Acceptable Use Policy of The Internet Works
Last Updated: September 1, 2007
TERMS OF USE
All The Internet Works Customers (herein Customers) are responsible for reviewing and complying with this Acceptable Use Policy. For the purposes of this Policy, "Customer" shall be defined to include Customers and also a customer's users and account holders. This Policy is subject to change with notice by publication on this Web site; customers are responsible for monitoring this web site for changes. This Policy was last changed on September 1, 2004. The actions described below are defined by The Internet Works as "system abuse" and are strictly prohibited under this Policy. The examples named below are not exhaustive and are provided solely for guidance to Customers. If any Customer is unsure of whether a contemplated use or action is permitted, it is Customer's responsibility to determine whether the use is permitted by contacting The Internet Works via electronic mail. The following activities are expressly prohibited, and The Internet Works expressly reserves the right, at its discretion, to pursue any remedies that it believes are warranted which may include, but is not limited to, filtering, suspending, or terminating accounts, end-users or Customers that engage in system abuse or who refuse to address user abuse. In general, Customers may not use The Internet Works's network, machines, or services in any manner which:
- violates any applicable law, regulation, treaty, or tariff;
- violates the acceptable use policies of any networks, machines, or services which are accessed through The Internet Works's network;
- infringes on the intellectual property rights of The Internet Works or others;
- violates the privacy of others;
- involves the resale of The Internet Works's products or services, unless specifically documented in a separate written agreement or in the initial Customer contract with The Internet Works;
- involves deceptive online marketing practices including, without limitation practices that violate the United States Federal Trade Commission's guidelines for proper online marketing schemes; or otherwise violates this Acceptable Use Policy.
Prohibited activities also include but are not limited to, the following:
- unauthorized use (or attempted unauthorized use) of any machines or networks,
- attempting to interfere with or denying service to any user or host (e.g. denial of service attacks);
- falsifying header information or user identification information;
- introduction of malicious programs into the network or Server (e.g. viruses, worms, Trojan horses, etc.);
- monitoring or scanning the networks of others without permission;
- attempted or successful security breaches or disruption of Internet communication including, but not limited to, accessing data of which Customer is not an intended recipient or logging into a Server or account that Customer is not expressly authorized to access;
- executing any form of network monitoring (e.g. packet sniffer) which will intercept data not intended for the Customer;
- attempting to circumvent Customer authentication or security of any host, network, or account ("cracking");
- using any program/script/command, or sending messages of any kind, designed to interfere with a third party customer terminal session, via any means, locally or via the Internet;· sending unsolicited bulk email;
- maintaining an open mail relay;
- collecting email addresses from the Internet for the purpose of sending unsolicited bulk email or to provide collected addresses to others for that purpose;
- collecting email addresses from the Internet for the purpose of sending unsolicited bulk email or to provide collected addresses to others for that purpose;
- transmitting or receiving copyright-infringing or illegal material;
- furnishing false or incorrect data on the signup form; or
- attempting to circumvent or alter the process or procedures to measure time, bandwidth utilization, or other methods to document "use" of The Internet Works's products and services.
Sending unsolicited ("opt-out") bulk email is prohibited. Sending unsolicited bulk email from another provider advertising or implicating, directly or indirectly, the use of any service hosted or provided by The Internet Works, including without limitation email, web, FTP, and DNS services, is prohibited and is grounds for termination of those services to Customers or users who engage in the practice. Customers or users who send unsolicited bulk email from The Internet Works's accounts will be charged the cost of labor to respond to complaints, with a minimum charge of $200. Customers or users who send bulk email to "opt-in" lists must have a method of confirmation or verification of subscriptions and be able to show evidence of subscription for users who complain about receiving unsolicited email. The following actions are likewise prohibited:
- Using email to engage in harassment, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages. Continuing to send someone email after being asked to stop is considered harassment.
- Using email to disrupt (e.g., mail bombing, "flashing," etc.) is prohibited.
- Sending email with falsified header information.
- Sending email with falsified or obscured information (e.g., encoded or "obfuscated URLs") designed to hinder identification of the location of what is advertised.
- Creating or forwarding chain letters, pyramid schemes, and hoaxes
- Using the The Internet Works or customer account to collect replies to messages sent from another provider which violate these rules or those of the other provider.
Usenet Newsgroups
Customers and users should be familiar with the workings of Usenet by reading FAQs regarding Usenet at rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/announce/newusers/ before becoming active participants. The Internet Works places the following restrictions on newsgroup postings by its users
- no illegal content, including pyramid/Ponzi schemes, infringing materials, or child pornography, is permitted;
- all postings should conform to the various conventions, guidelines and local culture found in each respective newsgroup and Usenet as a whole.;
- Commercial advertising is typically off-topic and/or a violation of charter in most Usenet newsgroups. Information about advertising on Usenet can be found in Joel Furr's "Advertising on Usenet FAQ" http://www.furrs.org/FAQs/advo.htm. For more information on "spam," see the FAQ on "Current Usenet spam thresholds and guidelines" http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/spam-faq/ which is regularly posted to the news.admin.net-abuse.misc newsgroup by Chris Lewis, or visit spam.abuse.net/.·
- Posting 20 or more copies of the same article in a 45-day period ("spamming") or continued posting of off-topic articles after being warned is prohibited. Users who engage in spamming using The Internet Works accounts will be charged the cost of labor to issue cancellations and respond to complaints, with a minimum charge of $200. Users who engage in spamming from another provider advertising or implicating, directly or indirectly, the use of any service hosted or provided by The Internet Works, including without limitation email, web, FTP, and DNS services, is prohibited and is grounds for termination of those services to those users.
- Excessive crossposting (Breidbart Index of 20 or greater in a 45-day period) is prohibited. The Breidbart Index (BI) is calculated by taking the sum of the square roots of the number of newsgroups each copy of an article is crossposted to. If two articles are posted, one crossposted to 9 newsgroups and the other crossposted to 16 newsgroups, the BI = sqrt(9)+sqrt(16)=3+4=7. Crossposting articles to newsgroups where they are off-topic is prohibited; a good rule of thumb is that if you are crossposting to more than five newsgroups, it's likely to be off-topic on at least one of them.
- Posting articles with falsified header information is prohibited. "Munging" header information to foil email address harvesting by "spammers" is acceptable provided that a reasonable means of replying to the message originator is given. Use of anonymous remailers is acceptable, so long as the use is not otherwise a violation of this policy.
- Users may not issue cancellations for postings except those which they have posted themselves, those which have headers falsified so as to appear to come from them, or in newsgroups where they are the official moderator.
The World Wide Web and FTP
The web space and public FTP space included with a shared hosting account may not be resold or used for adult-oriented material. The Internet Works reserves the right to require that sites using web or FTP space which receive high amounts of traffic be moved to other servers. Web pages and FTP files may not contain any material, text, or images, whether hosted on The Internet Works servers or "transclusioned" (images from another site displayed on the page) which violate or infringe any copyright, trademark, patent, statutory, common law, or proprietary rights of others. Web pages and FTP files may not contain links that initiate downloads of copyright-infringing or other illegal material.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Policy
It is the policy of The Internet Works to respond expeditiously to claims of intellectual property infringement. The Internet Works will promptly process and investigate notices of alleged infringement and will take appropriate actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") and other applicable intellectual property laws. Upon receipt of notices complying or substantially complying with the DMCA, when it is under its control, The Internet Works will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to any material claimed to be infringing or claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to any reference or link to material or activity that is claimed to be infringing. The Internet Works will terminate access for Customers who are repeat infringers. If you believe that a copyrighted work has been copied and is accessible on our site in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, you may notify us by providing our registered copyright agent with the following information:
- electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest;
- a description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed;
- a description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the site;
- your address, telephone number, and e-mail address;
- a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
- a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your Notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.
Notices of claimed infringement should be directed to abuse@the-networks.com. When The Internet Works's removes or disables access to any material claimed to be infringing, The Internet Works may attempt to contact the user who has posted such material in order to give that user an opportunity to respond to the notification. Any and all counter notifications submitted by the user will be furnished to the complaining party. The Internet Works will give the complaining party an opportunity to seek judicial relief in accordance with the DMCA before The Internet Works replaces or restores access to any material as a result of any counter notification.
Internet Relay Chat
Using IRC bots is prohibited. Flooding, cloning, spoofing, harassment, or otherwise hindering the ability of others to properly use IRC is prohibited. Impersonating other users, advertising, and spamming via IRC are prohibited.
Servers and Proxies
Users may not run on The Internet Works servers any program which makes a service or resource available to others, including but not limited to port redirectors, proxy servers, chat servers, MUDs, file servers, and IRC bots. The Internet Works will assume neither responsibility nor accountability for failures or breach of customer-imposed protective measures, whether implied or actual. Abuse that occurs as a result of a compromised customer's system or account may result in suspension of services or account access by The Internet Works, for example, if a system is abused after becoming infected with Back Orifice or the NetBus trojan horse programs as a result of an Internet download or executing an email attachment. (See www.nwi.net/~pchelp/bo/bo.html) Any programs, scripts, or processes which generate excessive server load on The Internet Works servers are prohibited and The Internet Works reserves the right to terminate or suspend any such program, script, or process.
Unsolicited Bulk Email Support Services and Email Address Harvesting
Customers and users may not advertise, distribute, or use software intended to facilitate sending unsolicited bulk email or harvest email addresses from the Internet for that purpose. Customers and users may not sell or distribute lists of harvested email addresses for that purpose.
Referral ID Services
Customers who provide or make use of a service employing referral IDs will be considered responsible for unsolicited bulk email sent by members of the referral ID service that makes reference to services hosted by The Internet Works. Customers must be able to provide visible evidence from the UBE-advertised link that a member of their referral ID service has had their membership terminated.
Storing files
The storage of any program, utility or file on The Internet Works's servers the use of which would constitute a violation of this policy is prohibited. For example, it is a violation to store hacker scripts, IRC bots, or spamming software on The Internet Works's servers.
How to Contact Us
To contact us with questions or comments regarding this Acceptable Use Policy or claimed violations of this Policy, please email abuse@the-networks.com.
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