EdLaw
Rhode Island — student data-cloud computing (R.I. Gen. Laws § 16-104-1)
Chapter 104 of Title 16 (Education), enacted by P.L. 2014, ch. 188 and P.L. 2014, ch. 207. Chapter 188 (2014-H 7124 Substitute B) is marked "Enacted 06/30/14" and provides: "This act shall take effect upon passage." (P.L. 2014, ch. 188, read 2026-10-08 through its Internet Archive id_ capture). The chapter is a single section that binds any person providing a cloud computing service to a Rhode Island educational institution. The provider must process K-12 student data for the sole purpose of providing the service, must not process it for any commercial purpose, and must certify in writing that it will comply. It is the same shape as Kentucky's KRS 365.734, enacted the same year.
Applicability to EdTech
- What counts as a cloud computing service. It is a service providing "a student, teacher, or staff member account-based productivity applications such as email, document storage, and document editing" (§ 16-104-1(a)(1)). The examples are productivity tools. Whether a learning platform with student or teacher accounts falls within the definition is a reading of these words, and the section gives no further test.
- Process and student data are defined broadly. "Process" includes "scan", "transform", "retain" and "aggregate" (§ 16-104-1(a)(3)). "Student data" includes information created by a student or by a school board employee about a student, "including the student's name, email address, postal address, email message, documents, unique identifiers, and metadata" (§ 16-104-1(a)(4)). Metadata is named.
- Sole purpose, no commercial use. Processing is limited to "the sole purpose of providing the cloud computing service to the educational institution". There is no processing "for any commercial purposes, including, but not limited to, advertising purposes that benefit the cloud computing service provider" (§ 16-104-1(b)). Unlike KRS 365.734, there is no carve-out for improving or developing the service.
- Written certification. Each cloud computing service that contracts to provide such services "shall certify, in writing, that it shall comply" (§ 16-104-1(c)). This is a per-contract deliverable.
Contents
| Document | Covers |
|---|---|
| STUDENT-DATA-CLOUD-COMPUTING.md | R.I. Gen. Laws § 16-104-1 in full |
Key obligations at a glance
- Process K-12 student data only to provide the service; no commercial or advertising use — § 16-104-1(b).
- Certify compliance in writing on contracting — § 16-104-1(c).
Enforcement
The section names no enforcing body, penalty or private right of action (§ 16-104-1).
Licence
The corpus reproduces R.I. Gen. Laws § 16-104-1 verbatim from the Rhode Island General Assembly's statutes service, by way of the Internet Archive's unmodified replay of that page.
Statute text enacted by a state legislature is outside copyright under the government edicts doctrine. In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255 (2020) (slip opinion), the Supreme Court held that "officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official duties". The section page (webserver.rilegislature.gov … 16-104-1.htm, read 2026-10-08 through its Internet Archive id_ capture) carries no copyright notice or terms.
Conditions: none. The corpus names the source in Sources and the route in the section's {.meta} provenance line.
Related
- Rhode Island — Student Social Media Privacy (ch. 16-103) — the preceding chapter of Title 16, binding the educational institution
- Kentucky KRS 365.734 — the 2014 cloud-computing statute of the same design, with a narrower purpose limitation that allows service improvement
- California SOPIPA — the broader operator model
- FERPA — the federal education-records layer