Ethical Use of Computing Resources

As a student you are probably aware of certain ethical responsibilities you have, such as honesty in doing class- work. Another area in which you have important ethical responsibilities is in your use of computing resources. This document describes some of these responsibilities and explains ICS Department policy on student use of computing resources. Some of these policies might be different from what you would expect, so please read over and understand this document.

The ICS department provides for you, the student, a wide range of computing resources from X-Terminals to PC's to large multiuser UNIX systems. These machines are expensive to buy and expensive to maintain, but it is our goal to provide you with the very best computing environment that we can. Many users depend on these computers for doing class assignments, research, and for communications. We are a community of computer users, and like any community we can all make the best use of our resources if we establish some guidelines for how we can use them responsibly.

Some computing facilities, such as those which hold classified data, may establish expensive and complex security systems. In our department we do not do this; we have some security mechanisms which greatly decrease the risk that one user will accidentally interfere with another, but it does not require great ingenuity to get around these mechanisms. As a result, we need to trust the people who use our machines.

The fundamental principle behind our policies is this: While using the computers, you should never do anything that harms another user or prevents him or her from getting work done.

If you have any questions about these rules, or if you suspect that an account (your's or someone else's) has been broken into, please contact the ICS Computing Support Group. To do this, send mail to the address support, or go to Support's office, CS346, and explain the problem.

The ICS Department has a wide range of computers available, located in several different labs. Some of these labs are open only to people enrolled in certain classes, some are available for general drop-in use. Each ICS major is given both an NT account, and a UNIX account on the Sun workstations. Different courses will require different platforms to be used. Non-majors will be given accounts only if required for a course in which they are enrolled.

All ICS computers are to be used only by ICS students, faculty, and staff. People outside ICS who wish to use computers should go see the people in the Office of Academic Computing (Engineering Gateway, room 2130). They provide computing for non-ICS people.

Any computer account created for you remains the property of the Regents of the University of California. You are responsible for this account, and you may not allow any other person to use it. The primary purpose of your account is to allow you to carry out your computing assignments and other instructional activities. You may also make modest use of these resources for other purposes, such as sending electronic mail to friends on campus, reading the electronic bulletin boards, and playing games, provided that this usage does not significantly interfere with instructional use of the machines.

An example of how one might “significantly interfere” would be be to tie up a computer for game-playing when no other computers are free and someone else is waiting to use the computer to do an assignment. If you have a game or other program you would like to make available to other users, please give it to the system administrator for public installation (You can contact the system administrator by sending mail to support). You may not use the machines for commercial purposes, such as preparing bills for your company or advertising products, or for work related to non-UCI organizations, such as an off-campus political or religious group. More details about this are given below. If you are in doubt about whether some use of the machines is allowed, ask the Support Group.

Here is a list of some examples of activities that the department does not allow. If a student makes such unethical use of ICS computers, he/she will be subject to the penalties described in the Disciplinary Procedures section.

• You may not introduce viruses, worms, Trojan horses, password cracking or login spoofing programs on any University computer or network. In fact, because of the serious damage such programs can cause, the ICS Department faculty have adopted a policy which forbids students even to have these types of programs in their accounts or to place them onto any Department computer; you may not store such a program on a departmental computer even if you only wish to study it.

• You may not try to use equipment or accounts that you are not allowed to use.

• You may not interfere with others' ability to make use of the resources. For example, it might be reasonable to lock a terminal if you need to leave the room for two or three minutes, but it is not reasonable to lock it while you leave to buy lunch. Another example would be doing something that ties up all or a significant fraction of the machine, thus preventing others from receiving their fair share.

• You may not destroy other people's work.

• You may not “spy” on people, that is, you may not attempt to gain information from their accounts or from their diskettes when there is good reason to believe that they do not wish you to obtain that information. This includes both attempting to violate the protection facilities provided by the system and also taking deliberate advantage of someone else's failure to protect sensitive information on their account. This works both ways. For example, it would be unethical for a faculty member or Support Group member to browse through your personal messages just out of curiosity, even if they have a security level that allows them to do so; we agree to respect your privacy. We do, however, retain the right to inspect material on your account when this is necessary to investigate a suspected violation of university rules, such as a cheating incident or a violation of the rules in this document.

• You may not send mail that appears to come from someone else.

• You may not advertise any commercial products or use your account to earn money. Non-commercial things like posting your used car advertisement on ics.market are permitted, though. If for some reason you need an account that can be used for commercial purposes, see the Office of Academic Computing.

• You may not display offensive material in any publicly accessible area. There are materials available on the Internet and elsewhere that some members of the ICS community will find offensive. (One example is sexually explicit graphics; another is political argument on such issues as abortion.) ICS and the University are committed to maintaining the free and open exchange of ideas as well as a non-offensive working environment. Thus, ICS does not restrict the availability of potentially offensive material, but ICS does regard as unethical conduct the display of such material in any publicly accessible area, including on terminal screens in public terminal rooms and in computer labs.

• You may not use the computers' printers as copying machines. For example, you may not print out one hun dred copies of a report; instead, print out one copy of the report and use a copying machine to obtain the other 99.

What happens if you violate any of these rules? It depends on the seriousness of the offense, but could be one or more of the following. Disciplinary procedures and sanctions will be consistent with those outlined in the UCI Implementation of “Interrim Policies and Procedures Applying to Campus Activities, Organizations, and Students, Part A.”

1. You may have to meet with the chair of the Computing Resources Committee (CRC), the chair of the ICS Depart ment, or the manager of the ICS Support Group to dis cuss abuse of computing resources.
2. Your account may be locked. (Again, we recognize an obligation to respect your rights as well. No student account will be locked without discussion and approval of the chair of ICS, or the chair of the CRC, except in the case of security violations. It would not be ethical for us to lock your account capriciously; for example, we agree not to lock it simply because you send a message to a bboard expressing disagreement with some Department policy or action.)
3. For minor infractions, some form of departmental services (e.g., cleaning the screens on terminals) may be requested in exchange for unlocking the account.
4. For offenses involving abusing computing resources, cheating on course related work, or preventing others from working on assignments, your grade may be lowered in the class or you may receive a failing grade.
5. For severe offenses, or repeating minor offenses, you may lose access to all ICS computing facilities for a period of time. Access to computing can be denied for a limited time (e.g., one week, the remainder of the quarter, an entire quarter) or permanently.
6. You may be suspended or dismissed from the University.
7. In serious cases your name and a description of the violation may be reported to the police. California Penal Code Section 502 makes certain computer abuses a crime, and penalties can range up to a $10,000 fine and up to three years in prison.

Your cooperation in the following areas will help us make efficient use of the computing resources and will avoid unnecessary impositions on the time of faculty, staff, and other students. These are not the sort of things which we can expect to enforce rigidly; rather, we are asking your cooperation for the benefit of the whole departmental community. Violations of these guidelines would not ordinarily result in any of the penalties listed above beyond number one, unless they were especially flagrant or persist after faculty or staff have asked you to stop.

1. Please be careful not to use the computer to annoy people, for example by sending them messages which they do not wish to receive. (The mail system makes it rather easy to send a message to a very large group of people; please be responsible in your use of this capability. In particular, when you reply to a message sent to a large group, avoid cc'ing your reply to the entire group unless it is a matter of interest to them.)
2. Please do not waste anything (i.e., paper, disk space, CPU time, people time, etc.). Please put your old printouts in the recycling bins.

Some of these polices are adapted from those used by the UCLA CS Department. They adapted some of their polices from Columbia University and the California Institute of Technology.