GMM agenda: February 5, 2013

Tuesday 11:30 – 1:30, Vari Hall D

Agenda

1. Cloud Computing: James Turk, Executive Director, Canadian Association of University Teachers [powerpoint]

Google is aggressively seeking to have universities “migrate” their email services to Google — offering this service for free and emphasizing that the institutions will save money, save staff time and make their faculty and students happy. Discussions are occurring presently between Google and York’s administration.

Google’s “too good to be true” offer should be refused. The dangers for faculty are many and serious. The agreement the University would have to sign to transfer services to Google (1) will subject to US anti-terrorism law all email, records and documents sent or received by faculty, (2) will assert the University has ownership of the intellectual property of all the transmitted material, (3) will hold Google harmless for any corruption or loss of data and records, (4) will allow Google to terminate the service at any time, and (5) will leave the only recourse for a dissatisfied faculty member wanting to take legal action to pursue it in a specified American county’s courts under that state’s laws.

The talk will explore the details of Google contracts with the handful of universities that have “migrated” their faculty email to Google and will provide more details on the reasons faculty should oppose any such arrangement at York.

2. Pension Plan Update

For background information, please see: Issues -> Pension Plan Solvency Relief