Durham University IT services regulations

[fanf]

Some amusing or odd features:

• Blasphemy and racism are forbidden, along with the usual porn. This probably covers some fortune(1) jokes.
• You can get permission to look at porn for research purposes, but there is no such exemption for reverse engineering software (so no software security research).
• You are not allowed to "access, download, store, or process" comercial spam, or anything that causes "annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety".
• Durham ITS takes a cut of research grants which have provision for computing costs.
• Durham claims all "intellectual property" you create and must be involved in any commercial exploitation.
• For the purpose of these regulations, "any remote IT facilities are deemed to be [Durham] University IT facilities".

Comments

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

You are not allowed to "access, download, store, or process" comercial spam

I take it they have infallible filters on the mailhubs, then. Otherwise you don't get a lot of choice.

Durham claims all "intellectual property" you create and must be involved in any commercial exploitation.

We have that. It's a bugger when you want to do a bit of freelance.

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

Their process for allowing Internet access to guest computers seems a little odd, too. It appears that they have a magic intercepting proxy that waits to see your computer update its antivirus definitions before you are allowed unfettered access. Bit of a bummer if you're using Linux!

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

Presumably you could wget http://www.norton.com/virusdefs or similar...

(S)

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

yep - there was a list of "approved" antivirus products on the wall, but life was too short for me to guess URLs, and I had a temporary login for the university's terminal room PCs, so I used that instead...

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

Do they actually enforce the blasphemy thing?

(S)

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Yeah that really is shocking isn't it? Are such restrictions legal?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Given that blasphemy is illegal anyway, it'd be hard to see why it would be.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Is blasphemy of any kind illegal?

[korenwolf.livejournal.com]

Only against the Christian religion in the UK, hence the plans to bring in the religious discrimination bill.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Do they actually forbid "racism" as opposed to racist abuse or incitement to racial hatred or whatever?

[edith-the-hutt.livejournal.com]

I thought that was usually worded along the lines of things which some members of the university may find offensive these days.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

That sounds frighteningly arbitrary. I hope that there are at least get-out clauses for allowing quoting of racist material without endorsement.

[fanf]

Nope!

[naath.livejournal.com]

I guess no-one at Durham studies, say, WWII then, or the slave trade. Bummer for the history department really.

[(Anonymous)]

For the purpose of these regulations, "any remote IT facilities are deemed to be [Durham] University IT facilities".
and
Durham claims all "intellectual property" you create and must be involved in any commercial exploitation.

must surely conflict in interesting ways...

[murkee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I noticed that.


(This comment is the intellectual property of the Durham University IT Facilities)

[korenwolf.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much of it is actually enforceable if someone decided to argue the toss and take the legal route. There are certainly bits which could easily fail a "reasonableness" test.