Legal Policy

Maurice Design provides web hosting to numerous clients. We have a responsibility to protect each client while continuing to provide the finest service possible. Maurice Design has therefore created these terms and conditions for use to fulfill these goals. The Terms of Service and Usage Policy contained in this document is intended for all domains residing on Maurice Design servers. It is understood that customers who use the services provided by Maurice Design have read and agree to abide by these Policies.

IMPORTANT TRAFFIC USAGE RESTRICTIONS

Each account plan comes with a pre-determined amount of bandwidth allowance. Please read carefully the Hosting Plan Comparison Chart for the permitted bandwidth each plan includes. Maurice Design continually monitors usage of the domains residing on our servers.

Sites that are approaching the allotted bandwidth allowance and are in danger of exceeding this bandwidth will be contacted immediately to inform them of the possibility of exceeding the allotted bandwidth. Accounts exceeding their bandwidth allowance will be required to pay a minimum of $1.50 per gigabyte of traffic for each gigabyte of traffic that exceeds their allotted bandwidth.

The following is a sample list of Web sites that historically require heavy bandwidth allotments. This list does not include every instance of sites that may consume more bandwidth:

  • Multiple domains residing at a single IP address.
  • Domains with archives or galleries, (i.e. .gif, .jpg, .exe, .zip, .tar, etc.)
  • Domain accounts offering downloadable file libraries.
  • Domains running multiple, data intensive cgi scripts.
  • Domains that use large databases.
  • Domains the incorporate Chat applications.

If at any time your site extensively exceeds more than 20% of our systems resources in one day, your account will be deactivated immediately without notice and you will have to contact us for reactivation.

UNACCEPTABLE ACTIVITIES

Maurice Design is a Spam-Free hosting provider. Maurice Design does not, under any circumstances, permit the use of our service for spamming purposes. For the use of this document, spamming consists of the following practices:

  • The sending unsolicited advertising to those with which the customer has no existing business relationship.
  • Posting off-topic advertising in newsgroups
  • spoofing Using a return email address which is not the valid reply address of the sender or sending an email message which does not contain enough information to enable the recipient to identify the party who is really sending the message - commonly referred to as Spoofing
  • Passive spamming - promoting a web site hosted by Maurice Design by spamming from some other source
  • Trolling - posting controversial messages in newsgroups to generate responses
  • Mailbombing - inundating a user with email without any serious intent to correspond
  • Generating a higher volume of outgoing mail than a normal user (20% or more of available system resources)
  • Subscribing someone else to an electronic mailing list without that person's permission.

A message is considered unsolicited if it is posted in violation of a newsgroup charter or sent to a recipient who has not requested the message. Making an email address available to the public does not constitute a request to receive messages. Distribution of mass emailing programs is also prohibited. All recipients on a mailing list must have personally subscribed. Mailing lists may not be used to distributed unsolicited email. Any customer repeatedly "mailbombed" or that attracts such behavior will be asked to leave.

If you are not sure if your actions constitute a violation of these spamming policies, please feel free to ask us about it BEFORE you begin. Send any inquiries regarding our spamming policy to support@Maurice Design.

AGE RESTRICTION

All customers of Maurice Design must be 18 years old or older to purchase the services offered by Maurice Design.

ABUSE OF THE LEGAL RIGHTS OF OTHERS

Examples of unacceptable activities and behavior which may be considered abuse of the legal rights of other individuals or entities may include:

  • The posting private information about a person without their consent
  • Infringing on the intellectual property rights of other persons or companies
  • Purposely defaming an individual or business
  • Knowingly making available computer code, software, or hardware devices which will have a deleterious effect on third party computers

Maurice Design supports free speech on the Internet and will not suspend or cancel a customer's account simply because it disagrees with the views expressed by the customer.

Where there are allegations that a customer's on-line activity has violated the legal rights of a third party, Maurice Design will not substitute itself for a court of law in deciding tort claims raised by the third party.

ABUSE OF THE LAW

Maurice Design services may be used for LAWFUL purposes only. Illegality includes but is not limited to:

  • The buying or selling of in illegal drugs and pharmaceuticals
  • Attempting without authorization to access any computer system
  • Pirating (distributing copyrighted material in violation of copyright law, specifically MP3s, MPEG's, ROMs, and ROM emulators)
  • Illegal gambling
  • Schemes to defraud
  • Sending a message or having content with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person
  • Threatening bodily harm or damage to individuals or groups
  • Violating U.S. export restrictions
  • Stalking
  • Violating other state or federal law such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or the Economic Espionage Act.
  • Linking to illegal material is also prohibited.

Maurice Design reserves the right to check system files, email, and other data on our servers for illegal content and materials, or for any other reasons deemed necessary.

ABUSE OF Maurice Design's SERVER RESOURCES

Running programs in the background on a Maurice Design server without Maurice Design's prior written authorization, or running chat rooms, Internet Relay Chat, IRC bots, and the like are not acceptable uses of Maurice Design servers. Further, any usage of twenty percent (20%) or more of our system resources is an undue burden on our system and is unacceptable. If your usage ever exceeds twenty percent (20%) of system resources, or any domain that exceeds twenty gigabytes of bandwidth traffic can be terminated without prior notice.

  • HACKING/CRACKING
    Maurice Design reserves the right to report illegal activities to any and all regulatory, administrative, and/or governmental authorities for prosecution.
  • OTHER BEHAVIOR
    The following examples of unacceptable behavior are non-exclusive, and are provided for guidance purposes. If you are unsure if your actions will be a violation of our policies please ask by sending an email message to: support@Maurice Design

    • Server broadcast messages or any message sent on an intrusive basis to any directly or indirectly attached network.
    • Attempt to circumvent any user authentication or security of host, network, or account.
    • Accessing data not intended for user.
    • Probing the security of any network.
    • Spawning dozens of processes.
    • Port scans, ping floods, packet spoofing, forging router information, Denial of Service attacks, sniffers, flooding, spoofing, ping bombing, smurfs, winnuke, land, teardrop.
    • Promulgation of viruses. IRC bots such as eggdrop or BitchX.
    • Any activity, whether or not the intrusion results in the corruption or loss of data, will be investigated and proper action taken.

The presence of any of these programs, whether or not run, will result in action against the user including suspension or termination.

Any activity, whether or not the intrusion results in the corruption or loss of data, will be investigated and proper action taken. The presence of any of these programs, whether or not run, will result in action against the user including suspension or termination.

CLIENT RESPONSIBILITY

The client is responsible for all activity originating from the account unless proven to be a victim of outside hacking or address forgery. The client is responsible for securing their username/password.

The proper use of the services provided by Maurice Design requires a certain level of knowledge in the use of Internet languages, protocols, and software. This level of knowledge varies depending on the anticipated use and desired content of the web space by the client. The following examples are offered:

  • Web Publishing - Requires knowledge of HTML, properly locating and linking documents, FTPing Web contents, Graphics, text, sound, image mapping, etc.
  • FrontPage Web Publishing - Knowledge of the FrontPage tools as well as Telnet and FTP understanding and capability.
  • CGI-Scripts - Requires a knowledge of the UNIX environment, TAR & GUNZIP commands, Perl, CShell scripts, permissions, etc.
  • Electronic Mail - A use of mail clients to receive and send mail, etc.

The customer agrees that he or she has the necessary knowledge to create and maintain their web space. Client agrees that it is not the responsibility of Maurice Design to provide this knowledge or support outside matter specific to the services we provide - specifically, Web Hosting Services.

BACKUPS

Backups are made nightly. No guarantees are made of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of these backups. WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT CUSTOMERS CREATE A BACKUP OF THEIR SITES.

Server backups are made for server restoration purposes only. It is the client's responsibility to maintain local copies of their web content and any other information that is stored on your domain account. If loss of data occurs due to an error of Maurice Design, We will attempt to recover the data for no charge to the client. If data loss occurs due to negligence of client in securing their account or by an action of the client, Maurice Design will attempt to recover the data from the most recent archive for a $85.00 fee.

ALTHOUGH WE GIVE EVERY ATTEMPT TO RECOVER A BACKUP SHOULD IT BE NECESSARY, WE MAKE NO GUARANTEE AS TO THE QUALITY OR THE RESULTS OF ANY RECOVERY ATTEMPT.

IP NUMBERS

Maurice Design maintains control and any ownership of any and all IP numbers and addresses that may be assigned to the client and reserves in its sole discretion the right to change or remove any and all IP numbers and addresses.

Host Plan Modifications

Maurice Design reserves the right to modify hosting plans, any features offered with those plans, and plan options at any time without notice. Maurice Design also reserves the right to change the price structure of any plan at any time. Customers who are using a plan that is subject to changes will receive notification of any changes 14 days before the changes are to take affect. Customers reserve the right to cancel their subscription upon notification of plan changes with no penalty.

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

Maurice Design shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, which may arise from Maurice Design's servers going off-line or being unavailable for any reason whatsoever. Further, Maurice Design shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental or consequential damages, resulting from the corruption or deletion of any web site from one of Maurice Design's servers. All damages shall be limited to the immediate termination of service.

  • Maurice Design shall be the sole arbiter of what is and is not a violation of these acceptable use policies.
  • Maurice Design reserves the right to terminate an account at any time and for any reason that causes harm to any Maurice Design customer's web sites.
  • Maurice Design reserves the right to delete all content and files upon termination.
  • Maurice Design reserves the right to withhold any pre-paid funds for any site removed for violations of these policies.
  • Maurice Design reserves the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion.

Maurice Design reserves the right to change these Policies without prior notice or warning. Non-enforcement of any part of these Policies does not constitute consent.

IGNORANCE OF THE POLICIES POSTED HERE IS NO EXCUSE. CLIENTS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR KNOWING WHAT IS AND IS NOT ACCEPTABLE USE OF SERVICES PROVIDED BY Maurice Design. CLIENTS SHOULD REVIEW THIS DOCUMENT MONTHLY FOR ANY CHANGES OR ADDITIONS. WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO CHANGE THESE POLICIES WITHOUT WARNING OR NOTICE. NON-ENFORCEMENT OF ANY PART OF THE POLICIES DESCRIBED HEREIN DOES NOT CONSTITUTE CONSENT.

Violations of these Policies should be referred to: abuse @ hostmaurice.net. All complaints will be investigated promptly.