Re: Ad support on UC sites

Scot Hacker wrote:
> One of our professors runs a site (with a custom domain) on our server.
> Even though it's on a non-berkeley.edu domain, it's still treated as a
> product of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The site has
> become quite popular and the professor is interested in raising some
> additional funds by running Google AdSense ads on the site.
>
> Objection: What will this do the site's credibility?
> Answer: Virtually every online publication runs ads alongside content.
> What's new about that?
>
> Objection: UC is partially taxpayer funded.
> Answer: So? We raise money a thousand different ways around here. How
> is this any different?
>
> Now he's got me curious. Are there any UC proscriptions or policies
> against running ads on UC sites?
>
> Any opinions/facts on this topic?

In my opinion, the UC Electronic Communications Policy, section III part D
(Allowable Uses) is fairly clear on this:

> Restrictions. University electronic communications resources may not be used for:
>
> · ...
>
> · commercial purposes not under the auspices of the University;

He could argue, I suppose, that selling commercial ads on his web site is
"under the auspices of the University," but it sounds like bad practice to me.
    If he wants a commercial site, he should host it on a commercial provider,
not at Berkeley.

-- 
Tom Holub (tom_holub@LS.Berkeley.EDU, 510-642-9069)
Director of Computing, College of Letters & Science
249 Campbell Hall
<http://LS.berkeley.edu/lscr/>
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