very counterintuitive,
misleading, and really, from a policy perspective, unfortunate definition in the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018.