This study examines the relationship between societal forces and school computer use in the context of two issues surrounding computer technology: computer property and computer privacy. Four types of data were collected from district administrators, principals, computer teachers, and students over a 9-month period in a high school with a broad, well-integrated computer education program. Methods employed were naturalistic observation, informal interviews, historical document analysis, and structured interviews. Observed conflicts surrounding classroom interactions pertaining to copying software were partly in response to the institutionalization at the district level of a policy that upheld the property rights of computer programs, but failed to provide compensatory funding for purchasing programs. This inadequate funding helps explain why teachers at times condoned and at times prohibited unauthorized copying of commercial software, and why so little explicit instruction addressed the issue of ethics with students. Observed conflicts surrounding the issue of computer privacy resulted from a conception on the part of the principal, teachers, and students that access to computer files was subordinate to and determined by learning--the central task at hand. This finding helps explain why students neither asserted nor protected the privacy of their files, and why the classroom projected a nonchalant attitude toward accessing electronic information despite the societal climate. (20 references) (GL)