How do Microsoft's Content Policies apply to self-hosted data managed with Azure Arc?

Question

This is a complex question that has been extremely hard for our company to get a definite answer to. We have been repeatedly either ignored or redirected to Microsoft Partners who have no idea what we are talking about.

In summary, how do Microsoft's Microsoft Services Agreement, Microsoft Customer Agreement, and any Acceptable Use Policies apply to data stored on our own servers but managed with Azure Arc?

To be upfront, we're a small company that hosts and produces illustrated adult content. Our company would like to expand parts of itself to the cloud where it can, but overwhelmingly we've found that the Acceptable Use Policies of almost every single cloud provider out there explicitly forbid the hosting of our content as it is considered 'obscene' or fits into some other vague prohibited category. Microsoft included.

Around a year ago, we were able to get in contact with a Microsoft 'Cloud Technical Expert' who was able to answer our questions about Microsoft 365, OneDrive, and to some extent Microsoft Azure. In short, we were told that, as long as the content was legal and not disruptive, Microsoft would be willing to host our content but we would not be able to publicly publish or share our content in any way that connects it back to Microsoft. This includes, for example, hosting a website and having it ping back to Microsoft's IP space. Or sharing an image from OneDrive to the public, such as embedding it in a link on a website. Around this time we were unaware of Azure Arc or what services it provided.

Forward to today, we learned about the capabilities of Azure Arc to allow us to use Azure software to manage machines and host data located in-house or on an external provider.
Would websites or databases managed with Azure Arc ping back to Microsoft's IP space? Because I would think that they would not.
How would Microsoft's content and use policies apply this sort of data? Would the type of data we process put us at risk of violating Microsoft's policies and having our service disrupted even if it is hosted in-house?

If someone knowledgeable on this complex issue could answer this question, or help us get in contact with someone who can answer this sort of question, it would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I recently received to following response to my query.