Professional Digital Publishing
Acceptable Use Policy
As a provider of web site hosting, and other Internet-related services, Professional Digital Publishing offers its clients, and their customers and users, the means to disseminate a wealth of public, private, commercial, and non-commercial information. Professional Digital Publishing respects that the Internet provides a forum for free and open discussion and dissemination of information, however, when there are competing interests at issue, Professional Digital Publishing reserves the right to take certain preventative or corrective actions. In order to protect these competing interests, Professional Digital Publishing has developed an Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP"), which supplements and explains certain terms of each customer's respective service agreement and is intended as a guide to the customer's rights and obligations when utilizing Professional Digital Publishing's services. This AUP will be revised from time to time. A customer's use of Professional Digital Publishing after changes to the AUP are posted on Professional Digital Publishing's web site, www.ProDigiPub.com, will constitute the customer's acceptance of any new or additional terms of the AUP that result from those changes.
One important aspect of the Internet is that no one party owns or controls it. This fact accounts for much of the Internet's openness and value, but it also places a high premium on the judgment and responsibility of those who use the Internet to disseminate information to others.
When information is disseminated through the Internet, they also must keep in mind that Professional Digital Publishing does not review, edit, censor, or take responsibility for any information its clients may create. When users place information on the Internet, they have the same liability as other authors for copyright infringement, defamation, and other harmful speech. Also, because the information they create is carried over Professional Digital Publishing's network and may reach a large number of people, including both clients and non-clients of Professional Digital Publishing, clients' postings to the Internet may affect other clients and may harm Professional Digital Publishing's goodwill, business reputation, and operations. For these reasons, clients violate Professional Digital Publishing's policy and the service agreement when they, their customers, affiliates, or subsidiaries engage in the following prohibited activities:
Spamming
Intellectual Property Violations
Adult Material
Defamatory or Abusive Language
Forging of Headers
Illegal or Unauthorized Access to Other Computers or Networks
Background Running Programs
Distribution of Internet Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses, or Other Destructive Activities
Facilitating a Violation of this AUP
Export Control Violations
Usenet Groups
Other Illegal Activities
Refund Policy
Spamming
Sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial messages over the Internet (known as "spamming"). It is not only harmful because of its negative impact on consumer attitudes toward Professional Digital Publishing, but also because it can overload Professional Digital Publishing's network and disrupt service to Professional Digital Publishing's clients. Also, maintaining an open SMTP relay is prohibited. When a complaint is received, Professional Digital Publishing has the discretion to determine from all of the evidence whether the e-mail recipients were from an "opt-in" e-mail list.
Intellectual Property Violations
Engaging in any activity that infringes or misappropriates the intellectual property rights of others, including copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets, software piracy, and patents held by individuals, corporations, or other entities. Also, engaging in activity that violates privacy, publicity, or other personal rights of others. Professional Digital Publishing is required by law to remove or block access to customer content upon receipt of a proper notice of copyright infringement. It is also Professional Digital Publishing's policy to terminate the privileges of customers who commit repeat violations of copyright laws.
Adult Material
Because the Internet is a global communication tool, and we have clients from nearly every country in the world it is difficult to dictate what is considered "adult material." However, it is not our function to discriminate against those who choose to utilize adult content or adult related material. This being said, there are still several reasons why Professional Digital Publishing has been forced to create its no adult sites policy for its virtual server users.
What does Professional Digital Publishing consider "Adult Material?"
Any site whose revenue is gained in part or whole from its adult content.
Photos or videos showing frontal nudity on either men or women for non-scientific or
non-artistic purposes.
Revenue-generating hyperlinks to sites who violate policy #1.
Why does Professional Digital Publishing disapprove of adult material?
Bandwidth and Resources: A virtual server is a shared environment where many servers reside on each particular machine. This being said, consider that an average "adult site" gets more hits than 100 standard websites. Some of the smaller adult sites get around 5 GB of transfer per day. With these types of resources being utilized, our servers would be severely slowed if we allowed these high traffic sites to also reside on our servers. On top of that, we would be forced to raise our prices to pay for the additional bandwidth. We strive to keep our servers fast and inexpensive, and our bandwidth clear; therefore, adult sites are not an option.
Professional Digital Publishing reserves the right to decide what it considers "adult content", "adult material", "sexually explicit", or "sexually related". Let us know if you are unsure of the approval of your site before placing an order.
Defamatory or Abusive Language
Using Professional Digital Publishing as a means to transmit or post defamatory, harassing, abusive, or threatening language.
Forging of Headers
Forging or misrepresenting message headers, whether in whole or in part, to mask the originator of the message.
Illegal or Unauthorized Access
Accessing illegally or without authorization computers, accounts, or networks belonging to another party, or attempting to penetrate security measures of another individual's system (often known as "hacking"). Also, any activity that might be used as a precursor to an attempted system penetration (i.e. port scan, stealth scan, or other information gathering activity).
Background Running Programs
Background Daemons in general are prohibited on Professional Digital Publishing's servers, including, but not limited to, IRC bots, eggdrop, BitchX, XiRCON, warez sites and any other program that interferes with normal server operation. Professional Digital Publishing will be the sole arbitor of what constitutes a violation of the above policy.
Distribution of Internet Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses, or Other Destructive Activities
Distributing information regarding the creation of and sending Internet viruses, worms, Trojan horses, pinging, flooding, mailbombing, or denial of service attacks. Also, activities that disrupt the use of or interfere with the ability of others to effectively use the network or any connected network, system, service, or equipment.
Facilitating a Violation of this AUP
Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP, which includes the facilitation of the means to spam, initiation of pinging, flooding, mailbombing, denial of service attacks, and piracy of software.
Export Control Violations
Exporting encryption software over the Internet or otherwise, to points outside the United States.
Usenet Groups
Professional Digital Publishing reserves the right not to accept postings from newsgroups where we have actual knowledge that the content of the newsgroup violates the AUP.
Other Illegal Activities
Engaging in activities that are determined to be illegal, including advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, fraudulently charging credit cards, and pirating software.
Refund Policy
Our refund policy is quite simple. A refund will be given to any customer based on any service not used. Example: If paid for 1 month service and only 15 days was actually used, when requesting refund. You will be refunded based on a prorated amount of 15 days. We strive for customer satisfaction, but if the end result is a refund, we'll be happy to provide one based on a prorated refund amount.
We hope this policy layout is helpful in clarifying the obligations of Internet users, including Professional Digital Publishing and its clients, as responsible members of the Internet. Any complaints about a client's violation of this AUP should be sent to our abuse department.
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