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| Acceptable
Use Policy |
| Important
Note:
This document is updated often. Please make a habit of reviewing
it from time to time to stay abreast of acceptable as well
as inappropriate uses of your Focused Web, Inc. Internet Services
account. Reports of activity in violation of this policy may
be sent via e-mail to abuse@focusedweb.com |
This document is divided into the following sections:
When you open your Focused Web account, you
join two communities. First is the community formed by
our network and our customers; the second community is
the one made up of all networks and users connected to
each other to form the Internet. Becoming a member of
these communities gives you certain rights and privileges,
but also imposes certain duties and responsibilities.
Focused Web has established an Acceptable Use Policy in
order to make these duties and responsibilities more clear.
This document is intended to provide a general understanding
of Focused Web's Acceptable Use Policy. The following
factors guide the establishment and enforcement of Focused
Web's usage policies:
- Ensure reliable service to our customers
- Ensure security and privacy of our systems and network,
as well as the networks and systems of others
- Comply with existing laws
- Maintain our reputation as a responsible service provider
- Encourage responsible use of the Internet and discourage
activities which reduce the usability and value of Internet
services
- Preserve the value of Internet resources as a conduit
for free expression and exchange of information
- Preserve the privacy and security of individual users
Focused Web intends to provide its customers
access to everything the Internet has to offer. While Focused
Web is firmly committed to the principles of free speech,
certain activities are damaging to the resources of both
Focused Web and the Internet and cannot be permitted under
the guise of free speech. The resources of Focused Web and
the Internet are limited, and abuse of these resources by
one user has a negative impact on the entire community.
We do not routinely monitor the activity of accounts
except for measurements of system utilization and the preparation
of billing records. However, in our efforts to promote good
citizenship within the Internet community, we will respond
appropriately if we become aware of inappropriate use of
our service.
If a Focused Web account is used to violate the
Acceptable Use Policy, we reserve the right to terminate
your service without notice. We prefer to advise customers
of inappropriate behavior and any necessary corrective action.
However, flagrant violations of the Acceptable Use Policy
will result in immediate termination of service. Our failure
to enforce this policy, for whatever reason, shall not be
construed as a waiver of our right to do so at any time.
As a member of our network community, you must
use your Internet access responsibly. If you have any questions
regarding this policy, please contact us at abuse@focusedweb.com
Your Focused Web account provides you access
to a vast collection of networks and services around the
world such as the World Wide Web, electronic mail, and
newsgroups. Your use of these services is subject to the
following policy. Violations of this policy may result
in termination of your account with or without notice
in accordance with the Agreement for Use of Focused Web
Internet Services that you accepted at the time you created
your account.
In general, you may NOT use your Focused
Web account:
- In a manner which violates any law, regulation, treaty
or tariff;
- In a manner which violates the rules, regulations
and policies of any network, server, web site, database
or service provider that you access through your Focused
Web account;
- In a manner which is defamatory, fraudulent, indecent,
offensive or deceptive;
- To threaten, harass, abuse or intimidate others;
- To damage the name or reputation of Focused Web, Inc.,
affiliates and subsidiaries;
- To break security on any computer network, or to access
an account which does not belong to you; or
- In a manner which interferes with other customers'
use and enjoyment of the services provided by Focused
Web.
Focused Web reserves sole discretion to determine
whether any use of the service is a violation of this policy.
Guidelines for using your account follows. This information
is only a guideline, and is not intended to be all-inclusive.
Your Focused Web account gives you the ability
to send and receive electronic mail. Misuse of electronic
mail may result in termination of service. The following
examples are non-exclusive and are provided for your guidance.
- You may not use your account to send unsolicited bulk
or commercial messages ("spam"). This includes,
but is not limited to, bulk mailing of commercial advertising,
informational announcements, charity requests, petitions
for signatures, and political or religious tracts. Such
messages may only be sent to those who have explicitly
requested it.
- You may not use your account to collect responses
from unsolicited bulk or commercial e-mail sent from
accounts with other providers.
- Forging, altering or removing electronic mail headers
is prohibited.
- You may not send numerous copies of the same or substantially
similar message, nor may you send very large messages
or files to a recipient, with the intent to disrupt
a server or account ("mail bombing").
- You may not use electronic mail to harass or intimidate
others. Harassment, whether through language, frequency
of messages, or size of messages, is prohibited. Sending
a single unwelcome message may be considered harassment.
If a recipient asks to stop receiving e-mail, you must
not send that person any further messages.
- You may not forward or otherwise propagate chain letters,
whether or not such messages solicit money or other
items of value, and whether or not the recipient wishes
to receive such mailings.
- Focused Web accounts may not be used to collect replies
to messages sent from another Internet service provider
if those messages violate this Acceptable Use Policy
or the acceptable use policy of the other service provider.
- If you use the services of another provider to promote
a web site hosted by or through Focused Web, then the
provisions of this Acceptable Use Policy shall apply
to the methods used to promote such site.
Your Focused Web account gives you access to
thousands of newsgroups. These newsgroups allow you to
read and post messages on a variety of topics. Newsgroups
may be moderated or unmoderated. Newsgroups may also have
a charter or a FAQ that describes what subjects are appropriate
for each newsgroup. Misuse of newsgroups may result in
the termination of your service.
- Focused Web provides an uncensored newsfeed. As such,
Focused Web does not control the content of the newsgroups
available to you. Focused Web believes that decisions
about which newsgroups and messages to read are best
left to its customers. Screening software is available
from third parties, and it is your responsibility to
use such tools if desired. Focused Web is not responsible
for the content of any newsgroup message, whether or
not the message was posted by a Focused Web customer.
- Messages posted to newsgroups must comply with the
written charters or FAQs for those newsgroups. Advertisements,
solicitations, or other commercial messages should be
posted only in those newsgroups whose charters or FAQs
explicitly permit them. You are responsible for determining
the policies of a given newsgroup before posting to
it. If you are unable to find a newsgroup's policy regarding
commercial messages, you must assume that such messages
are not welcome.
- You may not post or cross-post the same or substantially
similar message to more than 5 newsgroups. Continued
cross-posting can result in termination of service and
the cancellation of the message.
- You may not post binary files to newsgroups not specifically
named for that purpose.
- You may not post messages promoting pyramid schemes,
"Make Money Fast" (MMF) schemes, chain letters,
or other schemes to newsgroups. Doing so will result
in immediate termination of service.
- You may not forge or remove header information. This
includes attempting to circumvent the approval process
for posting to a moderated newsgroup.
- You may not solicit mail for any address other than
your Focused Web Internet Service account or service
where doing so manifests an intent to harass others.
- You may not post messages for the purpose of threatening,
harassing or intimidating others.
- You may not post messages which infringe on personal
or property rights of others (privacy rights or copyrights,
for example).
- You may not cancel messages other than your own, with
the exception of official newsgroup moderators performing
their duties.
Focused Web does not censor or control content
posted to a newsgroup. As a user of our service, you are
solely responsible for the content that you publish. Focused
Web, upon receiving notification that certain posts violate
this policy, or any state or federal law, or infringe on
the trademarks or copyrights of another, reserves the right
to remove such posts from our news server and to terminate
your account.
Focused Web provides storage space and access
for web sites through its Web Hosting service. In addition,
dedicated accounts may provide for the hosting of web
sites. Focused Web will not routinely monitor the contents
of your web sites.
You are solely responsible for any information
contained on your web site. However, if complaints are
received regarding language, content or graphics contained
on your web site, Focused Web may, at its sole discretion,
remove the web site hosted on Focused Web servers and
terminate your Web Hosting service.
You may not use your web site to publish material
which Focused Web determines, at its sole discretion,
to be unlawful, indecent or objectionable. For purposes
of this policy, "material" refers to all forms
of communications including narrative descriptions, graphics
(including photographs, illustrations, images, drawings,
logos), executable programs, video recordings, and audio
recordings.
Unlawful content is that which violates
any law, statute, treaty, regulation, or lawful order.
This includes, but is not limited to: obscene material;
defamatory, fraudulent or deceptive statements; threatening,
intimidating or harassing statements, or material which
violates the privacy rights or property rights of others
(copyrights or trademarks, for example).
Indecent content is that which depicts
sexual or excretory activities in a patently offensive
matter as measured by contemporary community standards.
Objectionable content is otherwise
legal content with which Focused Web concludes, in its
sole discretion, it does not want to be associated in
order to protect its reputation and brand image, or to
protect its employees, shareholders and affiliates.
Examples of prohibited web site content:
- Materials which hold Focused Web including its affiliates,
employees or shareholders up to public scorn or ridicule.
- Materials which encourage the commission of a crime;
or which tends to incite violence; or which tends to
degrade any person or group based on sex, nationality,
religion, color, age, marital status, sexual orientation,
disability or political affiliation.
You are responsible for any misuse of your
account, even if the inappropriate activity was committed
by a friend, family member, guest or employee. Therefore,
you must take steps to ensure that others do not gain
access to your account. In addition, you may not use your
account to breach security of another account or attempt
to gain unauthorized access to another network or server.
- You must adopt adequate security measures to prevent
or minimize unauthorized use of your account.
- You may not attempt to circumvent user authentication
or security of any host, network or account ("cracking").
This includes, but is not limited to, accessing data
not intended for you, logging into or making use of
a server or account you are not expressly authorized
to access, or probing the security of other networks.
Use or distribution of tools designed for compromising
security is prohibited. Examples of these tools include,
but are not limited to, password guessing programs,
cracking tools or network probing tools.
- You may not attempt to interfere with service to any
user, host, or network ("denial of service attacks").
This includes, but is not limited to, "flooding"
of networks, deliberate attempts to overload a service,
and attempts to "crash" a host.
- Users who violate systems or network security may
incur criminal or civil liability. Focused Web will
cooperate fully with investigations of violations of
systems or network security at other sites, including
cooperating with law enforcement authorities in the
investigation of suspected criminal violations.
You are responsible for ensuring that the services
obtained from Focused Web are used in an appropriate manner
by your customers and users. Therefore, you must take
steps to manage the use of the services obtained from
Focused Web in such a way that network abuse is minimized.
You must also make information publicly available about
how to contact you, and you must respond in a timely manner
to complaints concerning misuse of the services obtained
from Focused Web. Failure to responsibly manage the use
of the services obtained from Focused Web may be cause
for termination of services to you.
- You must designate one or more individuals ("Contacts")
to be responsible for every host, IP network or subnet
connected to the Internet through the use of the services.
You must provide Contact names, phone numbers, and postal
and e-mail addresses ("Contact Information")
to any and all appropriate Domain Name Registrars prior
to the initial network connection of your service. You
must keep Contact Information updated and accurate at
all times. Changes in the Contact Information must be
sent to the appropriate Domain Name Registrars in a
timely manner.
- Contacts must have the authority, access and tools
necessary to configure, operate and control access to
your systems. For important timesharing hosts, primary
domain name servers and mail relays or gateways, Contacts
must be accessible to Focused Web via telephone 24 hours
a day, 7 days a week.
- Every customer who allows third party access to the
services provided by Focused Web, whether such third
parties are employees, users or customers, must maintain
a postmaster address for the receipt of complaints by
e-mail. Messages delivered to the postmaster address
must be reviewed and handled in a timely manner.
Focused Web accounts operate on shared resources.
Excessive use or abuse of these shared network resources
by one customer may have a negative impact on all other
customers. Misuse of network resources in a manner which
impairs network performance is prohibited by this policy
and may result in termination of your account.
- You are prohibited from excessive consumption of resources,
including CPU time, memory, disk space and session time.
You may not use resource-intensive programs which negatively
impact other customers or the performance of Focused
Web systems or networks. Focused Web reserves the right
to terminate or limit such activities.
Although Focused Web does not offer software
or technical support for Internet Relay Chat (IRC), you
may use your account to connect to IRC servers and networks
maintained by third parties. Please remember that you
are a guest when you make use of these facilities. It
is particularly important that you do not engage in activities
which might interfere with other customers' access to
IRC.
- You may not use IRC scripts or programs that interfere
with or deny service to other users on any other server,
host, network or channel.
- You may not engage in activities which harass other
users. This includes, but is not limited to, "flooding"
(rapidly entering text with the intent to disrupt service),
"flashing" (disrupting terminal emulation),
"takeovers" (improper seizing and abuse of
operator privileges), attempting to send private messages
to those who do not wish to receive them, attempting
to return to a channel after being banned from it, and
other disruptive behaviors.
- You may not attempt to impersonate other users. The
use of nicknames does not constitute impersonation.
- You may run "clones" (multiple simultaneous
IRC connections) and "robots" only as permitted
by the host IRC server.
Any activity on our network that is a violation
of any state or federal law is a violation of this policy
and will result in immediate termination of service. Prohibited
activities include, but are not limited to:
- Transmitting obscene materials
- Intentionally spreading or threatening to spread computer
viruses
- Gaining or attempting to gain unauthorized access
to any network, including Focused Web's private network
infrastructure
- Accessing or attempting to access information not
intended for you
- Transmitting pirated software
- Conducting or participating in illegal gambling
- Soliciting for pyramid and other illegal schemes.
Focused Web has a policy to respect and protect
the privacy of its customers and their information that
is stored with Focused Web. Focused Web will only access
and disclose information as necessary to comply with applicable
laws and government requests, to provide the Focused Web
Services, to operate or maintain its systems or to protect
itself or its customers.
The Internet can be a valuable business tool
when used properly. However, it can reflect poorly upon
a business when used improperly. You are strongly encouraged
to visit our web site or to give us a call before doing
business on the Internet.
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