Acceptable Usage Policies

"Terms of Service"
Revised November, 01, 1999

Pro Web Design has a responsibility to protect each client and provide the best services available. The following guidelines were designed to insure these services.

Content:
All services 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 we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statute. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold us harmless from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Pornography, Nudity and sex-related merchandising are prohibited on all servers. This includes sites that may infer sexual content, or link to adult content elsewhere. This is also true for sites that promote any illegal activity or content that may be damaging to our servers or any other server on the internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited.

Any site selling or promoting Bulk email services or software is not allowed.

We reserve the right to immediately terminate any account that blatantly ignores our content policy. In addition, said accounts will not be eligible for a refund.

Examples of non-acceptable content or links:

Pirated software
Hackers programs or archives
Warez Sites
Irc Bots
Mp3

We will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. Web sites that violate our TOS by displaying inappropriate content (adult content, etc) are subject to a fine of at least $500.00 but not more than $10,000.00 per incident. Such accounts will be terminated immediately.

Bandwidth Usage
We are very flexible with our bandwidth. If you merely exceed your bandwidth limit, we won't charge you unless you are in major excess of your quota. In this case, you would be charged $7.00 per gig over your account quota.

You may check your bandwidth usage via. your control panel at any time. Your access log will be cleared at the beginning of each billing cycle.

CGI Scripts
Each account comes with its own cgi-bin. You are free to use any CGI scripts you wish, however we reserve the right to disable any CGI script that effects normal server operation.

Chat Rooms
We do not allow clients to install their own chat rooms. These tend to be large system hogs and we cannot allow it as an account option. We do provide a choice of Java chatrooms for a small extra charge that will more than fill your needs and run without hindering the performance of the machine for others. You are limited to one chatroom on your domain.

Web Cams
Web Cams are strictly prohibited from our servers. There are no exceptions. Any sites that run web cams from our network or servers will be disabled immediately. Violating accounts will be re-opened after customer contact has been made, and the web cam has been removed from the server. We reserve the right to impose a $35.00 account re-connection fee when the account is re-instated.

Background Running Programs
We may allow programs to run continually in the background. These are considered on a one to one basis and an extra charge will be incured based on system resources used and operational maintenance needed.

IRC
We currently do not allow IRC or IRC bots to be operated on our servers.

Commercial Advertising - Email:
Our servers may not be the source, intermediary, or destination address involved in the transmission of spam, flames, or mail bombs. Your domain may not be referenced as originator, intermediary, or reply-to address in any of the above. Advertising your web site through our server or network or any server or network which in turn contain links to a domain on our servers is prohibited. We consider spam any mass unsolicited message in the mediums of Newsgroups and Email. If you are found to have spammed, then we will immediately, without warning, disable your domain. In addition, we will impose a $100 penalty for each spam policy violation. We reserve the right to refuse or cancel service to known spammers. Lastly, we reserve the right to determine what violates this policy.

As such, any violation will result in immediate deactivation of services without refund.

Server abuse
Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a Pro Web Design server or customer of Pro Web Design is strictly prohibited. Any Sub-Networks of Pro Web Design and dedicated servers must adhere to the above policies.

Pro Web Design reserves the right to deny telnet access to a customer for any reason as we see fit.

InterNIC
Any and all InterNIC fees are paid seperately to the InterNIC. There is a $35 per year registration fee for a domain name. The InterNIC requires that you pay two years upon initial registration of a domain name. This fee is out of our hands, and can not be avoided.

If Pro Web Design is not listed as a contact within your domain name registration, it is not possible for Pro Web Design to alter or update your domain name record. Domain name changes and/or updates are soley the responsibility of the customer if this is true. Pro Web Design shall not be liable for any damage caused by a domain name registration change that we do not have access to update.

Data Liability
Pro Web Design shall not be liable for any loss, damage, liability, claim or expense arising out of or in relation to an outage or any period of downtime. This includes, but is not limited to, hardware failure, power loss, connectivity problems, disasters, severe weather and damage caused by an unauthorized user (hacker). Pro Web Design has a backup plan in effect, and if a backup is available, will recover lost or damaged files at no charge for those customers affected by loss of data due to hardware failure or damage caused by an unauthorized user.

Site Backup
Pro Web Design institutes daily, weekly and monthly site backups. There will be a service charge of $50.00 to retrieve data from a backup archive if the data loss or damage was not caused by Pro Web Design. The fee will be wavied for certain reasons or situations such as a hardware failure.

Emergency Programming Support
Our programmers are available "on call" after business hours. If a programming request is to be filled after business hours, or because of violation of policy, a rate of $100.00 per hour per incident will be charged. Web sites with offending code shall be surcharged an additional $50.00 per incident. Offending code is defined as any programming code that causes any kind of problem, hangup, or other system related malfunction. We reserve the right to disable such offending code immediately and without warning.

Account Billing
All accounts are billed on a recurring basis, whether monthly or annual. Annual accounts will be automatically renewed on the first day of the account anniversary month billing cycle, unless said account has been cancelled prior to this date. If you would like your annual hosting account downgraded, you must give 15 days notification prior to your account renewal date, or your account will be renewed automatically at the current plan rate. We reserve the right to alter our billing policy at any time, given written notice to the customer.

Returned Payment
Any returned check or credit card payment is subject to a $25.00 surcharge for each returned payment. Any customer who "charges back" or disputes a credit card charge, will be subject to a surcharge of at least $100.00 but not more than $500.00 for each incident.

Overdue Invoices
Invoices must be paid on time. Overdue invoices are subject to a 15% monthly interest rate, and a $25 collection fee.

Account Cancellation
If at any time you decide that you would like to cancel your account, you must do so by filling out our Account Cancellation Form. We will only accept cancellations from this form, for account verification and security reasons. After the form has been filled out, an e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address you provided in the cancellation form. This e-mail must be printed and sent back to Pro Web Design via. FAX or postal mail. We will not accept account cancellations via. e-mail. There are no exceptions.

Account Refund
Customers who pay via. credit card, that are entitled to a refund, will see a credit on their credit card statement within 90 days after the refund date. All other refunds will be in the form of a check and mailed via. US mail within 90 days after the refund date.

All refunds are considered on a "per case" basis. Pro Web Design will be the sole arbiter as to the eligibilty of an account refund.

A customer who cancels their annual renewable account after the account billing date may be entitled to a prorated refund, and shall be entitled to a refund of no more than 50% of the total fees paid.

Accounts that have violated our web site hosting terms of service will not be issued a refund. No refunds of any kind will be issued to a customer who cancels a "Basic" or "Starter" web site hosting account.

Defamation
Defamatory speech distributed over the Internet can result in civil liability for the defamer. Defamatory public comments regarding New England Internet (Pro Web Design) on any web site, public forum, bulletin board, etc. will result in immediate account termination. Any customer who's account is terminated because of libelous and/or defamatory comments shall forfeit any and all monies paid towards their web site hosting account (customer shall not be entitled to a refund).

Account Termination / Suspension
Not adhering to our terms and/or conditions will result in grounds for account deactivation. We reserve the right to remove any account or script without prior notice. Any account that is terminated because of violation of policy will not be entitled to a refund.

Pro Web Design reserves the right to terminate or suspend an account for any reason at any time. Pro Web Design also reserves the right to refuse service to any party for any reason.

If an account has been suspended or terminated for any reason, you will be subject to a restoral fee of at least $35.00, but not more than $75.00, if you wish to re-activate your account. It may also be necessary for you to make an annual payment on your account upon re-activation from suspension because of billing reasons. This determination will be the sole discretion of Pro Web Design.