Introduction
This document (the “Agreement”) sets forth the principles, guidelines and requirements of the Terms of Service of PetaHosting LLC, a Delaware Limited Liability Company (the “Company”), governing the use by the customer (“Customer”) of Company’s services and products (“Services and Products”). These Terms of Service define the scope and limitations of the Company’s obligations to the Customer and the acceptable use policy of the Services and Products by the Customer. The Company retains the right to modify these Terms of Service at any time and from time to time and any such modification shall be automatically effective as to all customers when adopted by the Company and published at “www.petahosting.com/tos.htm”. Company shall be the sole and final arbiter in regards to the interpretation of the Agreement. By utilizing the Company’s Services and Products, the Customer agrees to be bound by the terms outlined in this Agreement.
Questions or comments regarding this document should be forwarded to the Company at the following address:
sales@petahosting.com
Compliance with the Law
Customer shall not post, transmit, re-transmit or store material on or through any of Services or Products which, in the sole judgment of the Company (i) is in violation of any local, state, federal or non-United States law or regulation, (ii) is threatening, obscene, indecent, defamatory or that otherwise could adversely affect any individual, group or entity (collectively, “Persons”) or (iii) violates the rights of any person, including rights protected by copyright, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property or similar laws or regulations including, but not limited to, the installation or distribution of “pirated” or other software products that are not appropriately licensed for use by Customer. The Customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the Company from any claims resulting from the use of the Services and Products which damages the Customer or any other party. Customer shall be responsible for determining what laws or regulations are applicable to its use of the Services and Products.
Acceptable Use Policy
In order to protect the interest of its customers, the Company has adopted an uncompromising policy towards parties whose actions could detract from the Company’s ability to serve its customers. The Company believes the Agreement implements a fair policy geared towards protecting its many respectable customers, who should not be deterred by penalties to unlawful actions, while serving as a deterrent for unwanted parties who intend to misuse the Services and Products provided by the Company.
In addition to the other requirements of these Terms of Service, Customer may only use the Services and Products in a manner that, in the Company’s sole judgment, is consistent with the purposes of such Services and Products. If Customer is unsure of whether any contemplated use or action is permitted, please contact the Company as provided above.
The Company will be the sole and final arbiter as to websites or usages of resources that constitute violation or intent to violate the Company’s policies. Those Customers found in violation of these policies are subject to a $1000 service charge for each instance of violation, exclusive of charges for the bandwidth and/or other resources utilized. Customer will be charged a minimum $1000 service charge for each instance of a verifiable Spam message that is reported to the Company and faces immediate account suspension and/or termination, as well as further penalties as deemed appropriate by the Company. Customer accounts which the Company must suspend or cancel due to violation of these rules are not eligible to receive any type of refund or compensation. Acceptance of these Terms of Services, and/or use of Company’s services constitutes an acceptance of any fines, penalties or service charges which might arise out of violation of these policies.
By way of example, and not limitation, uses described below of the Services and Products are expressly prohibited.
General
Actions that restrict or inhibit any Person, whether a customer of Company or otherwise, in its use or enjoyment of any of the Company’s Services or Products.
Violations of the rights of any Person protected by copyright, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property or similar laws or regulations, including, but not limited to, the installation or distribution of “pirated” or other software products that are not appropriately licensed for use by Customer.
Pornography and pornographic related merchandising are prohibited under all the Company’s services. This includes sites that include links to pornographic content elsewhere. Further examples of unacceptable content or links include pirated software, “hacker” programs, archives of “Warez Sites”, IRC Bots, Egg Drop programs and any kind of illegal software or shareware. In addition, sites offering online gambling, casino functionality, sportsbook betting (including offshore), and Internet lotteries are prohibited.
Customer Support
The Company promotes a mutually-professional relationship with its customers. Abusive, threatening, obscene or otherwise harassing communications with agents of the Company, via telephone, Email, online chat or other means will result in immediate account termination not withstanding any other terms of this agreement. Violation of this or any section of this Agreement will result in refund ineligibility.
Bandwidth and Utilization
The Company provides the space and transfer limitations in good faith to its Customers so that they may create their websites without the fear of running over their web traffic allocation. While most Customers will use the space and traffic for their legitimate website needs, we recognize that others may try to take advantage of our offer and use the space and traffic in ways for which it is not intended. In the best interests of our Customers and in an effort to maintain the integrity of our service, the following common sense rules will apply: Customer’s account may only store the information and data that relates to his or her website;
The Company’s “traffic” and “storage” offer is to provide the Company’s customers with storage space and bandwidth for active web pages and cannot be used as a “storage space” for other files. All files stored on the storage space provided to the Customer by the Company must be part of the Customer’s website;
Customer may not resell or give away web space under a domain name, nor may Customer build websites that house “sub domain” websites on behalf of other companies, groups or individuals;
Customer may not use Customer’s website to store web pages, files or data for other IP addresses or domain names, nor may Customer use website as a repository for file, data or “Warez group” download transfers.
The Company does not permit websites which in the Company’s view are detrimental to the enjoyment of the Services and Products by the Company’s other clients, or are in the sole and final judgment of the Company, detrimental to network or business operations.
The data transfer utilization limit provided by the Company to the Customer is 30 gigabytes per month. The Company retains the right to automatically suspend the services provided to the Customer upon Customer’s reaching this limit.
The Company may take whatever steps necessary to provide its services, and to provide for the enjoyment of such services by all of the Company clients, and to ensure that certain clients do not utilize services to the detriment of other clients. Customers with websites that do not comply with these simple rules, will, at the discretion of the Company, have their sites canceled and/or removed from the servers and have service charges assessed at the discretion of the Company.
Sending unsolicited commercial Internet messages (Spam), including the sending of “junk mail” or other advertising material to individuals who did not specifically request such material, who were not previous customers of Customer or with whom Customer does not have an existing business relationship (“Email Spam”).
Sending Spam referencing an Email address for any domain hosted by the Company;
Sending Spam referencing a domain hosted by the Company;
Sending Spam referencing an IP address hosted by the Company;
Posting advertisements on IRC, ICQ, or any other public chat system containing an Email address hosted by the Company, a domain hosted by the Company, or an IP address belonging to the Company;
The Company will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of these provisions.
Harassment, whether through language, frequency or size of messages.
Unauthorized use, or forging, of mail header information.
Solicitations of mail for any other Email address other than that of the poster’s account or service with the intent to harass or to collect replies.
Creating or forwarding “chain letters” or other “pyramid schemes” of any type.
Use of unsolicited Email originating from within the Company’s network or networks of other Internet Service Providers on behalf of, or to advertise, any service hosted by the Company, or connected via the Company’s network.
Activities deemed to be unsolicited marketing efforts or otherwise harassing in any way.
System and Network
Executing any form of network monitoring which will intercept data not intended for the Customer’s account.
Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account.
Introduction of malicious programs into the Company’s network or servers (e.g., viruses and worms).
Effecting security breaches or disruptions of Internet communication. Security breaches include, but are not limited to, accessing data of which Customer is not an intended recipient or logging into a server or account that Customer is not expressly authorized to access. For purposes of this Section, “disruption” includes, but is not limited to, port scans, flood pings, packet spoofing and forged routing information.
Interfering with or denying service to any user other than Customer’s host (for example, denial of service attack).
Creating an “active” full time connection on a Company-provided account by using artificial means involving software, programming or any other method.
Using any program/script/command, or sending messages of any kind, designed to interfere with, or to disable, a user’s terminal session, via any means, locally or via the Internet.
Any attempt to circumvent or alter monitoring, bandwidth tracking or utilization reporting, or other actions which have the effect of complicating the normal operational procedures of the Company, including but not limited to altering, removing or in any way modifying or tampering with Company created log files.
Any action which the Company determines, in its own judgment, will reflect poorly on the Company or negatively impact its operations.
Any action which the Company deems to be an unacceptable use of resources, business practice or otherwise unacceptable to the Company.
Billing
Furnishing false or incorrect data on the order form, contract or online application, including fraudulent use of credit card numbers.
Attempting to circumvent or alter the processes any billing procedures or procedures to measure time, bandwidth utilization, or other methods to document “use” of the Company’s Services and Products.
Security
Customer agrees to take all steps reasonable, necessary, and prudent to protect Customer’s login ID and password.
Customer agrees not to attempt to undermine or cause harm to any server, software, system or customer of the Company.
Uploading a virus to a Company server will result in account termination, service charges and/or prosecution.
Technical Support
Customer acknowledges that the Company will not be required to provide technical support for any software and/or script that the Customer installs, whether manually or using tools provided by the Company. Customer also acknowledges that the Company does not supply technical support for Microsoft FrontPage or any other website authoring tool. The Company supplies technical support for web hosting issues only. The Company shall be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a “web hosting” issue.
Payment Terms
This agreement will automatically renew at the end of the initial hosting term (“next billing date”) for an additional hosting term of equal length.
By submitting a credit card or ACH information on the order form, Customer agrees to authorize all recurring charges to the account and any other balances incurred due to overages of limits, additions of extras to the account, service charges and/or any other fees, and to be bound to the terms of this Agreement.
Customer shall pay the fees and other charges for Products and Services ordered from Company as published on the hosting plan (www.petahosting.com/hosting.htm) at time of order. Company reserves the right to change rates and features without notice; any changes in price or features will take effect upon renewal of the existing hosting account, immediately for new purchases.
Customer agrees that the Company reserves the right to change its fees, features, and discount offerings and the Customer agrees to be bound by any changes of fee, feature, and/or discount.
Customer agrees to pay billed amount according to card issuer agreement. Storage space allocated to Customer during signup process serves as legally binding indicator of agreement.
Service Cancellation
All cancellations must be received by the Company a minimum of three (3) days prior to the next billing date of the service being cancelled.
Cancellation requests must be forwarded to the Company’s Sales Department (sales@petahosting.com). Any other form of cancellation request will not be acceptable.
If the Customer notifies the Company fewer than three (3) days before the next billing date of the domain being cancelled, the charges incurred as a result of that renewal will not be refunded.
Customer will not receive a refund for any reason, including but not limited to: late cancellation, slow connection caused by Customer’s ISP/network, Customer’s ignorance, InterNIC delays and account termination for violation of policies.
The Company reserves the right to terminate this agreement, to delete the website from its hardware and to cease providing any and all other Services and Products, immediately upon the occurrence of any of the following events:
Non payment of any charges due from Customer;
Breach of any term or condition of this agreement by Customer;
Commencement of any lawsuit or proceeding against Customer arising from or relating to its use of the website, whether or not such suit names the Company as a party or seeks any recovery from the Company.
Payment for any charges is due at the time of signup and renewal respectively and will be automatically billed to the customer’s credit card. All payments must be in US Dollars.
Accounts which have balances outstanding shall be deemed to be in default and subject to termination of service. Customer shall be responsible for all costs of collection, including reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs, in event of a default for nonpayment of any amounts due the Company.
Violation
Any attempt to undermine or cause harm to the Company or to any parties associated with the Company, including its other customers, is strictly prohibited. Any violation of the above Terms of Service will result in grounds for account termination, with no refunds given; the Company reserves the right to remove any account without prior notice. Violation of these Terms of Service may result in legal action, service charges or a combination thereof.
Refusal of Service
The Company reserves the right to refuse or cancel service in its sole discretion with no refunds.
If any of these Terms of Service are failed to be followed it will result in grounds for immediate account termination.
Indemnification of Provider
Customer agrees to indemnify and hold the Company harmless from any lawsuit, claim, charge, or expense, including reasonable attorney fees and costs of defense, for any matter arising from or relating to Services and Products provided hereunder.
Relationship of Parties
Nothing contained herein shall be deemed to create a relationship between the Company and the Customer in the nature of a partnership, joint venture, editor/publisher or otherwise. Both parties acknowledge and agree that the Company has no interaction with the data or substance of the Customer’s website, except as necessary to provide its Services and Products.
DISCLAIMER
USE OF THE COMPANY’S SERVICES AND PRODUCTS IS AT CUSTOMER’S SOLE RISK. NEITHER THE COMPANY NOR ITS EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, RESELLERS THIRD PARTY INFORMATION PROVIDERS, MERCHANTS LICENSERS OR THE LIKE, MAKE ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, THAT THE COMPANY’S SERVICES AND PRODUCTS WILL NOT BE INTERRUPTED OR BE ERROR FREE; NOR DO THEY MAKE ANY WARRANTY AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MIGHT BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE COMPANY’S SERVICES AND PRODUCTS OR AS TO THE ACCURACY, OR RELIABILITY OF ANY INFORMATION SERVICE OR MERCHANDISE CONTAINED OR PROVIDED THROUGH THE COMPANY’S SERVICE, UNLESS OTHERWISE EXPRESSLY STATED IN THIS AGREEMENT. THIS INCLUDES LOSS OF DATA, WHETHER RESULTING FROM DELAYS, ON DELIVERIES, WRONG DELIVERY, AND ANY AND ALL SERVICE INTERRUPTIONS CAUSED BY THE COMPANY AND ITS EMPLOYEES OR OTHER CAUSES.
THE SOLE CUMULATIVE LIABILITY OF THE COMPANY FOR ALL CLAIMS MADE BY THE CUSTOMER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY, REGARDLESS OF FORM, INCLUDING ANY CAUSE OF ACTION BASED ON CONTRACT, TORT OR STRICT LIABILITY, SHALL NOT EXCEED THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF ALL FEES AND CHARGES PAID TO THE COMPANY BY THE CUSTOMER.
The Company reserves the right to revise or change these Terms of Service at any time.
This Agreement shall be governed in all respects under the laws of the Commonwealth of Delaware applicable to contracts made, accepted and performed wholly in Delaware, without application to principles of conflict of laws, and the Customer and the Company agree that the sole venue and jurisdiction for any disputes arising from this Agreement shall be the appropriate federal or state court located in New Castle County, Delaware.
PetaHosting LLC – Terms of Service – Rev. 12Jan04