Price George Freenet - Miscellaneous Policies

COMMAND LINE ACCOUNTS

The following policy was adopted at the Dec. l3, 1994 meeting of the P.G. Free-Net Association Board.

THAT command line accounts will be issued only to

• 1. current Board members
• 2. Content committee members, who need to evaluate external resources
• 3. Technical committee members, who need to maintain the system; and
• 4. Those Information Providers who need command line access in order to contribute their information or otherwise fulfill their function as an Information Provider.

AND THAT command line accounts will be de-activated
a month after the person is no longer involved in #1-4 above. Advance notification will be given to the person, before the account is de-activated.

CONTENT COMMITTEE GUIDELINES

For more information, please contact: pgfn-content@freenet.unbc.edu

THE COMMITTEE

The Content Committee of the P.G. Free-Net Association is made up of:

• - 3 members of the Association's Board of Directors Directors are elected at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Association. At the first Board meeting after the AGM, 3 Directors are assigned to be on the Content Committee, one of whom is appointed to chair the Committee as Vice-President, Content.
• - a number of members-at-large of the Association (with the number to be determined by the Vice-President, Content, based on projects, tasks to be completed) Applications to be on the Committee are accepted at the AGM and members are appointed to the Committee at the first Committee meeting after the AGM. Applications can be submitted to the Vice-President, Content between AGMs to fill any vacancies on the Committee.

A list of current Content Committee members can be found in Free-Net Headquarters / About the P.G. Free-Net / Current Board and Committees.

AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY

The Content Committee performs what in a public library would be deemed the acquisition function, with respect to deliberately selected material presented on the P.G. Free-Net (PGFN).

The Committee also solicits, researches and organizes the presentation of both local and third party content accessible via PGFN.

ACQUISITION FUNCTION

It is the role of the Content Committee to decide whether any particular material is appropriate, and to approve or disapprove applications for the inclusion of material.

In making its decisions, the Content Committee shall refer to the following principles:

• 1) "Content" consumes PGFN resources (such as disk space, bandwidth or volunteer hours) which makes it impossible to provide all material desired by all parties.
• 2) The most appropriate material is that most conducive to public education, well-being, community building, health, safety, personal development or other public spirited goals. This does not prohibit approval of material primarily concerned with the transaction of business by a local information provider nor material primarily concerned with entertainment, provided those responsible adhere to information provider guidelines.
• 3) The Committee honours Canadian trademark and copyright laws. Copyrighted material posted on the Free-Net without the author's consent will be deleted and the poster will be subject to disciplinary action as outlined in 5(c) below.
• 4) The Committee respects the principle of freedom of information. In particular, the responsibility of deciding what material on PGFN an individual exposes him/herself to rests with that individual.
• 5) The Committee respects the sensibilities of users, funders and the community at large in ruling on the appropriateness of material which would be widely deemed to be offensive, threatening or characterized as hate literature. Such material is referred to in the following statements as "inappropriate."

• In particular, the Committee shall:
• a) deny requests for direct access to inappropriate material via menu options, supported newsgroups, and other locally configured settings of PGFN;
• b) hear complaints from users, funders and other stakeholders wishing to report inappropriate material accessed via PGFN;
• c) rule on suspension or termination of the PGFN account of any user foisting the presentation of inappropriate material on unwilling parties or posting it inappropriately in public areas, when such behaviour is reported to the committee. In such cases, the user will receive a warning and/or temporary suspension, and be given an opportunity to discuss the situation with the Committee.
• d) take reasonable precautions against the inclusion of inappropriate material supplied by third parties over Internet connections. Reasonable precautions will take into consideration:
  • i) the accessibility (i.e. obviousness) of inappropriate material following linkage to the third party service, including how hard users would have to look in order to find it, whether it could easily be found by accident, etc.
  • ii) the degree of inappropriateness of the material
  • iii) the technical feasibility and/or general practicality of blocking access without seriously limiting desirable content
  • iv) the value of the third party service

GUEST vs REGISTERED USER PRIVILEGES

This is a quick list of decisions relating to guest privileges made by the Board and Content Committee to date (Nov. 15/94)

GUESTS

• - are limited to 30 min. per login (registered users have 60 min.)
• - can read local information but cannot connect from the menu to any external site (e.g. GOPHER, WWW, TELNET including telnet to local sites such as UNBC, CNC, etc.)
• - can read local forums but cannot post to them (this is to prevent irresponsible postings under the anonymous username 'guest' We want to encourage postings from people who are willing to identify themselves and take responsibility for what they say)
• - cannot read or post to Usenet newsgroups
• - cannot use e-mail services or local chat features (when implemented) as a whole.

APPEALS

Appeals will be heard first by the Content Committee itself, and if satisfaction is still not obtained by the appealing individual or organization, brought through the President of the P.G. Free-Net Association to the attention of the Board as a whole. Where the Board ruling is not unanimous, the Board may decide to bring the appeal to the attention of the general membership of the Assocation at the next AGM or a vote conducted on the PGFN.