April 11, 2001, 3:10 PM —
Wallace Stevens was famous for writing poetry that can be difficult to grok. As a poet, he gave us many gems, among them a poem called "The Sense of the Sleight-of-hand Man." On one level, that poem seems to me to say that if one can imagine something, it can happen. The Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act (UCITA) says something very similar. UCITA says that if a large software publisher can imagine terms more favorable to itself than to the customer, it can make them real. The poem is art. UCITA is a crime against consumers.
Those who favor the act say that it offers protection to both consumers and vendors, and that it provides a common rule of law for all the states so that the computer software industry can thrive in the electronic age. Both arguments are rubbish. UCITA seeks to take back rights under contract law that consumers have already battled for and won. And for anyone who believes a new law is necessary to make the software business profitable, I invite you to inspect the obscene profits earned by Microsoft over each of the past 10 years.
Terms of disservice
UCITA is 50 pages of legalese that twists and turns like a drunken serpent trying to weave itself into a welcome mat. Virginia and Maryland have already passed it into law, and now Texas is considering doing the same. More on the battle for UCITA in Texas later. First, let me present an example (starring none other than Microsoft) of the sort of behavior UCITA allows from large software vendors. It captures the defining essence of the bill and clearly demonstrates the consequences it portends.
Microsoft's Passport Website, a portal that stores the private and financial information needed for consumers to make purchases on the Internet -- makes a bold promise for security and privacy. Its homepage proclaims, "Your Passport is protected by powerful online security technology and a strict privacy policy. You control which sites access it." (See Resources for a link.)
But that is a lie. The problem is that Microsoft doesn't keep the promise of privacy it makes up front. Under UCITA, altering the terms of the contract in this way is legal. In the case of Passport, those terms are obliterated.
The Passport Terms of Use are found on a different page from the one on which the privacy statement appears. I can't even find a link to them from the page where the promise of privacy is made. The terms stipulate that when you send anything to or through Passport, "you are granting Microsoft and its affiliated companies permission to ... use, modify, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, publish, sublicense, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any such communication."
That's a pretty strict privacy policy, alright. Microsoft alone has the right to do whatever it pleases with your personal material. And that's true for all the mail you send on Hotmail and all the messages you send with Messenger, as well.
Some of you may be protesting my statements about Hotmail and MSN. Microsoft's rights apply only to the Passport Website, right? Well, not exactly. Microsoft redefines the term "Passport Website" in the Terms of Use. Follow the pea, Grasshopper. The Terms of Use begin, "The Microsoft Passport Web Site is comprised of a Web site and its associated services and is operated by Microsoft Corporation ('Microsoft')." Elsewhere on the site (see Resources for a link) MSN Messenger, Hotmail, and MoneyCentral are identified as "Passport Sites." Are you beginning to get the sense of the sleight-of-hand going on here?
