Boulder Community Network Policy

BCN Management Structure and Policies

1. The BCN Management Team reserves the right to make any policy decisions necessary to ensure that the BCN project is in line with the goals of the University and the other community organizations participating in BCN.
2. BCN endorses the following American Library Association statements on access to information and their logical extension to on-line information:
   • Library Bill Of Rights

   • Freedom To Read Statement

   • Freedom To View Statement

3. In the case of both information stored on the BCN system and information accessible via BCN but stored on other non-BCN systems, ultimate editorial and publishing responsibilities lie with the specific groups and organizations providing the information (the Information Providers).
4. Initially, BCN will concentrate its limited resources on information of a clearly non-profit, community-oriented nature, although we may seek out information of particular interest from other sources. We will be evaluating this issue on an ongoing basis, and reserve the right to include for-profit groups and information as deemed appropriate in the future.
5. The Management Team reserves the right to deny BCN posting priviliges to any group or organization that do not meet the BCN Information Provider Criteria (under development).
6. Initially, interactive communication via BCN will be limited to the capability to send comments to BCN administration and other participating community organizations. In the future, we may explore the possibility of providing "bulletin board" discussion capabilities for local issues.
7. Our target audience is Boulder County residents; to ensure that all residents have priority access to BCN, we hope to restrict future dial-in lines to only Boulder County usage. Since BCN is on the Internet, those outside Boulder County can access BCN through the Internet and not tie up the modem lines.
8. The Internet can be used by the general public for a wide variety of purposes. This policy statement attempts to categorize the various services that can be provided and identify priorities from a community information provider standpoint so that limited dollars can be used most effectively. E.g. we don't want people to be unable to access basic local information because lots of other people are telecommuting or using "chat" services from public kiosks and dial-up lines.

   
       Here are the relevant "Service categories", in priority order:
   	Information browsing (read-only, usually no account or password)
   		Local World Wide Web resources - "community information"
   		Global World Wide Web resources - http, ftp, gopher, nntp
   		Local telnet information browsing sources (provided by other
   		   organizations, with their own access methods provided)
   
   	A login server which provides user accounts
   		For bulletin board read-write access
   		For email
   		For chat services
   
   	Full telnet access to full interactive services operated by
   	other "login service" providers (leaves the door open for
   	telecommuting, etc.)
   
       BCN has finite resources.  Some of the lowest priority, least
       "cost effective" (information per dollar) services are the most
       popular:
   	chat, bulletin boards, email
   
       Providing these popular communications services is also most
       likely to duplicate services provided by the private sector.
   
       Providing and supporting individual user accounts and passwords
       also requires many more resources than providing free anonymous
       service.
   
       Note also that within both the local and global WWW resource
       categories, some information (e.g. large downloadable movies)
       might be viewed as having lower priority than other information
       (e.g. bus schedules or proposed legislation).
   
   
       Policy for priority heirarchy of services:
   	Patron access to services with higher priority should not be
   	impeded by the provision and use of services with lower
   	priority.
   
       Implementation proposal:
   	Pick a set of "high priority" services to which we can provide
   	unimpeded access via existing funding or, if desired, via user
   	fees.  Optionally pick an additional set of lower priority
   	services for which we do not expect to be able to fund
   	unimpeded access to everyone, and which we will provide via
   	different terminals and/or dial-in lines.
   
   	Based on usage information, re-adjust priorities and the split
   	between the services.
   
          

9. Telnet-to-lynx gateway policies
   • No support for outgoing telnet (too difficult to prevent abuse, e.g. telecommuting).
   • No access to the "goto URL" command (allows us to better focus on high-priority local information). Is this necessary?
   • Try to find a way to provide read-only access to netnews. (Does this require modifications to lynx?)
   To do: 1 Develop Information Provider "contract" or agreement letter so stating.

   2 Develop an initial set of criteria.