On Equal Grounds Terms of Service

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User Agreement Hosting & Design Services

On Equal Grounds provides web hosting to numerous clients which means that we have a responsibility to protect each client and to provide the best services available. The following guidelines were established to ensure these crucial obligations are met.

UNACCEPTABLE ACTIVITIES:
These include spamming (sending unsolicited advertising to those with which the customer has no existing business relationship, posting off-topic advertising in newsgroups); spoofing (using a return email address which is not the valid reply address of the sender or sending an email message which does not contain enough information to enable the recipient to identify the party who is really sending the message; passive spamming (promoting a web site hosted by On Equal Grounds by spamming from some other source), trolling (posting controversial messages in newsgroups to generate responses), mailbombing (inundating a user with email without any serious intent to correspond), generating a higher volume of outgoing mail than a normal user (20% or more of available system resources), and subscribing someone else to an electronic mailing list without that person's permission. A message is considered unsolicited if it is posted in violation of a newsgroup charter or sent to a recipient who has not requested the message. Making an email address available to the public does not constitute a request to receive messages. Distribution of mass emailing programs is also prohibited. All recipients on a mailing list must have personally subscribed. Mailing lists may not be used to distributed unsolicited email. Any customer repeatedly "mailbombed" or that attracts such behavior will be asked to leave. If you are not sure if your actions will be in violation, please ask first. We also do not allow sites selling and distributing spamware.

Age:
The client must be 18 years of age to obtain our service or must fax a letter from parents giving permission. Contact us to make fax arrangements.

Abuse of the legal rights of others:
Examples of unacceptable activities in this regard include posting private information about a person without their consent, infringing intellectual property rights, defaming a person or business, and knowingly making available code which will have a deleterious effect on third party computers. On Equal Grounds supports free speech on the Internet, and will not suspend or cancel a customer's account simply because it disagrees with the views expressed by the customer. Where there are allegations that a customer's on-line activity has violated the legal rights of a third party, On Equal Grounds will not substitute itself for a court of law in deciding tort claims raised by the third party.

Abuse of the law:
On Equal Grounds' services may be used for lawful purposes only. Illegality includes but is not limited to: drug dealing; attempting without authorization to access a computer system; pirating (distributing copyrighted material in violation of copyright law, specifically MP3s, MPEG's, ROMs, and ROM emulators); gambling; schemes to defraud; trafficking in obscene material; sending a message or having content that is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person; threatening bodily harm or damage to individuals or groups; violating U.S. export restrictions; stalking; or violating other state or federal law such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or the Economic Espionage Act. Linking to illegal material is also prohibited. On Equal Grounds reserves the right to check system files, email, and other data on our servers for illegal content and materials, or for any other reasons deemed necessary.

*Abuse of On Equal Grounds 's Server Resources:
*Running programs in the background on a On Equal Grounds' server without On Equal Grounds' prior written authorization, or running chat rooms, Internet Relay Chat, IRC bots, and the like are not acceptable uses of On Equal Grounds' servers. Further, any usage of twenty percent (20%) or more of our system resources is an undue burden on our system and is unacceptable. If your usage ever exceeds twenty percent (20%) of system resources, you will be contacted and asked to eliminate the problem. In addition, any single domain that exceeds ten gigabytes of bandwidth traffic must be approved by us as we must maintain load balances.*

Hacking/Cracking:
On Equal Grounds reserves the right to report illegal activities to any and all regulatory, administrative, and/or governmental authorities for prosecution.

OTHER BEHAVIOR:
The following examples of unacceptable behavior are non-exclusive, and are provided for guidance purposes. If you are unsure if your actions will be a violation of our policies please ask .

Server broadcast messages or any message sent on an intrusive basis to any directly or indirectly attached network Attempt to circumvent any user authentication or security of host, network, or account. Accessing data not intended for user. Probing the security of any network. Spawning dozens of processes. Port scans, ping floods, packet spoofing, forging router information, Denial of Service attacks, sniffers, flooding, spoofing, ping bombing, smurfs, winnuke, land, teardrop. Promulgation of viruses. IRC bots such as eggdrop, or IRC clients such as ircII or BitchX. Any activity, whether or not the intrusion results in the corruption or loss of data, will be investigated and proper action taken. The presence of any of these programs, whether or not run, will result in action against the user including suspension or termination.

Content displayed or sent which is geared to instill hate, prejudice, discrimination and or to cause violent actions or abuse will not be allowed. Client's space use and or services will be suspended immediately if such content is discovered. Client's account will not be closed allowing for removal and appropriate explanation.

CLIENT RESPONSIBILITY:
The client is responsible for all activity originating from the account unless proven to be a victim of outside hacking or address forgery. The client is responsible for securing their username/password. Use of On Equal Grounds' service requires a certain level of knowledge in the use of Internet languages, protocols, and software. This level of knowledge varies depending on the anticipated use and desired content of the web space by the client. The following examples are offered: Web Publishing: requires knowledge of HTML, properly locating and linking documents, FTPing Web contents, Graphics, text, sound, image mapping, etc. FrontPage web publishing: knowledge of the FrontPage tools as well as Telnet and FTP understanding and capability. CGI-Scripts: requires a knowledge of the UNIX environment, TAR & GUNZIP commands, Perl, CShell scripts, permissions, etc. Mail: a use of mail clients to receive and send mail, etc. The client agrees that he or she has the necessary knowledge to create and maintain their web space. Client agrees that it is not the responsibility of On Equal Grounds to provide this knowledge or support outside matter specific to On Equal Grounds 's servers.

BACKUPS:
Full backups are made weekly, and backups of new/changed data made nightly. No guarantees are made of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of these backups. Backups are made for server restoration purposes only. It is the clients' responsibility to maintain local copies of their web content any information.

IP NUMBERS:
On Equal Grounds maintains control and any ownership of any and all I.P. numbers and addresses that may be assigned to the client and reserves in its sole discretion the right to change or remove any and all IP numbers and addresses.

Regular Hosting Clients - Should you become unsatisfied with our services within the first 30 days of your account activation, On Equal Grounds will refund your hosting fee.

On Equal Grounds does not refund fees which you have paid to InterNIC. (domain names)

On Equal Grounds shall be the sole arbiter of what is and is not a violation of these acceptable use policies. On Equal Grounds reserves the right to terminate an account at any time and for any reason that causes harm to any On Equal Grounds customer's web sites. On Equal Grounds reserves the right to delete all content and files upon termination. On Equal Grounds reserves the right to withhold any pre-paid funds for any site removed for violations of these policies. On Equal Grounds reserves the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion.

On Equal Grounds reserves the right to change these Policies without prior notice or warning. Non-enforcement of any part of these Policies does not constitute consent.