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  It was withdrawn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bytes and explaining that the posted Terms of User were "outdated" and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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