CAUGHT WEB SERVICES
SERVICE GUIDELINES AND ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

All services provided by Caught WEB Services ("CWS") may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United States federal, state or city law os prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statute. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless CWS from any claims resulting from the use of service which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Prohibited are sites that promote any illegal activity or present content that may be damaging to CWS' servers, or any other server on the Internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited.

Examples of unacceptable content or links:

  • pirated software
  • hacker programs or archives
  • Warez sites
  • any site that consumes more than 20% (35% for resellers) of system resources

NOTICE: IF YOUR ACCOUNT IS FOUND TO CONTAIN ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, ILLEGAL MP3 FILES, PIRATED SOFTWARE, HACKER PROGRAMS, WAREZ PROGRAMS, OR ANY OTHER ILLEGAL FILES, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE TERMINATED IMMEDIATELY, WITHOUT NOTICE, AND A $50.00 CANCELLATION FEE WILL APPLY. ADDITIONALLY, CWS WILL NOTIFY THE PROPER AUTHORITIES OF YOUR ACTIONS.

Following are a list of sites that will require more than 20% of our system's resources:

  • multiple domains residing at a single IP address
  • domains with archives or galleries (i.e., .gif, .jpg, .exe, .zip, .tar, etc.)
  • domain accounts offering download files

We are not saying that your web site cannot contain such files; however, if at any time they consume more than 20% of our system's resource (or 35% for resellers), you will be contacted to resolve the problem. CWS will be the sole arbiter as to what constiutes a violation of this provision.

Traffic Usage

All account plans come with a predetermined amount of traffic allowance. We monitor all accounts and bill $4.00 for each gig of traffic exceeded. This amount is not prorated, meaning that 1 mb - 1 gig will be treated and billed as the same.

Chat Rooms

We do not allow clients to install their own chat rooms. These tend to be a large drain on system resources and we cannot allow it as an account option.

Background Running Programs

We may allow programs to run continually in the background. These are considered on a case-by-case basis and an extra charge will be incurred, based on system resources used and operational maintenance required.

IRC

We currently do not allow IRC or IRC bots to be operated on our servers.

Server Abuse

Any attempt to undermine or cause harm to a server or customer of CWS is strictly prohibited.

Refusal of Service

We reserve the right to refuse, cancel or suspend service, at our sole discretion.

All sub-networks, distributive hosting sites and dedicated servers of CWS must adhere to the above policies, with the exception of system resources in respect to dedicated servers.

Billing

By the Account Activation Date of each month, CWS shall either: (1) debit the client's credit card (when such information has been provided by the client); or (2) deliver, by e-mail or regular mail, an invoice in accordance with the applicable Service Fees for services rendered for the current month. When an invoice is delivered to the client, payment shall be remitted to CWS by no later than the specified payment due date. CWS shall be entitled to immediately terminate this agreement for client's failure to make timely payments. You will be provided with an invoice on a monthly basis. All credit cards are billed automatically on a monthly basis. It is the client's responsibility to ensure that they have sufficient credit to cover this transaction. In the event that there is insufficient credit, we will send an e-mail notification, at which point we will need to be provided with another credit card account number within 24 hours. If we do not receive a response within 24 hours, the account, and all accounts under that account plan, will be suspended.

Service Fees

Certain services carry a set-up fee charged by CWS to client, which must be paid by client in order to have use of said services. If client terminates this agreement, client shall be responsible for any and all outstanding fees owed to CWS and agrees to pay any and all fees incurred by client. Because the services are provided on a monthly basis, the client will be responsible for service fees incurred each month, regardless of when client provides notice of termination. Thus, for example, if the client provides notice of termination on the 15th day of a particular month, the client will be responsible for service fees for the entire month, and such fees will not be pro-rated or refunded. If client has retained the services for one year and has pre-paid CWS for such services, refunds will be issued for any unused full month of the services, upon client's request. Therefore, if client's account is canceled at any point during the one-year term, client will be entitled to a refund for the months remaining, after notice given by the 25th day of the preceding month.

Account Deactivations

Any account deactivated due to non-payment will require a reactivation fee of $20.00 prior to reactivation.

Cancellation Refunds

Design/maintenance work: Once completed work is verbally approved by client to Caught WEB Services via phone, in person, via email or instant messenger, or any other means, no refunds are given. For projects that require a deposit before work begins, no refunds are given of the deposit amount. If dissatisfied with the work completed, clients are not responsible for the remainder of the amount beyond the deposit, but are not entitled to the rights of any of the files or other original electronic media created for that project; unauthorized use of the files/electronic media by any entity other than Caught WEB Services will constitute a violation of property rights and is subject to legal prosecution. Files and/or any other original electronic media created are the sole property of Caught WEB Services until payment is received in full (beyond the deposit amount, per agreed upon amount decided prior to commencing project; this amount will vary per project and must be agreed upon before any work is completed). Rights to the original material will be released to the client after payment is received in full; use of original material by any entity other than the paying client, or out of the realm of that particular project (to be decided by Caught WEB Services) is subject to legal inquiry and/or prosecution. Failure to remit payment in a reasonable period of time (within 3 notices, written, verbally or electronically transmitted) for work completed in good faith will be regarded as deliberate delinquency and is subject to legal action.

Hosting: 10-day "trial" period will be given upon request. If within the first 10 days of hosting service a client is dissatisfied for any reason, they may cancel their service and be refunded 100% of any hosting fees charged. Setup fees will not be refunded. After the initial 10-day period, absolutely no refunds are given for the period in which they are canceling service (month). We DO NOT refund partial monthly fees to accounts canceling after their 10-day initial account activation period. Therefore, only pre-paid full monthly fees existing on an account will be refunded. PLEASE NOTE: domain name registration and/or domain maintenance fees (such as domain forwarding, domain aliasing, etc. provided through a third party domain registrar) WILL NOT be refunded under any circumstances.

Refusal of Service

We reserve the right to refuse, cancel or suspend service, at our sole discretion.

Limitation of Liability

CWS shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, which may arise from CWS' servers going off-line or being unavailable for any reason whatsoever. Furthermore, CWS 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 CWS' servers. All damages shall be limited to the immediate termination of service.

Violations

Violations of these Acceptable Use Policies should be referred to All complaints will be investigated promptly. Failure to follow any term or condition will be grounds for immediate account deactivation.

Disclaimer

CWS cannot be held liable for system down time, crashes or data loss. We cannot be held liable for any predicated estimate of profits which a client would have gained if their site was functioning. Certain services provided by CWS are resold. Thus, certain equipment, routing, software and programming used by CWS are not directly owned or written by CWS. Moreover, CWS holds no responsibility for the use of our clients' accounts. Failure to comply with any terms or conditions will result in the automatic deactivation of the account in question. We reserve the right to remove any account, without advance notice for any reason without restitution, as CWS sees fit.

Account Activation

By activating your account with CWS, you agree to the above policies and disclaimer. Upon requesting activation of an account, you are required to accept these policies, guidelines and disclaimer, and a copy of your acceptance is forwarded along with your activation request to be maintained with your account information.
NOTICE: If you sign up for an account and fail to comply with these terms, no refunds will be given. We will, however, advise you by e-mail or phone prior to taking any action to provide you with an opportunity to correct the problem.

CWS reserves the right to amend any or all of the above policies, guidelines and disclaimer without notification. We also retain the right to increase any pricing and make changes to our account plans without notification.

ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

As a provider of web site hosting and other Internet-related services, CWS offers its customer (also known as "Subscribers") and their customers and users the means to acquire and disseminate a wealth of public, private, commercial and non-commercial information. CWS respects that the Internet provides a forum for free and open discussion and dissemination of information. However, when there are competing interests at issue, CWS reserves the right to take certain preventive or corrective actions. In order to protect these competing interests, CWS 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 using CWS' services. This AUP will be revised from time to time. A customer's use of CWS' services after changes to the AUP are posted on CWS' web site, www.caughtweb.net, will constitute the customer's acceptance of any new or additional terms of the AUP resulting 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 it, both in the information they acquire and in the information they disseminate to others. When subscribers obtain information through they Internet, they must keep in mind that CWS cannot monitor, verify, warrant or vouch for the accuracy and quality of the information they acquire. For this reason, the subscriber must exercise his or her best judgment in relying on information obtained from the Internet, and also should be aware that some material posted to the Internet may be sexually explicit or otherwise offensive. Because CWS cannot monitor or censor the Internet, and will not attempt to do so, CWS cannot accept any responsibility for injury to its subscribers resulting from inaccurate, unsuitable, offensive or illegal Internet communications.

When subscribers disseminate information from the Internet, they must keep in mind that CWS does not review, edit, censor or take responsibility for any information its subscribers 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 created is carried over CWS' network and may reach a large number of people, including both subscribers and non-subscribers of CWS, subscribers' postings to the Internet may affect other subscribers and may affect CWS' goodwill, business, reputation or operations. For these reasons, subscribers violate CWS policy and the Service Agreement when they, their customers, affiliates or subsidiaries engage in the following prohibited activities:

  1. Spamming: Sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial information over the Internet. It is not only harmful because of its negative impact on consumer attitudes toward CWS, but also because it can overload CWS' network and disrupt service to CWS' subscribers. Also, maintaining an open SMTP relay is prohibited. When a complaint is received, CWS will investigate and shutdown the account that is SPAMing. A $250 charge for violating this policy will be charged to the person initiating the SPAM. Futhermore CWS reserves the right to prosecute for this violation. A $1.00 charge will be assessed PER EMAIL sent should CWS choose to pursue and prosecute.

  2. 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. CWS is required by law to remove or block access to customer content, upon receipt of a proper notice of copyright infringement. It is also CWS' policy to terminate the privileges of customers who commit repeat violations of copyright laws.

  3. Obscene Speech or Materials: Using CWS' network to advertise, transmit, store, post, display, or otherwise make available child pornography or obscene speech or material is prohibited. CWS is required by law to notify law enforcement agencies when it becomes aware of the presence of child pornography on or being transmitted through its network.

  4. Defamatory or Abusive Language: Using CWS' network as a means to transmit or post negative, defamatory, harassing, abusive or threatening language.

  5. Forging of Headers: Forging or misrepresenting message headers, whether in whole or in part, to mask the originator of the message.

  6. Illegal or Unauthorized Access to Other Computers or Networks: 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 may be used as a precursor to an attempted system penetration (i.e., port scan, stealth scan or other information-gathering activity).

  7. 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.

  8. Facilitation 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.

  9. Export Control Violations: Exporting encryption software over the Internet or otherwise, to points outside the United States.

  10. Usenet Groups: CWS reserves the right not to accept postings from newsgroups where we have actual knowledge that the content of the newsgroup violates the AUP.

  11. Other Illegal Activities: Engaging in activities that are determined to be illegal, including, but not limited to, advertising, transmitting or otherwise making available ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, fraudulently charging credit cards and pirating software.

  12. Other Activities: Engaging in activities, whether lawful or unlawful, that CWS determines to be harmful to its subscribers, operations, reputation, goodwill or customer relations.

As we have pointed out, the responsibility for avoiding harmful activities just described rests primarily with the subscriber. CWS will not, as an ordinary practice, monitor the communications of its subscribers to ensure that the comply with CWS' policy or applicable law. However, when CWS becomes aware of harmful activities, it may take any action to stop the harmful activity, including, but not limited to, removal of information, shutting down a web site, implementing screening software designed to block offending transmissions, denying access to the Internet, or any other action deemed appropriate by CWS.

CWS is also aware that many of its subscribers are themselves providers of Internet services, and that information reaching CWS' facilities from those subscribers may have originated from a customer of the subscriber or from another third party. CWS does not require its subscribers who offer Internet services to monitor or censor transmissions or web sites created by customers of its subscribers. CWS reserves the right to directly take action against a customer of its subscribers. Also, CWS may take action against the CWS' subscriber because of activities of a customer of the subscriber, even though the action may affect other customers of the subscriber. Similarly, CWS anticipates that subscribers who offer Internet services will cooperate with CWS in any corrective or preventive action that CWS deems necessary. Failure to cooperate with such corrective or preventive measures is a violation of CWS policy.

CWS will not intentionally monitor private electronic mail messages sent or receive by its subscribers, unless required to do so by law, governmental authority or when public safety is at stake. CWS may, however, monitor its service electronically to determine that its facilities are operating satisfactorily. Also, CWS may disclose information, including, but not limited to, information concerning a subscriber, a transmission made using our network, or a web site, in order to comply with a court order, subpoena, summons, discovery request, warrant, statute, regulation or governmental request. CWS assumes not obligation to inform the subscriber that subscriber information has been provided and, in some cases, may be prohibited by law from giving such notice. Finally, CWS may disclose subscriber information or information transmitted over its network where necessary to protect CWS and others from harm, or where such disclosure is necessary to the proper operation of the system. However, CWS will never sell information to other services or outside companies.

CWS expects that its subscribers who provide Internet services to others will comply fully with all applicable laws concerning the privacy of online communications. A subscriber's failure to comply with those laws will violate CWS policy. Finally, CWS wishes to emphasize that, in signing the Service Agreement, subscribers indemnify CWS for any violation of the Service Agreement, law or CWS policy resulting in loss to CWS or the bringing of any claim against CWS by any third party. This means that, if CWS is sued because of a subscriber's or customer of a subscriber's activity, the subscriber will be responsible for payment of any damages awarded against CWS, plus costs and reasonable attorney's fees.

We hope this AUP is helpful in clarifying the obligations of Internet users, including CWS and its subscribers, as responsible members of the Internet. Any complaints about a subscriber's violation of this AUP should be sent to