Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)/Terms of Service

Pooled Networks strives to provide the best possible service to all our customers, but we will not tolerate any unlawful activity or abuse on our servers. We respect freedom of speech and expression unless it is harmful to others. These brief guidelines are imposed to protect you, other Pooled Networks customers and us against such harm.

Due to rules set in place by the government of the United States of America we cannot host clients from the following countries: Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, or Zimbabwe.

Payment Policies, Fees, Refunds and Terms of Agreement

Full payment is required before any hosting service is rendered, which includes renewals. All payment-due notices will be sent by electronic mail. No bills or invoices will be sent by postal mail or fax, unless requested and agreed upon before service is rendered. Prepayment is due each anniversary (one month, one year, or other agreed upon period) following the date the account was established. Billing will continue until the directions in the Account Cancellation section of this policy are followed. As a policy, we do not offer credits or refunds for hosting time already expended or on any promotional credit, such as a free month of hosting. Pooled Networks considers all credit card or PayPal chargebacks for services rendered, or partially rendered, to be fraudulent. Such accounts will be assessed a $50 fee, per incident, have their accounts suspended immediately, and have their balance sent to a third-party collections agency. Please follow the refund procedures we have defined.

We do give refunds for full months unused, not partial months, and billing is only done on full month or annual terms. If you decide to cancel after prepayment, you will not receive a refund for the current month in use (we do not give partial months refunds). If you have prepaid and received a multi-month discount, upon cancellation we will calculate the refund retroactively withdrawing the discount back to the start date of the contract. This will result in paying full undiscounted price for the months used and refunding the balance. If cancellation is done by Pooled Networks due to a violation of the Terms of Service, there will be no refund. Additional features can be added to accounts and upgrades can be made at any time. Pooled Networks reserves the right to change prices at any time, but will notify all clients at least 30 days before such changes take place.

All customers will receive invoices 7 days before the due date and any credit card on file will be charged 2 days before the due date. After the due date, there is a 2 day grace period in which to fully pay the invoice, with an overdue notice being emailed daily. If payment is not made, or other adequate arrangement put in place, the system(s) will be promptly shutdown after the 2nd day. The system will be maintained in full working order, with the original data, for a period of at least one additional week. The customer is fully responsible for making sure payment is made in a timely manner and is fully responsible for keeping accurate billing information on file.

Account Cancellation

A server order cannot be cancelled for a refund unless it is for a server which is not delivered in the appropriate time frame. That time frame is 72 business hours for in-stock servers and 10 business days for custom order systems, systems with any hardware modifications, extra RAM, RAID card, etc. Otherwise, servers can be canceled at any time. To cancel your account, please email billing@pooled.net with your Account ID and the Service ID, Server ID, or main IP of the server you wish to cancel. This email must be sent from the primary contact address for the account. Notification of cancellation must be received at least one full week prior to your cycle date, with the cycle date being the day of the month you sign up, in order to avoid charges in full for the next cycle. It is the client's responsibility to secure email confirmation from Pooled Networks that the account has been cancelled. If the client has not yet received email confirmation of account cancellation, then the account remains active, and you will continue to be invoiced. Clients are responsible for all charges associated with an account until cancellation is verified via email.

If the client has a balance due at the time of cancellation, this balance must be paid in full. Cancellation does not absolve client of any outstanding financial obligations. Pooled Networks reserves the right to go through a third-party collection agency to collect any overdue payments. All accounts sent through a third-party collections agency will have an additional fee of 38% of the amount owed added to cover the collections fees and other related expenses.

Indemnification Policy

You agree to use all Pooled Networks services and facilities at your own risk. Pooled Networks specifically disclaims all warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall Pooled Networks be liable for any loss, or loss of data, or other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages. The client agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold Pooled Networks harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted against Pooled Networks, its agents, its customers, officers and employees, that may arise or result from any service provided or performed or agreed to be performed or any product sold by the client, it's agents, employees or assigns. The client agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Pooled Networks against liabilities arising out of:

• Any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with a Pooled Networks server;
• Any material supplied by the client infringing or allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party;
• Copyright infringement and
• Any defective products sold to the client from a Pooled Networks server.

Pooled Networks shall be the sole arbitrator of what violates this policy.

SPAM Policy

Pooled Networks is committed to a strict anti-spamming policy. Under this policy, we prohibit spam, or any unsolicited commercial email, from being sent either: Over the Pooled Networks network, by clients or any other users of the Pooled Networks network (including the client's customers); AND/OR over ANY network - if the message sent advertises or mentions a site hosted on the Pooled Networks network.

We react quickly and seriously to violations, and we further reserve the right to terminate the services of any client disregarding this policy. Notice of at least 24 hours is given to all dedicated hosting and colocation clients. Sending unsolicited commercial email (a.k.a. "spam"), cross-posting messages to a large number of Usenet groups, posting obscene or threatening messages while using or referring to an email address or web site URL on Pooled Networks' network is prohibited. The use of Pooled Networks' network as a mail drop for responses to activities described above is also prohibited. Accounts cancelled due to spam will be billed a "clean up" fee of $100 along with a potential fee of $50 per mailing/complaint if they are deemed to be unresponsive to our requests.

If you have any complaints or comments regarding spam on our network, please email abuse@pooled.net.

We will not suspend an account due to a single violation. We will first attempt to work with you to resolve the situation. If problems persist or there is no cooperation the account may be suspended and have the above charges applied. As a web host we understand you may not have control of all your users/clients and we are more than happy to work with you as long as you are cooperative. We give all clients the right to defend themselves before accounts are permanently suspended or charged the specified clean-up fees.

Content Policy

All services provided by Pooled Networks may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any American law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, trademark, intellectual property, material that promotes any illegal activity, or material protected by trade secret and other statutes without proper authorization. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Pooled Networks from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Examples of unacceptable content include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Pirated software, including warez or any other commercial software which you do not have the legal right to distribute;
• Serial numbers and CD keys for commercially available software which you do not have the legal right to distribute;
• Music (.mp3, .wma, .ogg, etc.), Movies and Television shows (.mpg, .avi, .wmv, etc.) or compressed files or archives containing such files (.zip, .rar, .tar, etc.) which you do not have the legal right to distribute;
• Child pornography, rape, or bestiality;
• Hacker programs or archives;
• Any content that facilitates in identity theft, credit card fraud, or any other type of fraud;
• Torrent files and trackers that facilitate the download of any materials included in this list;
• Any software that facilitates any activity prohibited in this policy.

Any illegal activity may result in your site being suspended immediately, without notification. Any sites breaking the above rules will be subject to a $100 clean-up fee if they are deemed to be unresponsive to our requests.

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

Pooled Networks is a strong believer in everyone's right to practice free speech and we do not feel that it is our obligation to rid the Internet of any material which others feel may be inappropriate or offensive. We feel that the right of free speech trumps any other claims of content being inappropriate or offensive as those terms are objective, while the laws of the United States are quite clear. As long as the content is legal, we will not suspend your account without notice, though we do reserve the right to refuse hosting to any party for any reason with proper notice being given.

System and Network Security

Violations of system or network security are strictly prohibited, and may result in criminal and civil liability. Pooled Networks investigates all incidents involving such violations and will cooperate with law enforcement if a criminal violation is suspected.

Examples of system or network security violations include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Introduction of malicious programs into the network (example: viruses, worms, Trojan Horses and other executables intended to inflict harm);
• Effecting security breaches or disruptions of Internet communication and/or connectivity. Security breaches include, but are not limited to, accessing data of which the client is not an intended recipient or logging into a server or account that the client is not expressly authorized to access. For purposes of this section, "disruption" includes, but is not limited to, port scans, ping flooding, email-bombing, packet spoofing, IP spoofing and forged routing information;
• Executing any form of network activity that will intercept data not intended for the client's server;
• Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account;
• Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the client's host (example: denial of service attack or distributed denial of service attack);
• 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.

Inadequate security, insecure/unpatched software, insecure passwords, etc. are not the responsibility of Pooled Networks. The client is responsible for assuring that their account is as secure as possible and the account holder accepts all responsibility for actions taken using their allocated resources, whether they are authorized or not. The account holder on file agrees to be held responsible for all bandwidth overage fees, clean-up fees, and managed service fees.

Scripting/IRC Policy

Pooled Networks only allows the running of IRCd, eggdrop, or other IRC related scripts, programs, or bots as long as they are not connected to one of the major networks and are not targets for DDoS or similar attacks. If you are running such scripts, programs, or bots you take full responsibility for any and all costs that may be involved in resolving such an attack, with a minimum fee of $100 per incident.

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason not prohibited by law. Also we reserve the right to terminate service to any client for any reason not prohibited by law.

Any deliberate attempt to cause damage to Pooled Networks or any other Internet servers will result in immediate account deactivation without prior notice. No refund will be issued in this case.

Backups

It is the clients' responsibility to maintain backup copies of their content and other stored information. If loss of data occurs due to a failure on Pooled Networks' part, we will take reasonable action to recover the data at no charge to the client. If data loss occurs due to negligence of client in securing their account, by an action of the client, or any actions not under the direct control of Pooled Networks, such as a hard drive failure, Pooled Networks will have no liability.

Support

All Pooled Networks services are unmanaged, meaning support is only offered for hardware and network issues. No software support is offered. If software support is requested after having been denied once or if support is requested through means other than those mentioned on the Customer Support page of the web site (http://pooled.net/support/) a fee of $5 per incident will be charged to the account of the person requesting support.

User Information

It is the responsibility of the client to assure that the complete contact and billing information on-hand is up-to-date and accurate, including full mailing address and a list of authorized contacts. Pooled Networks will contact users via the email addresses and/or phone numbers entered by the user and will not be held responsible for the accuracy of this information. Pooled Networks provides a direct way for all users to verify this information through the control panel. Support services are only rendered to those users whose information is on file as an authorized contact on the account.