Author Archive

Privacy Policy

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

Privacy Policy

Public Nature of Content Submitted to Sites

The nature of blogging is to reach a public audience. Please be aware that any information that you submit to us whether through forms or email, including personally identifiable information, may be publicly displayed on sites hosted at http://blogs.4j.lane.edu/, or on websites not within our control. If you don’t want others to see such information, don’t submit it.

Forms and Content

To create a new blog, or register for an existing one, you may be required to submit an email address and other personal information. We may publicly display the personal information. Your address may also be used to send you email bulletins from individual 4J blogs to which you subscribe, or to attribute comments or posts to you. If there are problems with your individual site, we may contact you via email as well.

If you contribute content, such as discussion comments, to any of our blogs, your contribution may be publicly displayed including personally identifiable information. Display of visitor content is determined by the discretion of the individual blog editors.

As the editor of a blog, you may establish a range of access restrictions to your material. The initial default setting for individual blogs allows outside search engines, indexes and third party sites to scan each blog, create hyperlinks to individual blogs or distribute it further via feeds. If you change these settings, there is no guarantee that outside search engines will omit your blog from its searches. Please check your default settings to discern the level of access the public has to your individual blog.

Each time you update your individual blog, it may also send pings or feeds to sites that index or track newly updated blogs. These sites may publicly display a hyperlink to your site and the time that you updated it. If your site publishes XML feeds, content from or links to your site may be publicly displayed on third party sites.

Depending on the settings on your site, email bulletins that contain content from your site may be sent out to subscribers.

IP Addresses and Referrers

We may publicly display the IP addresses of visitors and contributors to individual blogs hosted at http://blogs.4j.lane.edu/.

We may use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, to tailor site content and to format the site and software to user needs, and to generate aggregate statistical reports. We may use aggregate visitor data to prepare publicly displayed reports regarding the traffic on individual blogs, site popularity rankings, and referrers that visitors use to access individual blogs.

Cookies

If you visit our web site, we may use session cookies while your browser is open, or while you are logged into our site. To facilitate our registration and login functions, we may use cookies to recognize you when you return to our website or to individual blogs hosted our site. If you do not logout of your account, these cookies allow us to keep track of your username and password, so that you do not have to resubmit the information to log into your account. Always remember to log out of your site or account so that the computer’s other users cannot access your account.

Available log records, and all data stored on our servers may be accessed by our system administrators. The system administrators may produce these records and data to the Administrative Dean, Dean of Students, or the Administrative Board, upon request or suspected violation of our terms of use. It is 4J’s policy to cooperate with law enforcement officials in the detection, investigation, and prosecution of unlawful activity. If we receive a warrant or subpoena for user information, we may disclose requested records to law enforcement authorities or outside parties seeking information through the legal process.

Links to Independent Websites

Blogs hosted by the Weblogs at 4J project may link to independently run web sites outside of the http://blogs.4j.lane.edu/ domain. The District is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of such web sites.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions about this privacy statement or the general terms of use of the site, you may contact us by email at nethelp@4j.lane.edu.

Legal FAQ

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

What is this funny CreativeCommons licensing business?

Original works of authorship (like the stuff you compose and post to
your blog) may be protected by copyright law. Technically, this means
that you own the rights to copy, distribute, display, and perform your
work. However, we also encourage you to share your work under the terms
of one of the CreativeCommons Attribution-ShareAlike license. This
license permits others to copy and display your work, as long as they
give you credit. It also allows others to compose derivative works new – works that incorporate some or all of your work. Moreover, if they
create a derivative work, they have to distribute that work under the
same license.

Why is this Attribution-ShareAlike license a good thing?

It’s good because it allows other people to more easily share and
build on your work. Furthermore, if they create new material based on
your original, the new works must carry the same license, meaning that
those new works can be used by you, and others, for further creative
efforts. It spares others from having to track you down at some distant
time, negotiate for permissions, get a license in writing, etc. The
license acts sort of like a virus, but a good one that enables greater
public benefit by reducing complex barriers.

What if I don’t like to share?

That’s your right, and you’re free to post your work with a more
restrictive license.

It looks like I’m giving the District all the rights to
everything and anything I post to my blog?

You still own your rights. No matter what license you choose for
your work, the District needs to be able to copy, transmit, and display
your work in order to effectively administer and run the blogging service,
otherwise the District cannot transmit that information over the
Internet.
So you are giving the District some non-exclusive permissions, but you
still retain ownership of your copyrights. If you don’t want to share
content, then you probably shouldn’t be blogging on this site.

What does indemnify mean?

In this context, in plain English, it means that if someone sues
the District for content that you posted, you’re on the hook for the
damages. In other words, you’re responsible for the consequences, if
any, of your own (possibly) poor judgment.

What if I want to use a quote from a book or other source on my
blog?

Typically, small amounts of copying are covered by the fair use
doctrine, which carves out exceptions to normal copyright law, for
purposes such as criticism, comment or parody. The classic example is
quoting a short passage for purposes of writing a book review. However,
remember that if you overstep the bounds of fair use and violate
someone’s copyright (e.g. posting a complete news article as your own,
as a really egregious example), you will be liable for the possible legal
ramifications of your actions. You assume all of the legal risks
associated with posting content without the express permission of the
author.

Terms of Use

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

Welcome to Weblogs at 4J!

We don’t mean to turn you off from blogging by immediately
inundating you with legalese, but we need to make clear our respective
rights and responsibilities related to this service. So, the Eugene
School District 4J ( the “District” ) offers these blogging
services ( the “Services” ) to you subject to the terms and conditions of
use ( “Terms” ) contained herein. By accessing, creating or contributing
to any blogs hosted at http://blogs.4j.lane.edu/, and in
consideration for the Services we provide to you, you agree to abide by
these Terms. Please read them carefully before posting to or creating
any blog.

1. Rights in the Content You Submit

Default Creative Commons Public License

Unless you specify otherwise, any and all works of authorship
copyrightable by you and posted by you to any blog ( “Content” ) are
submitted under the terms of an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons
Public License. Under this license, you permit anyone to copy,
distribute, display and perform your Content, royalty-free, on the
condition that they credit your authorship each time they do so. You
also permit others to distribute derivative works of your Content, but
only if they do so under the same Attribution-ShareAlike license that
governs your original Content.

Please read the full text of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons Public License.

Amongst other things, this license permits RSS aggregators to copy,
distribute, display and perform any Content on your blog that you
syndicate using RSS. All Content on your blog is syndicated for RSS
aggregation unless you change your settings to indicate otherwise.

Option for More Restrictive License Terms

If you prefer to offer your Content on more restrictive terms, you
may do so as follows:

For Content you submit to your own blog, remove the Creative Commons
logo from your blog template (contact us if you require instructions).

For Content you submit to a blog other than your own, label your
submission with a full copyright notice, i.e., your name, the word
“copyright” or “@” symbol and the year of first publication.

By posting your Content using the Services, you are granting the
District a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, and worldwide license to use
your Content in connection with the operation of the Services,
including, without limitation, the license rights to copy, distribute,
transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit,
translate and reformat your Content, and/or to incorporate it into a
collective work.

Attribution

When publicly displaying, publicly performing, reproducing or
distributing copies of your Content, or Content as incorporated into a
collective work, the District will make best efforts to credit your
authorship. You grant the District permission to use your name for such
attribution purposes. You, likewise, agree to represent yourself
accurately. You acknowledge that misrepresentation may lead us, in our
sole discretion, to cancel your use of the Services and delete any of
your Content.

2. Conduct

Posting

Those of us who are coordinating this project believe
deeply in free speech. Given our role in offering this service and our
presence together as part of the extended educational community,
however, we must reserve the right to remove certain content that you
may post. As a general matter, you may post content freely to your blog
and to those of others, so long as the content is not illegal, obscene,
defamatory, threatening, infringing of intellectual property rights,
invasive of privacy or otherwise injurious or objectionable.

You may not use the District name to endorse or promote any product,
opinion, cause or political candidate. Representation of your personal
opinions as institutionally endorsed by the District or any of
its schools or organizations is strictly prohibited.

By posting content to any blog, you warrant and represent that you
either own or otherwise control all of the rights to that content,
including, without limitation, all the rights necessary for you to
provide, post, upload, input or submit the content, or that your use of
the content is a protected fair use. You agree that you will not
knowingly and with intent to defraud provide material and misleading
false information. You represent and warrant also that the content you
supply does not violate these Terms, and that you will indemnify and
hold the District harmless for any and all claims resulting from
content you supply.

You acknowledge that the District does not pre-screen or regularly
review posted content, but that it shall have the right to remove in its sole
discretion any content that it considers to violate these Terms or the
terms of any other user agreements that may govern your use of
the District’s network.

Accessing

You understand that all content posted to
http://blogs.4j.lane.edu/ is the sole responsibility of the
individual who originally posted the content. You understand, also,
that all opinions expressed by users of this site are expressed
strictly in their individual capacities, and not as representatives of
the District.

You agree that the District will not be liable, under any
circumstances and in any way, for any errors or omissions, loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of use of any content posted on this site. You
agree that you must evaluate and bear all risks associated with the use
of any content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness,
or usefulness of such content.

Children

Collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 is
prohibited. No Content should be directed toward such children without
the express written permission of the Superintendent of the District.

3. Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability

This site is provided on an “as-is” and “as available” basis. The
District makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or
implied, as to the site’s operation or the information, content or
materials included on this site. To the full extent permissible by
applicable law, the District hereby disclaims all warranties, express
or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of
merchantability and fitness for any particular purpose. The District
will not be liable for any damages of any kind arising from the use of or
inability to use this site. You expressly agree that you use this site
solely at your own risk.

Home

Thursday, November 30th, 2006

4J offers free blog hosting to all staff and students. Our blogs are hosted on 4J servers managed by the Network Services group.

To use this site you must log in with you 4J username and email password:

Log in Here