Vanishing files: protocols and regulations for immaterial documents

Regulatory and technological aspects of cloud technology are showing both opportunities and gaps in the rules on security and accessibility. Our proposal aims at addressing a problem that has not yet manifested using a protocol and discussing the normative aspects regarding the possibility of rendering a document completely immaterial. Our article proposes a protocol that uses the network in an unconventional way to make a document fully immaterial. By immaterial we mean that is not localisable anywhere in its entirety. If we continue the analogy to climate, we want to realise a fog of files rather than a cloud. The files are distributed on a public or private network and only the injectors and extractors can access them. The inaccessibility by others, the non-location, and the dynamics of the system offer significant advantages in terms of security but raise some legal problems.