Acceptable Use Policy

Introduction and Terms

Blue Designs, LLC is in the business of providing various Internet Services and other Products to our clients. This Acceptable Use Policy specifies the guidelines for using our Services, Products, and Network.

Henceforth, first person terms, such as "We", "Us", and "Our", refer to us, Blue Designs, LLC., or third parties that provide services to us, or our assignees.

Second person terms, such as "You", and "Your", refer to You, our clients and users, and to your clients and users.

The term "Services" refers to the Services and Products that we provide.

The term "Network" refers to our network, and the networks we make available, and the equipment that makes up the physical infrastructure on those networks, such as routers, switches, and servers, etc.

And of course, the term "AUP" refers to this document, the Acceptable Use Policy.

By using our Services and Network, you indicate that you have read and agree to be bound by the policies, terms and conditions set forth in this AUP in their entirety, without limitation or qualification as well as by all applicable laws and regulations, as if you had handwritten your signature on a contract. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, do not use our Services and Network.

We reserve the right to amend or modify this AUP from time to time by placing the modified AUP on our website at http://www.coolbluedesigns.com/info/usage.php. Your continued use of our Services and Network will constitute your acceptance of any amendments and modifications.

You are responsible for complying with this AUP and for violations attributable to your clients and users, whether you authorized it or not. You must take all reasonable steps to ensure that your clients and users will comply with this AUP.

This AUP does not obligate us to monitor, review, or police the data and content residing on, or passing through our Network. Nor does it obligate us to any non-client party. We expressly disclaim any liability for the data and content residing on our Network and for the actions of our clients.

Any questions or comments regarding this AUP should be directed to abuse@coolbluedesigns.com.

Legal Usage

You may not use our Services and Network in violation of any relevant laws, regulations, ordinances, and court orders. You are responsible for determining which laws or regulations are applicable to the use our Services and Network. In addition to any other actions we may take under this AUP, we reserve the right to cooperate fully with any criminal investigation.

You will cooperate and comply with any civil or crimination investigation regarding content presented by your use of our Services and Network, including, without limitation: discovery orders, subpoenas, freeze orders, search warrants, information requests, wire taps, electronic intercepts and serveillance, preservation requests, and any other order from a court or law enforcement agency. We reserve the right to comply with any investigation without notice to you. You shall not be entitled to service credits, and we shall not be in default if compliance with any investigation causes you to incur a loss of service.

This AUP expressly includes "Child Pornography" as an illegal use of our Services and Network.

Intellectual Property Infringement

You may not transmit, distribute, download, copy, cache, host, or otherwise store any information, data, material, or work that infringes the intellectual property rights of others. We reserve the right to disable access to, or remove, infringing content to the extent required under any law or regulation, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

We reserve the right to suspend permanently or terminate the Services that repeatedly violates our Intellectual Property Infringement or any copyright law.

Prohibited Content

You may not transmit, distribute, download, copy, cache, host, or otherwise store any data, images, or information which, in our sole determination, contains any of the following prohibited content:

Pornography including exposed breasts, bare buttocks or visible genitals.

Sexual Material including obscured or implied sexual acts, sexual touching, sexual language, or erotica.

Violent Material including the assault, rape, injury, blood, dismemberment, torture, or killing of human beings, animals, or fantasy characters, including animation.

Bad Language including Abusive or vulgar terms, profanity or swearing.

Potentially Harmful Activities including the depiction of tobacco, alcohol, drug use, or gambling.

Incitement or depiction of discrimination or harm against any individual or group.

Upon request, we will inspect material for an exclusion from this prohibitation, provided that the material is presented in an artistic, educational, medical, sports, or news context. This will be done on a case by case basis, at our sole discretion. We reserve the right to suspend permanently or terminate the Services that repeatedly violates our Prohibited Content policy.

Security Obligation

You must use reasonable care to ensure the security of our Services and Network. You are solely responsible for any intrusions into, or security breaches of, any Service Network in your control. We reserve the right to disconnect or disable, without provision of service credit, any Service that disrupts our Network, as a result of a security compromise.

Network Abuse

You are prohibited from engaging in any activities that, in our sole determination, constitute network abuse, including the following:

Introducing or executing malicious programs, such as viruses, worms, Trojan Horses, and key loggers.

Causing or initiating security breaches or disruptions of network communication and/or connectivity, including port scans, flood pings, email-bombing, packet spoofing, IP spoofing, and forged routing information.

Executing any form of network activity that will intercept data not intended for you.

Evading or circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account, including cracking, brute-force, or dictionary attacks.

Interfering with or denying service to any user, host, or network other than a host you control, such as a denial of service attack or distributed denial of service attack.

Conduct designed to avoid restrictions or access limits to specific services, hosts, or networks, including the forging of packet headers or other identification information.

Using any program, or sending messages of any kind, designed to interfere with or disable a user's terminal session.

Email

You may not send spam (unsolicited email), and must comply with all relevant laws and regulations on spam and bulk email including the CAN-SPAM act of 2003.

You may operate a double-opt-in mailing list, provided you maintain complete and accurate records of all consents and opt-ins, including the actual email and its headers, and provide such records upon request. A double-opt-in mailing list requires that an email be sent to the user upon registration, and the user must respond by presenting information only available in the email. If you cannot provide positive and verifiable proof of the registration and verification, we will consider the mail to be unsolicited. Additionally, the mailing list must also allow any party on the list to remove itself automatically and permanently.

Other prohibited mailing activities include the following:

Use of our network for the receipt of replies to spam.

Forgery of email headers ("spoofing").

Spamming via third-party proxy, aggregation of proxy lists, or installation of proxy mailing software.

Configuration of a mail server to accept and process third-party messages for sending without user identification and authentication.

Hosting web pages advertised within spam email sent from our network or from any network ("spamvertising").

Block Removal - If, as a result of your actions, our mail servers or IP address ranges are placed on black hole lists and other mail filtering software systems, we will charge you $100 up front and $100 per hour thereafter for any necessary remedial actions.

We impose the following email limits on our Dialup Services:

Port 25 (SMTP) is blocked for all outgoing mail servers, except our own.
We may block certain attachment types used in transmitting viruses.
Do not send to more than 25 recipients at a time.
Do not send more than 100 emails per hour.
Do not Send from an email address that is not your own.
Do not Send and email that is more than 10 MB in size.

IP Allocation

You shall not use IP addresses that we did not assign. We reserve the right to disconnect or disable, without provision of service credit, any Service that utilizes an IP address outside of the assigned range.

Bandwidth

Website Hosting and Dedicated Server packages include a bandwidth limit. If your Service exceeds the bandwidth limit, you will receive an automatic notice, be charged an overage fee, and your bandwidth will be temporarily increased by 1 GB. If your account balance is insufficient to cover the overage fee, your website will automatically be disabled.

Dialup Limits

We may force a 10 minute idle timeout and a 5 hour maximum session on dialup services. You may not attempt to defeat the idle timer using a "ping bot" or similar tool, or use a re-dialer to automatically reconnect once disconnected. Inactivity is defined as less than 500 bytes of data transferred between your modem and our Network.

Dialup Services, other than our Dedicated Dialup Services, have a limited number of channel hours. Once the limit has been reached, access will be denied until the first of the next month. A channel hour is defined as a single channel connection for 60 minutes, or dual channel connections for 30 minutes. The limits are specified in the dialup services page, based on dialup network.

IRC

You may not operate and maintain IRC servers which connect to global IRC networks such as Undernet, EFnet, DALnet. Use of IRC plug-ins, scripts, add-ons, clones or other software designed to disrupt or deny service to other users is prohibited. Harassing or abusive IRC activity is expressly prohibited, including (i) disruption or denial of service or (ii) the use or joining of "botnets" or the use of IRC BNC's or other proxy and re-direction software. If your service is frequently compromised or attract denial of service or distributed denial of service attacks that disrupt or deny service to other clients or their users, we may null-route, filter, suspend, or terminate your service.

Usenet

Usenet posts and content must conform to standard established by the Internet community and the applicable newgroup charter. We reserve the right to determine whether such posts violate this AUP.

System Backups

It is your responsibility to back up your email, website, or server. We do not perform system backups, unless it is added to your package. Otherwise, we will not restore any data of any type for any reason. You should always keep backup of your own websites, databases, and/or systems. We do provide some tools to assist in the backup of your data. We will not be held responsible for loss of any of your data on our servers, including email, websites, databases, or system files.

Confidentiality

Information transmitted through the Internet in general is not confidential. We cannot and shall not guarantee your privacy or your protection. We reserve the right to monitor your transmissions when deemed necessary for providing proper service and/or to protect our rights and property.

Billing

Domain Registration is based on a year, expiring on the yearly anniversary of the original registration. Website Hosting and Dedicated Servers are based on a calendar month, the first term will be extended and prorated to include a minimum of 25 days, ending on the last day of the month. Dialup Access and Web Acceleration is based on a calendar month, the first term will be extended, but not prorated, to include a minimum of 25 days, ending on the last day of the month.

All services automatically renew, one at a time, based on the start date, on the last day of the service term, unless the service has been cancelled, or the service is set to expire by the last day of the service term, or your account balance is insufficient to cover the cost of the service, in which case the service will expire. The renewal term will be based on the original service term (1 month, 6 months, 12 months, etc).

Domain Bucks can be used for the domain registration, transfers, and renewals only. If there is an insufficient domain bucks balance to pay for a domain service, the domain service will be paid from a combination of the domain bucks and cash accounts. If the combination of domain bucks and cash accounts do not have a sufficient balance, the domain will expire like any other service.

It is your responsibility to ensure your accounts have a sufficient balance to cover all upcoming expenses. We accept checks, money orders, and PayPal payments. Payments are processed during business hours only. We reserve the right to hold a check until it clears before applying the payment to your account. PayPal charges us a fee for using their service, and we pass that fee on to you. The PayPal fee is 2.9% + $0.30.

Cancellation

You have the right to cancel service at any time. If the cancellation is not due to a violation of this AUP, we will refund the unused portion of the service term, prorated according to service type, service term, and service age. Domain Registration services are not entitled to a refund; the domain is yours, and you can transfer it if you choose. Website Hosting and Dedicated Servers are eligible for a refund, prorated starting the day after the cancellation date, adjusted for actual time. Dialup Access and Web Acceleration are eligible for a refund, prorated starting the first of the month following cancellation. We will refund any fees within 60 days.

Warranty Disclaimer

No warranty's are made regarding our Services. We do not guarantee that the Services will be uninterrupted or error free. There are many factors that are beyond our control. We exercise no control whatsoever over the content of information that is passed through our Network.

Limitation of Liability

Under no circumstances shall we be liable for damages, which result in any way from your use or inability to use our Services or any part thereof. This includes all direct and indirect damages, special, punitive, or consequential damages that may result from busy signals, errors, delays, loss of files, viruses, theft, or alteration of your computer. In the event that we are found liable under any circumstances under the terms of this agreement, our liability shall be limited to the unused balance of your account, pro-rated to reflect the current term.

Violations of the AUP

We may enforce this AUP with or without notice to you by any action we deem necessary in our sole discretion, including the following:

Disabling, Suspending, and/or Terminating, in part or in whole, your Service(s).

Removal of DNS records.

Effecting IP address null routing.

Blocking email or any other network service.

Take direct action against you, your users, and your customers.

This list of actions shall not be construed in any way to limit the actions or remedies that we may take to enforce and ensure compliance with this AUP. We reserve the right to recover any and all expenses, and apply any reasonable charges, in connection with a Customer's violation of this AUP. No service credits will be issued for any interruption in service resulting from violations of this AUP.

We reserve the right at all time to investigate any actual, suspected, or alleged violations of this AUP with such investigation to include accessing of data and records on, or associated with, any Service.

Miscellaneous

In the event that any portion of this AUP is held to be unenforceable, the unenforceable portion shall be construed in accordance with applicable law as nearly as possible to reflect the original intentions of the parties and the remainder of the provisions shall remain in full force and effect.

Our failure to enforce strict performance of any provision of this AUP shall not be construed as a waiver of any provision or right. Neither the course of conduct between parties nor trade practice shall act to modify any provision of this AUP.

This AUP shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the state of Texas, without regard to conflicts of law provisions. Any cause of action you may have with respect to the Service must be commenced within one (1) year after the claim or cause of action arises or such claim or cause of action is barred.

We shall not be liable or deemed to be in default for any delay or failure in performance under this AUP or interruption of service resulting directly or indirectly from any cause beyond our reasonable control, including, but not limited to: Acts of God, civil or military authority, acts of public enemy, war, riots, civil disturbances, insurrections, accidents, dire, explosions, earthquakes, floods, the elements, strikes, labor disputes, shortages of suitable parts, materials, labor or transportation.

Venue for litigation of any dispute, controversy, or claim arising out of, in connection with, or in relation to this AUP, or the breach thereof, naming us as the defendant, shall be proper only in a venue determined by us.

In any action between us and you to enforce any of the terms of this Agreement, we shall be entitled to recover expenses, including reasonable attorney's fees.