Acceptable use policy (AUP) and terms and conditions are necessary instruments in the regulation of infrastructure access. They bind the user to the ‘purpose’ for which the services and resources they use have been provided. Yet, like with privacy notices, the reader is rather inclined to click through and proceed with the actual task at hand. Thus, to reduce the burden on the user and increase the likelihood that they will read the AUP, the number of times a user is presented with such notices must be kept to a minimum, preferably just a single time. Yet the notice should cover as much of the user’s potential use of the infrastructure as possible: the more services and resources deem an AUP as sufficient for their policy purposes, the better it will be. This will allow users to use resources from multiple service and resource providers without the need to confirm acceptance of additional AUPs.
The aim of the WISE Baseline AUP is to
WISE Baseline Acceptable Use Policy and Terms of Use (WISE SCI working group, for publication) |
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The AUP text referenced above is intended to form part of the information presented to a member of a community (the user) at the time they register to access the services comprising an infrastructure. The AUP provides the user with information about their expected behaviour and restrictions on their use of the infrastructure. This "baseline" text can, optionally, be augmented with additional, community or infrastructure specific, clauses as required, but the numbered clauses should not be changed. The registration point where the user is presented with the AUP may be operated directly by the user's research community or by a third party on the community's behalf.
The motivation to provide this "baseline" text is to facilitate -
rapid community infrastructure ‘bootstrap’ - communities do not have to build their own AUP from scratch
ease the trust of users across an infrastructure - services within an infrastructure have a common framework describing the behaviour of users coming from multiple communities
provide a consistent and more understandable enrolment for users - as users move between communities and projects come and go, users have a common understanding of their responsibiities.
Other information to be presented to a user, as addition to the AUP, to properly define their rights and responsibilities when using the infrastructure and services are -
Implementers Guide to the WISE Baseline Acceptable Use Policy (AARC-I044) |
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The original draft text of the baseline AUP is available as a Google document here - WISE Baseline AUP template v1.2. (Please see the stored Version History for the recent evolution of this text.)
Draft of the implementors guide at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tGghpHCKTu8sTO1wNrJBXXfD0N1XDAmFTn9b8t6wzPE (since published as AARC-I044)