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South Bay Community Network Charter and Policies Table of Contents Preamble Structure & Definitions Normal Procedures Acceptable Use Responsibilities Decision-making Amendments These are the current sbay.org policies, as amended in February 2000. The coordinators of the following sbay.org services and projects have also posted additional specific policies: The sbay.* Newsgroup Hierarchy Policies SBAY.ORG Domain Park SBAY Wireless Network

Structure & Definitions

The Organization

The collective members of sbay.org.

The Domains

This policy covers all domains operated by the sbay.org organization. The domains are sbay.org, sbay.net and sbay.com.

Registrar

The registrar address is hostmaster@sbay.org. Hereafter, this will be referred to as "hostmaster." This is intended as a top-level technical role for the organization.

Coordinator of the Organization

The coordinator of the organization has the authority to represent the organization to others outside the organization, and any other administrative authority and responsibilities listed in this policy. Any authority or responsibility assigned by this policy to the coordinator of the organization may be delegated to another volunteer.

This is intended as a top-level political role for the organization. The coordinator of the organization may appoint and remove individuals to all other roles in the organization.

Service Coordinator

The coordinator of any network, service or activity of the organization. The list of networks, services and activities, and their coordinators, will be listed on the organization's web site.

Member Sites

Any site which participates in services, domains, or activities via organization is a member site. At least one person represents and maintains a site.

Perimeter Sites

A perimeter site interfaces between a network operated by the organization and other networks.

Interior Sites

An interior site is any site which depends on the organization for communications.

Normal Procedures

Joining

Unique site name

A name must be selected for each new site. The site name must be unique within all the domains operated by the organization. The hostmaster manages the site namespace for the organization.

Responsible individual

An individual must be named as the contact person and responsible party for the site.

Service Coordinator's Criteria

When joining any network or service of sbay.org, the service coordinator may require any information necessary to establish the new site. This applies to each and every network and service operated by the organization for new sites or changes of networks or services for an existing site.

No Fees for Joining

One can expect that joining the organization and participating in its networks, services or activities will cost some amount of time and/or resources for some participants. New members must not be charged a fee specifically to join. But new members should make a best effort to reduce the work incurred by members when they join the network.

Ongoing Operations

No Fees for Ongoing Operations

There are no fees for participating in any service, network or activity of the organization.

Encouragement of Participation

While not every site has the resources to contribute to the network, sites are encouraged to do so if they can.

Prohibition of Abuse of Volunteers

Members who receive services from the organization or its participants must be aware that these services are provided by volunteers. Unreasonable actions or requests may be curtailed by the organization.

Leaving

If for some reason a site needs to shutdown permanently, the site administrator must notify the hostmaster that the site will be going down. The site administrator should consider whether future e-mails for that site will bounce or be routed to another site, and include this decision with the shutdown request.

Fees cannot be charged for leaving the network.

Acceptable Use

Normal Use

Site administrators are responsible to educate and, as appropriate, restrain users from violation of the network's acceptable use policies. The acceptable use policy for the network applies to communications passed between sites on the network. This policy does not apply to communications within a single site.

Legal

All applicable Federal, State, and Local laws must be upheld by all site administrators and other participants of the organization.

Network Security

The organization forbids the following:

• Unsolicited bulk or commercial e-mail ("SPAM")
• Denials of Service
• Spoofing
• Unauthorized access or use of network resources
• Open mail, news or other protocol relays

Responsibilities

Electronic Mail Forwarding

E-mail forwarding is the core the organization. Sites must be capable of forwarding e-mail to and from the organization. In some cases the e-mail topology configuration is coordinated centrally by the organization.

Bandwidth

All communications take some amount of network bandwidth. Therefore, any kind of traffic beyond normal personal use must be coordinated with upstream and/or peer sites to verify that they have the capacity. In case of emergencies resulting from programs or sites which may be out of control, the affected sites will cooperate in a reasonable manner to resolve the problem. Sites should make a reasonable effort to minimize bandwidth consumption.

Handling Complaints

Whenever the organization receives a complaint about a site, it will be forwarded to the administrator for the site. The site administrator or a delegate will provide a reasonable answer (positive or negative) to the originator of the complaint and CC to the hostmaster. The site administrator is responsible to cooperate with the hostmaster in the resolution of any and all complaints regarding their site. The site administrator may request assistance from other admins or the hostmaster in determining what is a reasonable response.

Sanctions on Abusive Sites

If an undue burden is caused upon any member site or participant by abusive action of another member site resulting from failure to meet any responsibilities listed in the the organization's policies and acceptable use policies, the affected member site or hostmaster may resolve the problem with any necessary action to remove the burden. Attempts should first be made to resolve the situation through education and/or reasonable demands to cease the abusive action. If there is no progress with these communications, the organization may expel the abusive member site.

Sanctions shall not be placed upon member sites to prevent communications merely because of a disagreement over content that doesn't violate the Acceptable Use Policy.

Decision-making

General Guidelines

For decisions not otherwise addressed in this policy, the following priorities shall apply in order of decreasing priority:

• the owners of property or network bandwidth involved in the decision
• the coordinators of the organization's networks or services involved in the decision
• the volunteers who will do or have done work related to the the decision, favoring those who have already done the most significant work
• administrators of sites who are or would be affected by the decision

The person or people highest in the decision-making priority scale have the responsibility and authority to make the decision. Such decisions must not be entirely to the exclusion of people at lower priorities in the scale, whose inputs must be heard and should be considered in the final decision.

If there is difficulty deciding who makes the decision, the people ranking in the highest priority must make the decision together. In case of difficulty determining who will make the decision, the coordinator of the organization may select all the people at the highest priority to make it.

Arbitration

Decisions which cannot be made by the general guidelines must be arbitrated by the coordinator of the organization. The coordinator of the organization may make the final decision if it cannot be resolved through arbitration.

Site Autonomy

A decision is considered internal to a site if it does not affect other volunteers, sites, networks, services or activities of the organization, and is not otherwise addressed by this policy. Decisions which are internal to a site are the authority and responsibility of the site's administrator.

Volunteer Sustainability

Any participant may refuse any request or service which would make his/her role unsustainable for the long term.

Amendments

Voting Members

For voting on policy amendments, only voting members of the organization may cast votes. Any participant meeting the following criteria may register with the coordinator of the organization as a voting member:

• a provider of network bandwidth used directly by the organization.
• an owner of property used directly by the organization.
• any service coordinator
• the hostmaster
• the coordinator of the organization
• any other volunteer contributing a significant service to the organization, as determined by the coordinator of the organization

Voting members may be removed by the coordinator of the organization when they fail to continue to meet the criteria for voting.

One Vote Per Person

Regardless of how many roles an individual may fill, no one may have more than one vote in any poll.

Distribution of Proposed Amendments

Proposed amendments to the policies shall be e-mailed out to the voting members for review. There shall be at least one round of revision based on comments from the review.

Non-controversial Amendments

If there are no significant objections, the policy amendment shall go into effect.

Controversial Amendments

If there are significant objections which cannot be resolved by further revision, the amendment may be passed by a 2/3 majority vote of the voting members. There is no quorum - these votes must be counted via e-mail relative to all voting members. Results must be kept confidential while voting is in progress. Results must be fully disclosed, including how each member voted, to all voting members after voting ends. Public disclosure of voting results is not required, and may be decided on a case-by-case basis.