Copyright Policies and Procedures

Discuss about the IT Major Project Copyright, Ethics and Privacy for HDS.

This paper contains copyright policy, codes of ethics, and privacy policy for HDS which is an IT organization from Sydney which provide s open source IT solutions to SMEs that include hardware and software configuration and management, website development, intranet and extranet management, and cloud computing. Currently, the company is facing many operations challenges such as lack of clear strategic direction, underdone networking capacity, slow customer turnaround, pressure on the cash flows, delays in research and development, reducing margins, and increasing workload on staff. Besides these, the company has an old website with old content that needs to be refreshed. In order to achieve these objectives, the company needs formal documentation of policies and procedures. Thus, the current report formalizes the policies for the company including policies for copyright, privacy and ethics. The purpose of this policy and procedures document is to define roles and responsibilities of the employees of HDS with the following objectives:

• To help business innovate and grow
• To create a supportive and caring culture in the organization
• To take advantage of market opportunities and developments
• To manage service deliveries efficiently and effectively 

The purpose of this policy and procedures document is to define roles and responsibilities of the employees of HDS with the following objectives:

• To help business protect the content that is developed internally
• To ensure that the content developed is not misused by anyone
• To deliver the content effectively following the appropriate guidelines

The policy statements and procedures are applicable to all the employees of HDS. The scope of the policy is limited to defining following responsibilities and procedures:

• Use of the third party content for research, training, promotion, and administrative procedures
• Use of the copyright material that is not covered in the software piracy policy

This policy covers does not cover first party content which is covered by the Intellectual Policy Rights.

Item	Definition
Copyright	It is defined is a legal concept that gives the originator an exclusive right to use the material and prevent others from using it
Copyright Act	It refers to the Copyright Act 1968
Third Party Material	It refers to the content that is not owned by HDS
Moral Rights	Rights that would be granted to the creators of content on HDS website

Policy Statement

The ownership of the content decides who can use the material, whether it is subject to any kind of agreement on for what purpose it is used and what part of it can be used, and how it can be used. HDS is responsible for providing training, guidance, and other information to employees, its controlling entities, customers, and other individuals associated with the copyright material. These responsibilities can be broken down as:

• Addressing the responsibilities and rights related to copyright
• To develop and implement systems that support compliance of copyright policy
• Monitor the developments that happen in the environment external to the company with respect to copyrights(National Research Council, 2013).
• All the information published must be reviewed to check if they meet the copyright Act requirements
• Respond immediately if any situation of copyright breach is faced

It is the responsibility of employees and other associated individuals to:

• Remain aware of their rights as well as obligations with respect to copyright
• Comply to the copyright policy statements including procedures and practices
• Consult with the owners of the company before preparing any material to be copyrighted
• Report the breaches of copyright to the owners of the company(Okediji, 2017) 

Use of content is allowed in any of the following sources or formats

• Digital or hardcopy
• Published or unpublished content
• Local or foreign content
• Online or offline

A work is an item created by one author. The HDS website is the publishing platform that can contain many such works such as articles, pictures, editorial, and opinion pieces. In some cases, some part of content can be used by individuals which would be considered as a reasonable portion of the work. Following is the guide to deciding this reasonable portion:

Work Format	Whole Work	Reasonable work
Hard copy	Unpublished Note available within a reasonable time An image with text that is allowed to be copied	10% of the amount of work published
Soft copy	Use a work as an image	10% of the words in the digital content

The licence for use of content is exclusive for hardcopy content through scanning and photocopying as well as for digital content including printing, emailing, and online usage

Code of Ethics

If the employees or associated individuals and entities do not comply with the copyright policy or copyright act, appropriate procedures have to be followed including imposing of fines or taking legal actions. Staff would be responsible for any copyright infringement that happens because of their actions directly or indirectly.

All the staff members and associated members have to ensure that they understand the requirements of legal obligations and comply with them when using a third party copyright material. The Quality Assurance officer would address the instances of copyright risks. 

This is the Code of Ethics for the Directors and staff of HDS. This code should be read and followed along with the business principles of the company which would govern the conduct of the affairs of the organization. The principles were adopted by HDS and they must avoid any conflicts between the activities of the business. The code must meet the requirements defined in the Sarbanes Oxley Act, Section 406.

Hosted Desktop Solutions is committed to the framework that has standards and principles of practice formalized in 2010 with the inception of the organization. This code reflects upon the value that employees of the organization must practice as professionals and establish expectations for our practices on the principles of corporate duty. The initial codes have been modified to fit the needs of the modern society and professions. This code would ensure protection of the welfare and reputation of consumers.

HDS code of ethics is a guide for professionals supporting them in their routine activities at work. The code is aspirational, disciplinary and obligatory in parts. It defines the roles of professionals working with the organization or associated with on various projects delivered to its customers. This code would educate professionals and others on principles and standards of ethics.

HDS has to preserve highest standards of ethics and integrity as it is vital for the responsible delivery of services of the company. The code of ethics describes certain rules and principles that are essential for the organization and have to be followed by the following people:

• Staff member of the organization
• Third party contractor working on a project of the organization

All these members would get subjected to the jurisdiction of the board of ethics automatically. The basis of the Code of ethics are reflected in following areas:

• Responsibility to serve the customers
• Responsibility of professional competence
• Responsibility towards public
• Responsibility for a professional relationship(COllege of Policing, 2014)

The individuals must oblige with all the conditions of any professional work. Rules within the ethics code are the statements that define the minimal conduct that has to be acceptable or unacceptable.

Terminology

The code of ethics has been designed for the staff members and other associated professionals. This code does not address any needs of specific situations nor does it include all possible ethical dilemmas that professionals are expected to face.

Advertising: Any communication that goes to public on the products and services of the company

Conflicts of Interest: The opposition that happens between the interests of professionals in the position of a power or authority

Professional competence: It is the capacity of an individual to act in an efficient manner to achieve an objective of a task

Privacy: Privacy is an ability of an individual to express oneself with limited disbursal of information

Security: It is prevention of the unauthorized access to a data or network

Individuals must honour the responsibility and welfare of professionals working for the company. The Rules of Ethics that would be followed include:

1. Individuals should provide all products and services competently to their customers without fail every time they are given a responsibility to serve
2. Individuals should use all resources and relationships to ensure the quality of service is maintained and given to the customers of the company
3. Individuals should not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, age, culture, language, dialect, or religion while delivering any professional services(Duquenoy & Kimppa, 2002)
4. Individual must not delegate the task that is within responsibility unless they are properly prepared and supervised to ensure they have the right competence and skills to perform
5. Individuals should not delegate any task that needs unique skills and knowledge that the individual has for the completion of work to avoid any negative impact on the performance of the company in any way
6. Individuals providing service or technology must evaluate their effectiveness and should provide them only when sufficient benefits are received by the customer
7. Individuals must protect the security and privacy of the customers and other associated individuals including staff, website visitors, and other associated individuals(AICPA, 2014)  

Individual must achieve highest level of their performance and professional competence. The Rules of Ethics that would be followed include:

1. Individuals should only engage in those practices that are in the scope of professional practice, experience, and competence while working for the organization
2. Individuals not working in the organization but associated with it should follow local laws and regulations that govern the codes of ethics in the related profession
3. Individuals must keep learning to enhance their skills and professional competence along life so that they can improve upon their skills while serving the customers of the company
4. Individuals who are on a supervisory role should not need a permit for providing services exceeding their competence level
5. Individuals must use technology as per professionally accepted guidelines in their practice area (Planning Institute of Australia, 2018)

Individuals must honour their responsibility towards public while providing them information. The Rules of Ethics that would be followed include:

1. Individuals must not misrepresent their skills, competence, and experience in any communication for taking any professional benefit
2. Individuals must avoid engaging in situations that are conflicting or can influence their professional judgement which can go wrong because of the given situation
3. Individuals should not defraud through the use of services provided by internet or as a result of ignorance
4. Individuals must provide complete and accurate information to public about their services while communicating with public through the website or any other form of public communication such as social media or public relations
5. Individuals must use only those statements that adhere to professional norms and should not misinterpret when they are used for promotion or advertising for the company in online or offline mode(Joyce, Blackshaw, King, & Muller, 2003)

Individuals should follow the dignity of their profession by maintaining harmony and collaboration through relationships. The Rules of Ethics that would be followed include:

1. Individuals should collaborate with other professionals to delivery highest quality of service to the customers of the company
2. Individuals should not engage in any act of fraud, negligence or misrepresentation affecting the reputation of the organization
3. Individuals should not engage in any form of abuse or harassment to others with less authority in the company
4. Individuals should not engage in sexual acts with people over whom they have professional authority over in the organization
5. Individuals should not allow anyone as a superior to violate the codes of ethics and correct in case of such a discovery.
6. Individuals should give credit for a work only to those contributing and not to those personally favoured by the individual for unprofessional reasons
7. Individuals should not discriminate while building relationships at work on the basis of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, age, culture, language, dialect, or religion(RSC, 2001)
8. Individuals must report any act of others that violate the law of ethics to their seniors or management verbally or in written if needed
9. Individuals must respond to any complaints made against people violating the law of ethics and ensure within their power to resolve them
10. Individuals should follow local laws related to the professional practice that are governed by the industrial associations
11. In the case of receiving a complaint, individuals should not respond with false statements just to address the concern
12. Individual must ensure that the responsibilities of the other individuals junior to him or her are very clear and are not overlapping
13. An individual must use team building practices to bring the staff close and coordinate better(Teare & Ploem, 2013) 

This privacy policy is made to help you understand how data is collected, why is it collected and how is it used by the staff of the company. There are several ways, a customer can use the services of the company such as through our website or through direct interaction with our professionals. In any case, the use of information and the ways it is used by the professionals working in the company has to ensure protection of the privacy of customers. The privacy policy explains what information is collected in these processes, why is it collected, how is it used, how and how can access or update it.

Information that is collected include:

• Personal information of customers is taken such as name, contact number, designation, email address, and company would be taken while interacting with customers or through the website that visitors use
• While using our services over any technological device like mobile or computer, following information would be collected
  • Device specific information such as operating system, device identifier, mobile number, and network information
  • Log information such as search queries, phone calls, IP address  browser types and cookies
  • Location information such as IP address

The information collected would be used in following ways:

• Information is collected to provide services and maintain as well as improve them for customers
• It is used to understand customer needs such that more tailored service can be provided
• The website collects some information through the use of cookies  for improving user experience
• Before using any information provided by the customers or visitors of the company website, a formal consent would be taken

Transparency and Choice: Customers may have privacy concerns so we give them a guidance on making the right choices concerning their privacy needs. Customers can have a control over the information that would be saved on the hosted servers of the company. They would be able to maintain the data and services that are hosted on the system of HDS. This would not apply to the services that are consumed from the third party vendors

Principles of Ethics 1

Information we share: The information you provide would not be shared outside the company unless your provide us the consent for its use, is needed for processing a transaction, or is needed for legal reasons such as for enforcing government requests, enforcing certain terms and conditions, addressing frauds or technical issues, or protecting rights of others.

Information security: Information provided on the website is encrypted and is reviewed to guard them against any unauthorized or illegal access. For securing systems data that the company has in its computers, security applications such as malware, antivirus, and firewall protection would be utilized.

When does the privacy policy apply: It applies to all the employees of the company and to the users of the company website as well as to the customers of the company. The policy does not apply to the services that are provided to individuals by any other organization or sites linked with our website.

Regulatory Compliance: We have a self-regulatory framework, which involves receipt of physical complaints which is followed by a response from our staff.

Changes: There would not be any changes in the rights to receive our services without a written consent given by customers or other individuals.  In case of any major changes done on the policies, a notice must reach the customers and other associated individuals. This information would be given to the customer over an email

Emails: Our website and other services allow customers and users to send emails. In this process, HDS would not collect any data that is transferred by you unless the customer directs us to do so. Every complaint that is received through an email would be responded to immediately by the service professional and a ticket would be raised generating complaint code that would be provided to the customer  through an email.

Third Party websites or applications: Third party websites such as social media platforms are used to publicize information and customization would be used for measuring website visitors. Third party applications can ask customers or users of HDS for their username, password, address and location details. Information that is collected to bring this customization include session cookies and persistent cookies on the website (Mayer & Mitchell, 2012)

Security: The company takes security needs of individuals very seriously and thus takes measures for protecting confidentiality, integrity, and security of the information collected from customers or website visitors. Some security measures have been taken by the company to protect information that is in the systems and computers used in the organization such as firewall, antivirus, access control, secure socket layer, encryption, password protection, and technical compliance procedures. For this, the company would review their security infrastructure and keep making arrangements for improvements as per the latest needs for security of the systems (WARREN, 2007).

Conclusions

This paper had covered the copyright policy, codes of ethics, and privacy policy for an IT organization from Sydney called HDS which provides open source IT solutions to SMEs. The objective of formation of these policies was to help the organization manage its operational challenges such as lack of clear strategic direction, underdone networking capacity, slow customer turnaround, pressure on the cash flows, delays in research and development, reducing margins, and increasing workload on staff. It was found that policy statements can give disciplinary direction for procedures and practices to help organization enforce right behaviour in people to achieve objectives desired.  

References

AICPA. (2014). Code of Professional Conduct. AICPA.

COllege of Policing. (2014). Code of Ethics . COllege of Policing.

Duquenoy, P., & Kimppa, K. K. (2002). Code of ethics for information technology professionals . Tivia.

Joyce, D., Blackshaw, B., King, C., & Muller, L. (2003). Codes of Conduct for Computing Professionals: an International Comparison. UNITEC Institute of Technology.

Mayer, J. R., & Mitchell, J. C. (2012). Third-Party Web Tracking: Policy and Technology. IEEE Xplore.

National Research Council. (2013). Copyright in the Digital Era: Building Evidence for Policy. National Research Council.

Okediji, R. L. (2017). Copyright Law in an Age of Limitations and Exceptions. Cambridge University Press.

Planning Institute of Australia. (2018). CODE OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT. Planning Institute of Australia.

RSC. (2001). Professional Practice and Code of Conduct. RSC.

Teare, A., & Ploem, J. (2013). Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct. Deloitte Central Europe.

WARREN, E. (2007). Legal, Ethical, and Professional Issues in Information Security. Cengage Learning.v