Our Intentions
About this Document
Our Appropriate Use Policy is
designed to help protect our customers, ourselves, and the Internet
community from misuse of Internet access through irresponsible or
illegal activities. We believe that the Internet should be fun as well
as useful, but when one individual's "fun" interferes with
another's ability to enjoy their Internet access, the line between use
and misuse has been crossed. This document should help lay out those
lines more clearly, and allow for our users to more thoroughly enjoy
their internet access while not interfering with others' ability to do
the same. As with any set of guidelines, there will be exceptions. Use
common sense.
Enforcing the AUP
Our policy with most offenses
is to provide one warning upon violation of these terms, with a second
offense resulting in account termination. In severe instances, warning
may not be given. QCOL reserves the final right of judgment in all AUP
violation incidents. Obviously, flagrant or repeated violations will be
viewed in a different light than minor infractions. In cases where
Internet access abuse is in violation of state or federal law, we will
work with the appropriate authorities to achieve resolution.
Ideologies
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
an Internet Service Provider are all contributing factors to decisions
made concerning our AUP, and violations of it.
It is our intention to allow
QCOL customers access to everything the Internet has to offer with
minimal interference. Our belief in free speech is a firm commitment to
our customers, and we will not prevent them from accessing material on
the Internet desirable to them. However, just as free speech doesn't
include the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater,
certain activities are considered inappropriate by the Internet
community at large and cannot be permitted under the guise of free
speech.
While we do not prohibit access
of such objectionable material from other sites, there are certain
guidelines by which content hosted at QCOL, paid for or not, must
conform. QCOL happens to be a company founded by Christians who feel a
moral obligation not to add to the glut of objectionable material on the
Internet. For these reasons we will not host sites offering illegal
copies of software (referred to by would-be hackers as "warez")
or pornographic/suggestive images, nor will we make apologies for our
refusal to do so.
Violations and
Descriptions of Appropriate Use
General Violations
Impersonation/Forgery -
Adding, removing, or otherwise modifying identifying header information
in e-mails or other data transmitted over the network (sometimes
referred to as "spoofing") in an attempt to deceive or mislead
is prohibited. Attempting to impersonate another individual through the
use of such techniques is particularly frowned upon.
Unfriendly Activity -
Activities which adversely affect the ability of other people or systems
to use QCOL's services or the Internet are prohibited. Denial of service
(DoS) attacks are strictly forbidden.
Threats - Making threats
of bodily harm or other destruction are prohibited.
Invasion of privacy -
Attempts, whether successful or unsuccessful, to gain access to computer
systems or data without consent (cracking/hacking) are prohibited.
Attempts to gain access to unauthorized areas of QCOL servers in
particular can result in account termination.
E-mail
Commercial E-mail -
Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail is prohibited. Using bulk mailer
software to deliberately send such mail in large quantities is reason
for account termination. Using a QCOL e-mail account to collect
responses from such bulk mails is also prohibited.
Mail bombing - Sending
large volumes of unsolicited mail to an e-mail address (whether
commercial or not) in attempts to cause problems for that individual's
mail server or e-mail client software is strictly prohibited.
Harassment - Sending
harassing or threatening e-mail is prohibited. If, after being requested
to stop, a QCOL user persists in harassing another Internet user, QCOL
may intervene.
Financial
Account sharing -
Sharing accounts with anyone other than immediate family members or
re-selling services without express written consent from QCOL is
prohibited. Our dial-up servers prohibit multiple connections for the
same username, so by giving out your username and password you are
risking your own ability to log in when someone else is using your
account.
Running servers - Under
no circumstances may a QCOL subscriber run a server of any kind on their
machine. This includes FTP/Gopher servers, web servers, IRC servers, or
any similar service. Game "hosts" for online gaming, in which
a particular player is sometimes referred to as the server during play,
are permitted, but dedicated game servers (such as those for Quake/Quake
2/Unreal, etc.) may not be run on users' machines. No exceptions will be
made for our users running variants of UNIX, such as FreeBSD or Linux.
Servers in such operating systems can be disabled in your /etc/inetd.conf,
and should be so. If you need further assistance disabling servers in a
UNIX variant, feel free to contact our Systems Administrator at sysadmin@qcol.net,
who may be able to help you.
Connection keepalive
programs - Using programs to defeat system inactivity timers or
otherwise maintain a connection when not actively using it are expressly
prohibited. Your account with QCOL provides you with unlimited usage of
the Internet, however this does not mean a dedicated modem connection.
Inactive connections will be disconnected, and a given dial-up session
can not last more than 8 consecutive hours. If you are still
interactively using the system after 8 hours, you are welcome to dial
back in immediately. Should you require such an exception, please
contact us for pricing. We apologize for this particular restriction,
but recent trends in usage dictate we must be strict in this regard.
Many people are known to run software such as ICQ and simply maintain a
connection all day long, while hardly actively using it at all. You can
see how this could easily lead to busy signals, decreasing quality of
service for individuals who would like to dial in to interactively use
the service. We are not saying that you cannot run such software, just
that when you are through interactively using the Internet (ie. You're
not sitting at the computer and not in the process of downloading
something) you should disconnect to free up the line for another user.
The "Golden Rule" certainly applies here. :)
Delinquent accounts -
Untimely payment of any and all amounts due may result in account
termination.
Returned Checks - $15.00
charge.
Excessive disk
utilization
Your QCOL account comes with a
fixed disk space usage limit, and these limits are not to be exceeded.
These limits are "soft limits," meaning that for a short
period of time the limit may be exceeded by a small amount, but if you
are consistently using more than the space you are paying for (without
arrangements through QCOL), you risk being billed for the additional
space in increments of 5MB.
Reporting to QCOL Abuse
If you are aware of a potential
inappropriate use, please direct the information regarding the offense
to abuse@qcol.net, where we will
investigate and take appropriate action. "Appropriate action"
may consist of one or more of the following:
