Acceptable Use Policy

1. Personal account connections have idle timers which terminate a dial-up session after 15 minutes of inactivity. Idle timers may not be defeated by auto-generation of data mimicking user activity. ZipLink's personal accounts are for interactive use only.
2. ZipLink allows no more than one (1) dial-up connection from a personal account at a time.
3. IRC robots ("bots") are not permitted on ZipLink's systems.
4. Disk space quotas for personal accounts include storage of World Wide Web, anonymous FTP, e-mail files and personal files. Personal accounts must not exceed their disk quota or they may be suspended until the customer brings the disk space under the quota limit, or purchases additional disk space. Additional disk space is available for a nominal monthly charge.
5. Personal Web pages and FTP locations may be reclassified as commercial based on the volume of data transfer or content. If ZipLink determines that personal Web or FTP space is being used for commercial purposes, ZipLink will add additional charges for commercial Web or FTP hosting to the customer's account and will bill the customer retroactively to the start date of that account. Personal Web sites exceeding 1 Gigabyte (GB) per month of traffic will be billed as a commercial Web site.
6. ZipLink reserves the right to terminate any account which is used for the unauthorized transfer or storage of material which is in violation of U.S. copyright or export laws. Therefore, it is the user's responsibility to maintain any publicly or privately accessible directories and keep them free from content violating U.S. copyright or export laws. Software piracy is strictly forbidden and is defined here as "any unauthorized copying or transfer of a computer program in any manner other than what is permitted by copyright law or by the author as stated in the software licensing agreement". This includes, but is not limited to: material protected by patent, copyright, or trade secret. Any person engaging in software piracy will have their account terminated.
7. Abuse of technical or customer support call center services or personnel is not tolerated. Support will not be provided to abusive users and repeated abuse may result in termination of the user's account(s).
8. Unsolicited advertising (a.k.a. "spamming") via e-mail newsgroup posting is prohibited. Spamming is cause for immediate termination and penalties may be charged to an account. ZipLink considers the following activities as spamming:
   1. Posting or e-mailing offers such as "make money fast" and "pyramid" or chain letter.
   2. Making fraudulent offers of products, items, or services.
   3. Posting unsolicited advertisements for products, items, or services to five (5) or more unrelated newsgroups, forums, mailing lists, or e-mail addresses.
   4. Sending e-mail with headers altered with the intent to disguise the sender.
   5. Using ZipLink servers to relay unsolicited commercial e-mail.

9. A message is considered unsolicited if it is posted in violation of a newsgroup and/or is sent to a recipient who has not requested or invited receival of the message. For the purposes of this provision, merely making one's e-mail address accessible to the public shall not constitute a request or invitation to receive messages.

10. Unacceptable behavior will result in immediate account termination. Examples of unacceptable behavior include but are not limited to:
    1. Harassing others by "mail-bombing" or "news-bombing".
    2. Falsifying user information provided to ZipLink.
    3. Posting articles to any newsgroup, mailing list, or similar forum which are off topic according to the charter or other public statements of the forum.
    4. Forging any message header, in part or whole, of any electronic transmission, originating or passing through ZipLink's services.
    5. Threatening bodily harm or property damage to individuals or groups.
    6. Distributing computer viruses, worm, or any software intended to damage or alter a computer system without the owner's consent.
    7. Installation of "auto-responders", "cancel-bots", or other similar mechanisms which generate excessive network traffic, disrupt newsgroups, or e-mail.