Our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is designed to help protect our customers, and the Internet community, from irresponsible or illegal activities. As good 'net citizens, we prohibit the impersonation of others, unsolicited commercial appeals, and any disruption of Internet services. Examples of such activities are given below:

E-mail

Commercial e-mail:
Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail is prohibited. Using a DOWCO e-mail address to collect responses from unsolicited commercial e-mail is prohibited. Using unsolicited commercial e-mail to direct traffic to a website hosted within DOWCO's netblocks (including co-located servers) is prohibited. Please refer to the section on Commerce on the Internet for additional guidance.

Mail bombing:
Sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail is prohibited.

Harassment:
Sending threatening or harassing e-mail after being requested to stop is prohibited. Extremely threatening or harassing e-mail is always prohibited.

News

Newsgroup spamming:
Excessive cross-posting (posting the same article to several newsgroups, aka spamming) is prohibited. Generally accepted standards allow no more than 8 newsgroups, or cross-postings, for a single article or substantially similar articles. Such articles may be cancelled.

Off-topic or inappropriate postings:
There is no restriction on content, except as defined by each newsgroup. Continued posting of off-topic articles is prohibited. Please note that commercial advertisements are off-topic in the vast majority of newsgroups.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC):

The use of IRC 'bots is prohibited, as is the violation of any accepted policies on IRC servers. If DOWCO Internet addresses are banned from a server, the offending account will be terminated.

General:

Impersonation:
Attempting to impersonate any person, using forged headers or other identifying information, is prohibited. The use of anonymous remailers and nicknames does not constitute impersonation.

Network unfriendly activity:
Activities which adversely affect the ability of other people or systems to use DOWCO's services or the Internet is prohibited. This includes use of programs which disrupt others' Internet connections (Denial-of-service attacks).

Privacy violations:
Attempts, whether successful or not, to gain access to any computer system, or customer's data, without consent is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, running "port scanning" programs.

Abusive or threatening behavior:
Abusive or threatening behavior targeted towards other DOWCO Internet customers, DOWCO Internet staff, and other users of the internet violate this acceptable use policy and may result in the suspension or termination of your account.

Inciteful material:
DOWCO Internet reserves the right to refuse to post or to remove any information or materials, in whole or in part, that in its sole discretion, are unacceptable, undesirable, or in violation of this agreement. We do not permit the hosting of defamatory, hateful, obscene, pornographic, profane, offensive, or illegal material on our server.

Financial

Sharing dialup account passwords is prohibited. Using programs to defeat system timers limiting inactivity is prohibited. Untimely payment of any and all amounts due may result in account suspension or cancellation.

Copyright or Trademark Infringement

Using the Services to transmit any material (by email, uploading, posting, or otherwise) that infringes any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, or other proprietary rights of any third party, including, but not limited to, the unauthorized copying of copyrighted material, the digitization and distribution of photographs from magazines, books, or other copyrighted sources, and the unauthorized transmittal of copyrighted software constitutes a violation of the Acceptable Use Policy.

Copyrighted material may only be hosted with written permission from the copyright holder(s).

Excessive bandwidth or disk utilization

DOWCO account descriptions specify limits on bandwidth and disk utilization, and use in excess of those limits is not permitted. Bandwidth utilization is determined by the total number of bytes transferred from an account's Web and FTP space. Disk utilization is determined by the total number of bytes required to store an account's Web, FTP, and Mail data.

If excessive bandwidth or disk space utilization is determined to adversely affect DOWCO's ability to provide service, immediate action will be taken. The account owner will be notified by e-mail as soon as practicable.

No customer may operate any public information service, such as a Web or FTP server, from their DOWCO account without prior written authorization from DOWCO. If such a service is found to be operating, immediate action will be taken.

Privacy

It may be necessary for DOWCO employees to examine system accounting logs and other records to resolve system problems. DOWCO reserves the right to access an account's mailbox to resolve system problems or mail system errors.

In addition, DOWCO will cooperate with the appropriate legal authorities in investigating claims of illegal activity, including but not limited to illegal transfer or use of copyrighted material, postings or e-mail containing threats of violence, or other illegal activity.

DOWCO makes no guarantee and assumes no liability for the security of any data on any server including "secure servers."

Our customers are reminded that no computer system should be considered safe from intrusion. E-mail may pass through many computer systems, and should not be considered a secure means of communication unless encrypted. Even then, information is only as secure as the encryption method.

Rationale

This document provides a general understanding of DOWCO's policy on the Acceptable Use of DOWCO's Internet services. Common sense and judgement are a necessary part of any system of rules, and this AUP is no exception. Of course, flagrant or repeated violations of the Policy are viewed in a very different light than minor infractions.

Protection of our customers and our resources, the ability to provide quality service to our customers, conformance with existing law, and the protection of our reputation as a service provider are all contributing factors to decisions on AUP violations.

Although DOWCO believes in Free Speech, we must point out that some activities are considered inappropriate by the Internet community at large. These activities will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis to see if there are in violation of DOWCO's AUP.

DOWCO reserves the right to filter the content of newsgroups. If some Internet content is unacceptable to a user, we recommend the use of Internet filtering software to screen an account's access to newsgroups and web content one considers offensive. It is the account owner's responsibility to make use of such tools if desired.

DOWCO does not monitor the activity of accounts except for measurements of system utilization and billing records. However, in our efforts to promote good citizenship within the Internet community, if we become aware of inappropriate use of DOWCO's service, we will respond.

If a DOWCO account is used to violate the AUP, we reserve the right to terminate service without notice. Our preferred course of action would be to advise the account owner of the inappropriate behavior and corrective action necessary. However, flagrant violations of the AUP will result in immediate termination of service.

In the event that an account is temporarily deactivated as a result of any prohibited activities, the account may be subject to reactivation charges and/or deposit requirements to be determined by DOWCO.