IP: So you want to understand it ... .NET and the fourth amendment

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> 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 ET
>
> IP'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  It was withdrawn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 bytes and explaining that the posted Terms of User were "outdated" and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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