Stellar Terms of Service

This service is intended for use by:

• MIT students enrolled at the Institute
• MIT faculty, instructors, teaching assistants and staff
• Non-MIT affiliates enrolled and/or participating in an academic course
• MIT/Non-MIT affiliates enrolled and/or participating in a project site

Stellar is a service offered by MIT Information Services & Technology (IS&T). Requesting and/or using a Stellar site indicates assent to these Terms of Service. Stellar is offered on an "as is" basis and is intended for Institute-related business and interactions only.

The Stellar Help Desk will respond to questions or difficulties during normal Institute business hours and will work to resolve issues as promptly as is practical within this time window. Support requests, bug reports and feedback may be addressed by contacting the Service Desk or by calling 617-253-1101, Monday-Friday 8-5 EST.

This service is to be used for legal purposes only, and in conformance with the Policies and Procedures of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  For example, you may not use it to post, distribute or disseminate any defamatory, obscene, or other unlawful material, including another's proprietary information, including trademarks or copyrighted information without express authorization from the rights holder. See the Acceptable Use Policy (http://web.mit.edu/policies/) and MIT STOP IT (http://web.mit.edu/stopit/). 

The person or group designated as domain administrator has first-line responsibility for ensuring that content and access control for the site adhere to the above-mentioned policies and procedures, and any further policies desired for their particular course or project site.  Publication of information, information access controls and group or individual membership controls are the responsibility of the Domain Administrator of each course or project site. 

Course administrators are responsible for the managing of student access to and students requests for any and all course materials posted on current and past course sites. By default, materials labeled as "restricted use" are available to a site's membership list for the current semester only. At term's end, participant access to restricted materials will no longer exist. Non-restricted course material will remain read-only.

Course administrators have access to course sites, present and past for a minimum of six years.  This is subject to change based on archive and storage limitations.  Domain administrators will receive notification prior to any permanent archival of course sites.

IS&T, in accordance with Institute policy, is committed to complying with all copyright laws to the fullest extent possible.  Information for MIT faculty mounting course material on the Web is available at MIT Libraries Copyright Information. For an extensive list of guides and references to copyright policies and practices at MIT, see Copyright at MIT.

Unauthorized use of third-party copyrighted work is illegal, unethical, raises significant financial liability, and damages the reputation of MIT.  All Stellar users must exercise scrupulous care to identify the source of every third-party owned element posted in the Stellar Course Management System.

Stellar uses MIT Touchstone as their login authentication process. 

Data is stored and backed-up nightly. Copies of backups are available for up to two months upon request.