Tuesday, December 24, 2002|
Merry Christmas everyone! Have a fun and safe holiday. 9:39:42 PM  comment []
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Microsoft subverts sunshine laws at state colleges. Lawmeme reports that state colleges, which are often bound by freedom-of-information-act-like provisions that require them to disclose their contractual obligations to the public who fund them, are being forced to keep their deals with MSFT secret due to non-disclosure terms.
For a yearly fee, an educational institution receives the right to sell Microsoft software at a nominal fee to it's students and employees. However, as part the of the license agreement, Microsoft has been stipulating that the terms of the contract be kept under non-disclosure. Public institutions covered by public records laws are clearly unable to abide by such terms. There are very few exemptions to the disclosure requirements of these laws. Indeed, non-competitive contracts with convicted monopolists would seem to be expressly what these laws should allow to be exposed. Surprisingly, a number of public universities have been signing off on these non-disclosure terms in apparent breach of their state's public records laws. For example, both the University of Michigan and The Ohio State University claim that they are unable to disclose substantive details of their respective Microsoft licenses due to contract terms.
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John Anderson
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Last update: 9/3/03; 7:59:56 PM .
Last update: 9/3/03; 7:59:56 PM .
