Ulster County Community College Technology Policy
AppendixLocal, state and federal laws referenced in document
Any activity that is illegal is a violation of UCCC policy. Alleged violations will be referred to the appropriate campus official. In addition, offenders may be investigated and/or prosecuted by the appropriate local, state or federal authorities.
Child pornography
Child pornography, material that depicts minors in a sexually explicit way, is illegal. Under the federal child pornography statute (18 USC section 2252), anyone under the age of 18 is a minor. States also have child pornography statues and the age of minority varies by state. Knowingly uploading or downloading child pornography is a federal offense. It is also illegal to advertise or seek the sale, exchange, reproduction or distribution of child pornography. Lewd exhibition of genitals can constitute sexual conduct and therefore, any graphic files containing images of naked children could violate the federal child pornography statute.
Distribution of pornography to minors,br> Possession of non-obscene adult pornography is legal, but it is illegal to distribute to minors.
Obscenity
Obscenity is illegal. Virtually every state and municipality has a statute prohibiting the sale and distribution of obscenity, and the federal government prohibits its interstate transportation. The Supreme Court in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, (1973), narrowed the permissible scope of obscenity statutes and applied this three part test to determine constitutionality: (a) whether the average person applying contemporary community standard would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way sexual conduct specifically defined in applicable state law; and (c) whether the work taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
The contemporary community standard is historically the standard of the community in which the material exists. Many on-line activists argue that the contemporary community standard in cases that arise on-line ought to be determined by the on-line community. However, a federal prosecution of a California couple that offered a members-only bulletin board service, concentrating on pornography, resulted in a conviction of the California couple under the federal obscenity statute and Tennessee community standards. In that case a postal worker in Memphis downloaded some material from this California bulletin board service. See United States v. Thomas, 1996 U.S. App. LEXIS 1069 (6th Cir. Jan. 29,1996).
Scams and pyramid schemes
Beware of money-making "opportunities" on the Internet. A common scam is the pyramid scheme. You get an email message with a subject like "MAKE MONEY FAST" and it instructs you to send money to the people on the list and then add your name to the bottom of the list and send it on to some number of people. This is considered chain mail, but it is also illegal under 18 U.S.C section 1302. The US Postal Service and the Federal Trade Commission provide information to help individuals identify scams and report them. Pyramid schemes that use US Postal mail to send money are considered mail fraud and can be reported to the USPS.
Copyright infringement
Almost all forms of original expression that are fixed in a tangible medium are subject to copyright protection, even if no formal copyright notice is attached. Written text (including email messages and news posts), recorded sound, digital images, and computer software are some examples of works that can be copyrighted. Unless otherwise specified by contract, the employer generally holds the copyright for work done by an employee in the course of employment.
Copyright holders have many rights, including the right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, display, and perform their work. Reproducing, displaying or distributing copyrighted material without permission infringes on the copyright holder's rights. However, "fair use" applies in some cases. If a small amount of the work is used in a non-commercial situation and does not economically impact the copyright holder it may be considered fair use. For example, quoting some passages from a book in a report for a class assignment would be considered fair use. Linking to another web page from your web page is not usually considered infringement. However, copying some of the contents of another web page into yours or use of video clips without permission would likely be infringement.
