Outsourcing contracts: Six suggested clauses
July 5, 2008
In researching something, I happened upon an article in CIO Magazine from March 2007: "Outsourcing Contracts: Clause Control," by Stephanie Overby. The article talks about several clauses that outsourcing customers might want in their service contracts:
- Benchmarking - the right to renegotiate pricing if a benchmark survey shows that the contract pricing is significantly above market
- Most favored customer [ugh]
- Cost-plus pricing
- In-sourcing / re-sourcing right
- Continuous improvement
- Mandatory reference - the outsourcer must use the customer as a reference at least X times a year
Don’t Even Think About Accessing
Computer Data Without Permission
December 19, 2003
This AP story reports that an employee of a market-intelligence company pleaded guilty to federal charges of obtaining unauthorized access to a customer’s computer files. The files included passwords and personal data of the customer’s own customers. The market-intelligence employee reportedly downloaded the data to CDs and stored it at his house, just because he liked to have it — he didn’t use it for criminal or commercial purposes.
The employee is being held without bond, pending sentencing in about two months. He faces up to five years in federal prison.
Bandwidth Management to Keep Copyright Police Away
December 9, 2003
It’s said that a non-trivial portion of the Internet bandwidth consumed by businesses is taken up by illegal employee downloading of music and video files. This ComputerWorld column suggests that businesses can reduce their risks of being targeted by the record industry, video industry, etc. — and reduce costs too — by deploying bandwidth-management software:
How Much Would Actual Subscriptions Have Cost?
October 13, 2003
MSNBC reported last week that money-management firm Legg Mason was hit with a $20 million jury verdict for copyright infringement, for internally distributing a stock-market newsletter when they had only paid for a single subscription. Thanks to TechLawAdvisor for the tip.
Music Industry Could Go After
Your Company for File-Swapping
August 19, 2003
You’ve probably heard about the controversy over the music industry’s battle against Internet song-swappers. In a recent letter to a U.S. senator, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America pledged that “RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted music.” See Reuters story.
Suppose that your employees were surreptitiously swapping songs, not just with their home computers, but with your company’s servers. Now suppose that RIAA were to discover that fact — possibly because of a whistleblower within your company. RIAA might view your company as a tempting target for a copyright-infringement lawsuit, with the intent of making your company into a very public example. (Software industry groups such as the Business Software Alliance have done much the same thing with their anti-piracy campaigns.)