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EU Will Not Divulge Microsoft Contracts

Posted by kdawson on from the move-along-no-public-interest-here dept.

Elektroschock writes "Marco Cappato, a Liberal member of the European Parliament, wanted to inspect the EU's contracts with Microsoft. His request was denied. '...the [divulging] of [this] information could jeopardize the protection of commercial interest of Microsoft.' Apparently the European Council sees no clear public interest in the release of such contractual material, and so 'the Secretariat general concludes that the protection of Microsoft's commercial interests, being one of the commercial partners of the European institutions, prevails on the [divulging] for the public interest.'"

6 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What Rights? by rbanffy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anything that involves public money and is not a matter of national (or continental, in this case) security should be open to scrutiny.

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    http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
  2. Re:What Rights? by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    However it is the right of governments to decide what they make public and not. And for my American friends remember that we have a different view on things like this, usually European governments are MORE open than the US.

    The idea that governments have rights is absurd. People have rights. The people have delegated certain tasks to government for their own convenience, and have accepted limits on some minimal subset of their rights so that society can best protect the rest. Note that "society" is not the same as "the government"; the government is just a mechanism used by society to accomplish certain specific things.

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    -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
  3. Re:What Rights? by orielbean · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Rights of governments? The people give rights to the government in order to serve the people, not the paternalistic other way around. Government exists to serve the people. Where do you think the money to pay MS comes from? It's like your dad taking money from your trust fund, giving it to you, then telling you that it is your allowance that you earned! The money is the public's money. We agree to let the government protect us from harm and so we allow state secrets to exist in order that our common enemies do not use that information to avoid detection. Everything else that does not fall into that narrow category should be exposed to sunlight and competition. This is a simple paternalistic monopoly protection scheme for MS.

  4. Re:Not in their interest? by pclminion · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not in the public interest to know how much public money MSFT is getting and for what?

    That's not what is being claimed. The information IS in the public interest -- the argument is that Microsoft's commercial interest is MORE IMPORTANT than the public interest. Which I think is even worse-sounding that what you said.

  5. More and more... by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Almost EVERYTHING governments do is not in the public interest.

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    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
  6. Re:European Parliament by pejyel · · Score: 5, Informative

    When has the European Parliament and the public interest ever coincided?

    Hum let me think ...
    When it voted against the 3-strikes law for downloaders?
    When it voted against software patents?
    When it voted for restrictions on the use of radioactive weapons?
    The EU Parliament can really hardly be criticized, except for the fact that it doesn't have that much power, which in my opinion is a real pity. Go troll elsewhere.

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