Committees on the Chebucto Community Net are almost extinct. The Policy
Committee, charged with addressing policy development and implementation
issues, and addressing complaints or abuses about and by CCN members, is
one of the only two committees left.
In 2007 there was some discussion of User Agreement amendments to cover
use of the Chebucto Wireless highspeed service. These discussions will be
continuing this year. The biggest single new issue raised by the wireless
service not covered by the current User Agreement is Internet connection
sharing, which on the Chebucto Wireless service will be strictly
forbidden.
The Chebucto Wireless service will be operating on a cost-recovery basis
and Internet connection sharing of the full paid service basically
constitutes theft of service from a charitable organization. While
stealing from a charity is morally pretty low, it may not necessarily be
seen as such by unthinking users looking to save money at the expense of
everyone else.
Over the past year complaints against individual Chebucto Community Net
users have been completely absent. Early in 2007 two users' Chebucto Plus
account access were temporarily suspended when their computers became
infected by viruses and started sending out spam. In both cases the
computers were cleaned off and all services restored.
We have received complaints about mail sent out through organizational
mailing lists hosted by Chebucto Community Net. In every case the
complaints came from AOL users reporting legitimate mail that they
themselves had signed up for as spam, rather than simply contacting the
mailing list manager or just unsubscribing themselves from the mailing
list.
In one case the organization with the mailing list chose to leave the
Chebucto Community Net rather than deal with the AOL users. In a current
ongoing case, the mailing list owner was advised of the issue by Chebucto
and included a note in their most recent bulletin telling AOL users how to
stop mail from the list they had signed up for and asking them not to
report the mail as spam. Six AOL users so far have reported this attempt
to help them as spam.
Andrew D. Wright
Chair, Policy Committee
Chebucto Community Net Society