Use and Misuse of the Services

All complaints of abuse, violation and misuse of the Services, whether described in this section or otherwise, shall be investigated promptly. If you are not sure if your actions will be an abuse, violation or misuse, then please contact us.

You are responsible for all use of your website, with or without your knowledge or consent.

You agree to use the Services only for lawful purposes, in compliance with all applicable laws. Illegality includes, but is not limited to: Drug dealing; Attempting without authorisation to access a computer system; Pirating (distributing copyrighted material in violation of copyright law, specifically MP3s, MPEGs, ROMs, and ROM emulators); Gambling; Schemes to defraud; Trafficking in obscene material; Sending a message or having content that is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person; Threatening bodily harm or damage to individuals or groups; Violating export restrictions; stalking; or violating other state or federal law.

When Straight Up Hosting becomes aware of possible violations of this Agreement, Straight Up Hosting may initiate an investigation that may include gathering information from you and the complaining party, if any, and examination of material on Straight Up Hosting’s servers. Straight Up Hosting, in its sole discretion, will determine what action will be taken in response to a violation on a case-by-case basis. Violations of this Agreement could subject you to criminal or civil liability.

BY ACCEPTING THIS AGREEMENT, YOU AGREE TO WAIVE AND HOLD STRAIGHT UP HOSTING HARMLESS FROM ANY CLAIMS RELATING TO ANY ACTION TAKEN BY STRAIGHT UP HOSTING AS PART OF ITS INVESTIGATION OF A SUSPECTED VIOLATION OF THIS AGREEMENT OR AS A RESULT OF ITS CONCLUSION THAT A VIOLATION OF THIS AGREEMENT HAS OCCURRED. THIS MEANS THAT YOU CANNOT SUE OR RECOVER ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER FROM STRAIGHT UP HOSTING AS A RESULT OF STRAIGHT UP HOSTING’S DECISION TO: REMOVE MATERIAL FROM ITS SERVERS, WARN YOU, SUSPEND OR TERMINATE YOUR ACCOUNT, OR TAKE ANY OTHER ACTION DURING THE INVESTIGATION OF A SUSPECTED VIOLATION OR AS A RESULT OF STRAIGHT UP HOSTING’S CONCLUSION THAT A VIOLATION HAS OCCURRED. THIS WAIVER APPLIES TO ALL VIOLATIONS DESCRIBED IN THIS AGREEMENT.

Use and Misuse of Materials Materials in the public domain (e.g., images, text, and programs) may be downloaded or uploaded using the Services. You may also re-distribute materials in the public domain.

You assume all risks regarding the determination of whether the material is in the public domain. You are prohibited from storing, distributing or transmitting any unlawful material through the Services. Examples of unlawful material include, but are not limited to, threats of physical harm, child pornography, and copyrighted, trademarked and other proprietary material used without proper authorization. Pornography and sex-related merchandising, or links to such material, even if legal, are not acceptable uses of Straight Up Hosting’s servers. You may not post, upload or otherwise distribute copyrighted material on Straight Up Hosting’s servers without the consent of the copyright holder.

Unacceptable uses of website content also include the presence of the following programs or the activities associated with them, regardless of whether or not any actual intrusion results in the corruption or loss of data: Server broadcast messages or any message sent on an intrusive basis to any directly or indirectly attached network; Attempts 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, and forging router information; Denial of service attacks, sniffers, flooding, spoofing, ping bombing, smurfs, winnuke, land and teardrop; Promulgation of viruses; and IRC bots, such as eggdrop or BitchX.

Software installations that may cause service degradation (high CPU or RAM usage) are also banned, including but not limited to PABX, VOIP, game servers, crypto-currency mining (such as Bitcoin), audio/video processing, etc.

Straight Up Hosting supports free speech on the Internet and will not suspend or cancel an account simply because it disagrees with views expressed at a website. However, examples of unacceptable activities include posting private information about a person without his or her consent, defaming a person or business, and knowingly making available code that will have a deleterious effect on third-party computers. Where there are allegations that your on-line activity has violated the legal rights of a third party, Straight Up Hosting will not substitute itself for a court of law in deciding tort claims raised by the third party.

Email Use

Unacceptable affronts to netiquette and unacceptable activities include, but are not limited to, the following:

Spamming (sending unsolicited advertising to those with which you have no existing business relationship and posting off-topic advertising in newsgroups);

Spoofing (using a return email address that is not the valid reply address of the sender or sending an email message that does not contain enough information to enable the recipient to identify you);

Passive spamming (promoting a website hosted by Straight Up Hosting 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 or sending large or multiple files to a user);

Generating a higher volume of outgoing mail than a normal user (over 10% of available system resources) via the use of mailing lists;

Propagating chain letters; and 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 distribute unsolicited email or marketing material in bulk.

If you are repeatedly mailbombed or attract such behavior, the Services will be terminated.

You should not send email to any user who does not wish to receive it, either at Straight Up Hosting or elsewhere. Straight Up Hosting recognizes that email is an informal medium; however, you must refrain from sending further email to a user after receiving a request to stop.

You may not alter the headers of email messages to disguise their identity or to prevent users from responding to the messages. Straight Up Hosting may disclose the usernames of accounts responsible for forged email messages to system administrators or users requesting the information.

Violations of the Straight Up Hosting policies outlined herein can sometimes result in massive numbers of email responses. If you receive so much email that Straight Up Hosting resources are affected, Straight Up Hosting’s staff may shut down your mailbox.

Forms that allow visitors to ‘Email a Friend’ and the script called Matt’s Formmail is banned on our servers due to spammer abuse. If this script is found on your website, it WILL be removed immediately. We provide an alternative, more secure script on our website for your use.

System Security

You are prohibited from utilizing the Services to compromise the security of system resources or accounts on servers at Straight Up Hosting or at any other site. Use or distribution of tools designed for compromising security or containing viruses or trojans is prohibited. Examples of these tools include, but are not limited to, password guessing programs, cracking tools or network probing tools.

If you are involved in violations of system security, Straight Up Hosting reserves the right to release all usernames of users involved in such violations to system administrators at other sites in order to assist them in resolving security incidents. Straight Up Hosting will also fully co-operate with law enforcement authorities in investigating suspected lawbreakers.

System Resources

System abuse includes any use of Straight Up Hosting’s resources that disrupts the normal use of its servers or services for others. Examples of system abuse include running excessive numbers of processes or consuming excessive amounts of CPU time, memory or disk space.

Any usage of 10% or more of Straight Up Hosting’s system resources is an undue burden on Straight Up Hosting’s system and is unacceptable. If your usage ever exceeds 10% of system resources, your account may be terminated immediately without prior notice and without providing evidence.

Further, running programs in the background on a Straight Up Hosting server without Straight Up Digital’s prior written authorization, or running chat rooms, Internet Relay Chat, IRC bots, mailing lists that send more then 1,000 emails within a 12 hour period and the like are not acceptable uses of Straight Up Hosting’s servers.