CREN Information Center CREN NET_USE October 3, 1990
Suite 600, 1112 Sixteenth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036 (202) 872-4200
Corporation for Research and Educational Networking
Acceptable Use Policy
CREN networks are for the use of persons legitimately affiliated with
CREN Member or Affiliate organizations, to facilitate the exchange of
information consistent with the academic, educational and research purposes
of its members. All individuals affiliated with CREN Member or Affiliate
organizations are responsible for seeing that their communities are aware
of these guidelines, and that the guidelines are followed, both in letter
and in spirit.
CREN networks are, at the discretion of the institutions involved,
open to use by students enrolled at participating CREN Member or Affiliate
educational institutions.
Use of CREN networks shall:
* Be consistent with the purposes and goals of the networks
* Avoid interfering with the work of other users of the
networks
* Avoid disrupting the network host systems (nodes)
* Avoid disrupting network services
Acceptable Use of the Networks
The following examples may help users of the networks apply these
principles in particular cases.
* Messages that are likely to result in the loss of recipients'
work or systems are prohibited.
* CREN networks are not to be used for commercial purposes, such
as marketing, reselling bandwith, or business transactions
between commercial organizations.
* Advertising is forbidden. Discussion of a product's relative
advantages and disadvantages by users of the product is
encouraged. Vendors may respond to questions about their
products as long as the responses are not in the nature of
advertising.
* CREN networks may be used for the provision of services which
support the needs and purposes of the CREN networks, and for
which a charge is made, if the network is an optional mechanism
for provision of this service for which no additional charge is
made, and as long as the use of the service is consistent with
the bandwidth of the network and the forwarding hosts.
Providers of such information may be non-profit or for-profit
organizations.
* Any communication which violates applicable laws and regulations
is not allowed.*
Users of CREN networks are expected to be responsible in their use:
* "Chain letters," "broadcasting" messages to lists or
individuals, and other types of use which would cause congestion
of the networks or otherwise interfere with the work of others
are not allowed.
* Bitnet files will be limited to sizes determined and reviewed
periodically. (Note: The current limit is 300,000 bytes per
file transmitted.)
CREN Members or Affiliates are expected to take reasonable measures
(given the constraints of technology and management) to ensure that traffic
using gateways between CREN networks and other networks conforms to these
guidelines.
Final authority for CREN acceptable use policies lies with the CREN
Board. It is the responsibility of member representatives to contact the
CREN Board, in writing, regarding questions of interpretation. Until such
issues are resolved, questionable use should be considered "not
acceptable."
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* In particular, messages and data sent to destinations outside the US
must satisfy the Department of Commerce regulations (either be within
the GTDA guidelines for information which may be generally
transmitted or have the required license).
