Hosting Terms of Use

R. Jason Benson (hereafter referred to as "Provider") will never require clients to advertise for Provider on their websites in any way, shape or form.

Clients are allowed to use their websites for business/commercial or personal websites or content.

Content

All services provided by Provider may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United States Federal, State or City law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material that is threatening or obscene, material with "adult only" content, or material protected by trade secrets and other statute.

Note: Pornography and sex-related merchandising are prohibited. This includes sexual content or direct links to adult content hosted elsewhere. Sites promoting any illegal activity, violence or content that may be damaging to our servers or any other server, or links to such sites are also prohibited. Examples of non-acceptable content or links are:

  • Pirated software or MP3 files
  • Hacking Tools
  • Warez Sites
  • Adult Content (in any form)
  • Spamming Software
  • Web-based Shells

Provider will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Disk Space

Provider will monitor the customer's disk usage and if it exceeds the usage agreed upon, Provider shall have the right to take corrective actions. Such corrective actions may include assessment of additional charges, suspension of service, or termination of this agreement.

Refund Policy

Provider offers an unconditional 60-day money-back guarantee on hosting services. If the customer wishes to cancel a hosting account within the initial 60-day period for any reason, he/she must notify Provider via e-mail and the payment will be promptly refunded. Since all domains registered by Provider cannot be refunded, they will be subject to a $15.00 annual domain registration fee. Therefore, the domain registration fee will be deducted from the refund amount. As the customer is the sole owner of the registered domain name, arrangements can be made to transfer its registration to another provider. In addition, any transaction fees related to the initial purchase and the corresponding refund will be subtracted from the amount refunded.

  • Provider does not offer any partial or prorated refunds after the initial 60-day money-back guarantee period.
  • If a customer disputes a setup / renewal charge for any account, Provider will not re-activate the service, unless the customer covers all fees involved, including the chargeback fee and any other transaction fees.
  • Accounts terminated due to policy violations will not be refunded.

Account Renewal Policy

Provider does not renew accounts automatically. For the customer's convienience, Provider will send a renewal reminder to the contact email address on file for the corresponding hosting account. The customer is ultimately responsible for renewing the hosting account according to the instructions given by Provider.

Customers are not allowed to open a second hosting account for a domain that is already hosted through Provider. If the customer wants to continue hosting the specified domain with Provider, he/she needs to renew the account using one of the renewal options offered by Provider.

Dispute Resolution Policy

In case of ownership dispute, Provider reserves the right to be the sole decision maker in settling the dispute. There are several guidelines, based on which Provider will decide who is the rightful owner of the disputed hosting account or domain name:

  • By default, Provider will grant ownership to the person who paid for the hosting account. If the purchase was made by PayPal, the holder of the respective PayPal account will be considered the owner. If the purchase was made by check, or some other similar way, the respective sender of the funds covering the purchase of the account will be considered the owner. Provider reserves the right to confirm the identity of the owner by contacting him/her by e-mail or telephone, in the same order of preference.
  • If the identity of the sender of the funds as discussed above cannot be confirmed, Provider will attempt to determine the owner in other ways, which include but are not limited to investigation of log files, investigation of the content hosted under the respective hosting account or domain name, and investigation of the sequence of annual payments for the disputed service.
  • In case of death or serious disability of the original owner, that prevent him/her from continuing to manage the hosting account or the domain name purchased, Provider may grant ownership to another person or organization, if enough proof is presented about the original owner's condition, and based solely upon the investigation that Provider will undertake about this issue.
  • Provider will consider a court decision overruling in case of ownership dispute, and will always comply with such a decision.

Lost Login Information Policy

In case the customer has lost the hosting account login information, he/she can request it to be sent to the contact e-mail address for the respective service.

If the contact e-mail address is outdated or incorrect, the customer should contact Provider, who will conduct an investigation of the issue, and assign a new proper contact e-mail address. In this case, the dispute resolution policy may be applied.

Traffic Guidelines

Sites that go over their traffic limit will be charged additionally, in accordance with the characteristics of the plan purchased. In case of failure to cover the fees incurred by traffic overusage, Provider reserves the right to take corrective actions such as suspension of service, or termination of this agreement. In case Provider takes corrective actions under this provision, the customer shall not be entitled to a refund of any fees paid in advance.

Chat Rooms

Running and linking to IRC servers or IRC bots and clients such as Eggdrop, BitchX, ircii, etc., is strictly prohibited.

Background Running Programs

Programs running in the background are not allowed.

Resource Usage

To maintain the integrity of the shared hosting services offered, several special per-user resource limits are in place. These include, but are not limited to:

  • Memory limitations: Customers using shared hosting services will be able to use only a certain portion of the total available memory on the server.
  • CPU usage limitations: Scripts that take too much real CPU time will be terminated.
  • Simultaneous script execution limitations: Customers will be able to run only a certain amount of CGI scripts simultaneously. Whenever this limitation is triggered, execution of subsequent CGI script requests via the web will produce an error message.

Provider reserves the right to alter the above limitations and to place additional limits without prior notice if an account endangers the stability or the performance of the hosting server due to intensive resource usage. The additional limits may include, but are not limited to MySQL, memory and CPU usage limitations, and stopping access to directories.

Proxy Software

The running of proxy software on Provider's servers is strictly prohibited.

Distribution and/or Transmission of Obscene or Indecent Speech or Materials

Violation of indecency and obscenity laws can result in criminal penalties.

Intellectual Property Rights

Materials, accessible to the customer through Provider's services, may be subject to protection under the United States or other copyright laws, or laws protecting trademarks, trade secrets or proprietary information. Except when exclusively permitted by the owner of such rights, the customer may not use Provider's services in a manner that would infringe, violate, dilute or misappropriate any such rights, with respect to any material, which the customer accesses or receives through Provider's services. If the customer uses a domain name in connection with Provider's service, he/she may not use that domain name in violation of any third party trademark, service mark, or similar rights.

Network Security

Customers may not use Provider's services in an attempt to circumvent user authentication or security of any host, network or account. This includes but is not limited to: accessing data not intended for the customer, logging into a server or account the customer is not exclusively authorized to access, password cracking, probing the security of other networks in search of weaknesses, or violation of any other organization's security policy. Customers may not attempt to interfere or deny service to any user, host or network. This includes, but is not limited to: flooding, mail bombing or other deliberate attempts to overload or crash a host or network. Provider will fully cooperate with investigations of violations of systems or network security. This also includes cooperating with law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected criminal violations. Users who violate system or network security may incur criminal or civil liability.

Defamation

The customer may not host material that is:

  • threatening or obscene;
  • offensive to any person or group. This includes but is not limited to prejudice, racism, intolerance, hatred, and harassment; expressions that are by nature libelous, defamatory, and offensive to or disrespectful of ethnic, racial, religious, or other groups;
  • harmful to minors;
  • likely to cause damage to reputation of third parties.

Note: Defamatory speech distributed over the Internet can result in civil liability for the defamer.

Spam or Unsolicited Email

The customer may not use Provider's network, Provider's equipment or Provider's email service in connection with the transmission of spam, flames, mail bombs, or similar unsolicited email messages. In addition, the customer's domain may not be referenced as originator, intermediary or reply-to address in any of the above. This prohibition fully extends to sending of unsolicited mailings from another service that in any way mentions your domain name or implicates the use of the Provider's network, Provider's equipment or Provider's email services. A message is considered unsolicited if it is posted in violation of a newsgroup charter, or if it is sent to a recipient without his/her prior consent. For purposes of this provision, merely making one's email address accessible to the public will not constitute a request or invitation to receive messages.

In case sufficient evidence is presented about any violation of this provision, Provider reserves the right to disable the customer's account without prior notice. For the purpose of acquiring such evidence, Provider will use various techniques, including but not limited to: closely inspecting all spam reports sent to Provider, searching the logs of Provider's mail servers, and scanning the server space for popular "spamming" applications. Provider will be the sole arbiter as to what would be considered sufficient evidence.

Abuse

Any attempt to undermine, slander, libel, threaten or cause harm to Provider's customers, property, or to the Provider directly, is grounds for immediate termination without refund. In addition, any such attempts will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Indemnification

Customer agrees to indemnify, defend and hold harmless, Provider and agents from and against all losses, expenses, damages and costs, including reasonable attorneys' fees, resulting from any violation of these Terms of Use.

Disclaimer

Provider, at his sole discretion, may change these terms and conditions at any time. By using Provider's services the user agrees that Provider may: (1) revise these terms and conditions; and (2) change the services provided. Any such revision or change will be binding and effective immediately on posting of the revised terms or change to the service(s) on Provider's web site, or on notification to the customer by email. The customer agrees to review Provider's web site, including these terms, periodically to be aware of any such revisions. If the customer does not agree with any revision, he/she may terminate the services at any time by notifying Provider by email. Notice of the customer's termination will be effective on receipt and processing by Provider. The customer agrees that, by continuing to use Provider's services following notice of any revision to this Agreement or change in service(s), he/she abides by any such revisions or changes.

The content available through this site is the sole property of Provider and is protected by patent, copyright, trademark and other intellectual property laws. Except as otherwise explicitly agreed in writing, Provider-owned content received through this site may be downloaded, displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal, non-commercial use only. You agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish, broadcast or circulate the content received through this site to anyone, including but not limited to others in the same company or organization without Provider's express prior written consent.

Refusal of Service

Provider reserves the right to refuse hosting for insecure applications that could be, for instance, utilized by an attacker to gain unauthorized access to the server and/or execute applications with the privileges of the customer that has uploaded the insecure application in question. Customers are responsible for keeping their applications up-to-date, checking for security issues with the application vendor, and updating to the latest secure version that is available. In the event that an insecure application is installed on the hosting account of the customer, Provider reserves the right to disable access to it, or, if deemed necessary, to the hosting account in its entirety. This will be with the exclusive purpose of preventing damage to the customer and to the other customers hosted on the same server, and may be done with or (in case of emergency) without prior notice.

Provider reserves the right at its sole discretion to refuse or cancel service. Violation of any of Provider's Terms could result in a warning, suspension, or account termination. Submitting fake personal information can also be grounds for suspension or termination.

Limited Liability

THE CUSTOMER AGREES THAT PROVIDER SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY (1) SUSPENSION OR LOSS OF THE SERVICE(S), INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION SERVICES AND WEB HOSTING SERVICES, (2) USE OF THE SERVICE(S), INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION SERVICES AND WEB HOSTING SERVICES, (3) INTERRUPTION OF PROVIDER'S SERVICES OR INTERRUPTION OF THE CUSTOMER'S BUSINESS, (4) ACCESS DELAYS OR ACCESS INTERRUPTIONS TO PROVIDER'S WEB SITE(S) OR SERVICE(S) OR DELAYS OR ACCESS INTERRUPTIONS THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES IN RELATION TO THE SERVICES OFFERED BY PROVIDER; (5) LOSS OR LIABILITY RESULTING FROM ACTS OF OR EVENTS BEYOND PROVIDER'S CONTROL (6) DATA NON-DELIVERY, MIS-DELIVERY, CORRUPTION, DESTRUCTION OR OTHER MODIFICATION; (7) LOSS OR LIABILITY RESULTING FROM THE UNAUTHORIZED USE OR MISUSE OF THE CUSTOMER'S ACCOUNT; OR (8) APPLICATION OF THE DISPUTE POLICIES. PROVIDER ALSO WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY KIND (INCLUDING LOST PROFITS) REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF ACTION WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF PROVIDER HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN NO EVENT SHALL PROVIDER'S MAXIMUM AGGREGATE LIABILITY EXCEED THE TOTAL AMOUNT PAID BY THE CUSTOMER FOR THE DISPUTED SERVICE, BUT IN NO EVENT GREATER THAN ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($100.00). BECAUSE SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, IN SUCH STATES, PROVIDER'S LIABILITY SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.


Last revision: June 10, 2009

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