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IP: So you want to understand it ... .NET and the fourth amendment
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 15:23:24 -0400
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 11:59:41 -0700 From: Dennis Allison <allison () shasta Stanford EDU> To: dave () farber net, farber () cis upenn edu Subject: Re: IP: .NET and the fourth amendment Cc: allison () stanford edu Dave, In reference to Connie Guglielmo's posting:In Microsoft Do You Trust? By Connie Guglielmo and Doug Brown, Interactive Week April 16, 2001 12:00 AM ETIP'ers might want to listen to the examination of Microsoft's Passport Terms of Use agreement given by Jack Russo (Russo & Hale, LLP, Palo Alto). The original Terms of Use posted on the Passport site was outrageous and resulted in a boomlet of criticism. It was withdrawn silently on April 4, 2001 in the United States but apparently remains in use elsewhere. Apparently, the language preference a user sets is used to guess his/her country and determines the particular Terms of Use agreement seen. Terms of Use for the rest of the world continues with the same outrageous "Microsoft owns all bits passing through" wording. Russo spent much of his talk examining the new Terms of Use and found fifteen significant flaws. A free video version of the talk is available on-line from http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380 or through http://online.stanford.edu. Viewing requires Microsoft Media Player :-); downloads for Windows, Macintosh, and Solaris are available at the online.stanford.edu site. Microsoft was invited to participate in the discussion of their Terms of Use for the Passport site, but try as they might, given a one week lead-time, they could not find anyone who could explain this critical contractual document either in person at the colloquium or via speakerphone. I found this surprising, since this document is supposed so clear and understandable that an individual, untrained in the nuiances of legal wording, can read and grok the contents and its implications. Microsoft flak, Tom Pilla, spend considerable time feeding me sound bytes and explaining that the posted Terms of User were "outdated" and had been replaced, but acknowledged that they had been posted and had, presumably, been in force for some period of time. He did not answer my direct question about what sort and level of corporate review the legal documents associated with a website receive. I personally cannot imagine a corporation of Microsoft's stature not having the Terms of Use contractual documents reviewed at the very highest level. Pilla stated that Microsoft planned to incorporate "Passport technology" into the .NET and Hailstorm products, but since the latter were not yet available, the Terms of Use for today's Passport did not apply to the future products. When asked whether a reasonable person might expect that the current Passport Terms of Use to be indicative of the Terms of Use Microsoft might use for the .NET and Hailstorm products he dodged the question saying that Microsoft was not shipping the .NET and Hailstorm products and that they would have their own terms of use. Microsoft gave a number of interviews and press briefings on Passport Terms of Use issue, but prepared nothing written (no White Papers, no press releases). The email I received were mostly limited to "please call me" so that all technical interactions were by telephone and blessed with plausible deniability. Dennis Allison Organizer, Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium Stanford University
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- IP: So you want to understand it ... .NET and the fourth amendment David Farber (Apr 20)