Acceptable Use Policy and Terms of Service

We want you to fully understand our policies before signing up.   We hate it when a hosting service promises one thing and then lets you know all of the exceptions after you've paid your money.

At the 13th Floor Network, we value our customers and wish to provide them with a positive experience. The 13th Floor Network general policy is to act as a provider of internet presence. To offer you the best service possible, all customers need to follow the same rules and guidelines.  The 13th Floor Network has certain legal and ethical responsibilities consisting with the use of its server and equipment involved in these services. These policies are intended to make the 13th Floor Network's Service available to all our customers as consistently and efficiently as possible.

Specific Acceptable Use Policies

User-Supplied Content
All services may be used for lawful purposes only. Through the 13th Floor Network's Service, you may have access to chat areas, bulletin boards, web pages, email, or other services that enable you to send or post materials ("content") and make that content available to others. You must not submit, publish, or display on the Network any defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, obscene, infringing, or threatening content. In addition, you may not submit, publish, or display any content that violates any US Federal, State, or Local law. You are solely responsible for the content you make accessible through the 13th Floor Network. You may not use the Service to assist any other person or entity to violate any Federal, State, or Local laws, ordinances, or regulations.

The 13th Floor Network is not obligated to monitor the network to examine available content. You hereby acknowledge that if we are made aware of content that is determined to be, in its sole discretion, unacceptable, undesirable, offensive, indecent, obscene, excessively violent or otherwise objectionable, the 13th Floor Network has the right, but not the obligation, to edit, remove or deny access to such content. The 13th Floor Network may disclose any content or records concerning customer's account as required to satisfy any law, regulation, governmental request or court order.

Pornography and sex-related merchandising are prohibited on all the 13th Floor Network servers. This includes sites that may infer sexual content, display nudity, or link to adult content elsewhere. This is also true for sites that promote any illegal activity or content that may be damaging to the 13th Floor Network's servers or any other server on the Internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited. In addition, any site selling or promoting bulk email service is not allowed. Below are some examples of non-acceptable content or links:

• Adult Sites - Any erotic or pornographic material, links to adult sites, or advertisements for adult sites.
   
• Pirated Software (Warez) - Any software that is copyrighted and not freely available for distribution without cost; i.e. ROMs, ROM Emulators and MPEG Layer 3 files (MP3).
   
• Copyright Violations - Violation of copyrights held by individuals and corporations or other entities can result in civil and criminal liability for the infringer.
   
• Hacking/Phreaking - Includes sites with material, links, or resources for hacking, phreaking, viruses, anarchy, or any type of site that promotes or participates in willful harm to Internet sites or providers.

Network Security
Customers may not use the 13th Floor Network with an attempt to circumvent user authentication or security of any host, network, or account. This includes, but is not limited to, accessing data not intended for the customer, logging into a server or account the customer is not expressly authorized to access, password cracking, probing the security of other networks in search of weakness, or violation of any other organization's security policy. Customers may not attempt to interfere or deny service to any user, host, or network. This includes, but is not limited to, flooding, mail bombing, or other deliberate attempts to overload or crash a host or network. 13th Floor Network will cooperate fully with investigations of violations of systems or network security at other sites, including cooperating with law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected criminal violations. Users who violate system or network security may incur criminal or civil liability.

CGI Scripts
Each 13th Floor Network account comes fully equipped with its own pre-configured CGI-Bin. Customers are free to use any CGI-scripts provided with their account or add any additional ones they require. Any CGI-scripts deemed to be adversely affecting the server performance or the network integrity may be shut down without prior notice. CGI-script sharing with domains not hosted by the 13th Floor Network is not allowed.

Chat Rooms
The 13th Floor Network prohibits its customers from installing outside chat rooms on their domain, as these tend to be a resource problem. The 13th Floor Network does provide its customers a choice of Java chat rooms to choose from for a nominal monthly charge. These chat rooms were designed to meet the growing needs of customers and function without hindering the performance of the servers for others.

Server Resources
Any web site that uses a high amount of server resources (such as, but not limited to CPU time, memory usage, and network resources) will be given an option of either upgrading their service level or reducing the resource used to an acceptable level.

Background Running Programs
Background daemons in general are prohibited. The 13th Floor Network will consider requests on a per-application basis. If allowed, extra charges will be assessed based on resource requirements for system maintenance.

IRC
The 13th Floor Network currently prohibits its customers from operating IRC or IRC Bots on any of the servers in the 13th Floor Network.

Commercial Advertising/ Mass Mailings
You must not use the 13th Floor Network, 13th Floor Network equipment or any 13th Floor Network email address in connection with the transmission of spam, flames, mail bombs, or substantially similar, unsolicited email messages. Your domain may not be referenced as originator, intermediary, or reply-to address in any of the above. This prohibition extends to the sending of unsolicited mass mailings from another service that in any way implicates the use of the 13th Floor Network, 13th Floor Network equipment or any 13th Floor Network email address. A message is considered unsolicited if it is posted in violation of a newsgroup charter or if it is sent to a recipient who has not requested or invited the message. For purposes of this provision, merely making one's email address accessible to the public will not constitute a request or invitation to receive messages.

If you are found to have spammed, without warning, the 13th Floor Network reserves the right to disable your domain. In addition, the 13th Floor Network may impose a $100 penalty for each Spam policy violation. The 13th Floor Network solely reserves the right to refuse or cancel service to known spammers. Lastly, the 13th Floor Network reserves the right to determine what violates this policy. As such, any violation may result in cancellation of services without refund.

Distribution and/or Transmission of Obscene or Indecent Speech or Materials
Violation of indecency and obscenity laws can result in criminal penalties.

Intellectual Property Rights
Material accessible to you through the 13th Floor Network's Services may be subject to protection under the United States or other copyright laws, or laws protecting trademarks, trade secrets or proprietary information. Except when expressly permitted by the owner of such rights, you must not use the 13th Floor Network Service in a manner that would infringe, violate, dilute or misappropriate any such rights, with respect to any material, which you access or receive through the 13th Floor Network. If you use a domain name in connection with the 13th Floor Network Service or similar service, you must not use that domain name in violation of any trademark, service mark, or similar rights of any third party.

Defamation
Defamatory speech distributed over the Internet can result in civil liability for the defamer.

Payment Policies
All accounts are set up on a pre-pay basis. All pricing is guaranteed for the term of pre-payment. The 13th Floor Network reserves the right to change prices at any time, unless other terms have been agreed upon. Any account not brought current within a week (7 days) of e-mail notice or exceeding this time frame in any way is subject to suspension. The customer is responsible for all money owed on the account from the time it was established to the time that the customer notifies the 13th Floor Network in writing for a request for termination of services. All payment is in U.S. currency.

Cancellation
The 13th Floor Network reserves the right to cancel service at any time. All fees paid in advance of cancellation will be pro-rated and paid by the 13th Floor Network if the 13th Floor Network institutes it's right of cancellation. Any violation of policies which results in extra costs will be billed to the customer (i.e. transfer, space etc.)

Customers can cancel service any time.

Refusal of Service
The 13th Floor Network reserves the right to refuse service to anyone. Customers may only use the 13th Floor Network server for lawful purpose. Violation of any of the 13th Floor Network's Rules and Regulations could result in a warning, suspension, or possible account termination. Accounts terminated due to policy violations will not be refunded. Transmission of any material in violation of any Federal, State or Local regulation is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to copyrighted material, material legally judged to be threatening or obscene, and material protected by trade secrets.

The 13th Floor Network expressly forbids anyone from using the 13th Floor Network servers for the propagation, distribution, housing, processing, storing, or otherwise handling in any way lewd, obscene, or pornographic material, or any other material which we deem to be objectionable, including, but not limited to, pornography, satanic materials, and any and all materials of an adult nature. The designation of any materials as such described above is left entirely to the discretion of the 13th Floor Network management.

Indemnification
Customer agrees that it will protect, indemnify, save and hold the 13th Floor Network harmless from any and all stipulations, liabilities, losses, expenses and claims, as well as reasonable attorney's fees assessed against the 13th Floor Network , its agents, customers, officers, employees and administration that may arise or result from any service provided or performed or agreed to be performed or any product sold by it's customers, agents, employees or assigns. Customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold the 13th Floor Network harmless against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or distributed in association with the 13th Floor Network's Services; (2) any material furnished by customer infringing or allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party; (3) copyright violation and any defective products sold to a customer from the 13th Floor Network's Services.

Disclaimer
The 13th Floor Network  will not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. The 13th Floor Network makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. The 13th Floor Network disclaims any warranty or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This includes loss of data resulting from delays, non-deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service interruptions caused by the 13th Floor Network and its employees. The 13th Floor Network reserves the right to amend or update these policies without notice. Failure to follow any terms and conditions may result in account deactivation.

The 13th Floor Network furthermore expects that its customers who provide Internet services to others will fully comply with all applicable laws concerning the privacy of online communications. A customer's failure to comply with those laws will violate this policy. Finally, the 13th Floor Network wishes to emphasize that in accepting services, customers indemnify the 13th Floor Network for the violation of any law or the 13th Floor Network policy, that results in loss to the 13th Floor Network or the bringing of any claim against the 13th Floor Network. This means that if the 13th Floor Network is sued because of activities of the customer that violate any law, or this policy, the customer will pay any damages awarded against the 13th Floor Network, plus costs and reasonable attorneys' fees.

All Sub-Networks, resellers and dedicated servers of the 13th Floor Network must adhere to the above policies.

Failure to follow any term or condition will be grounds for immediate account deactivation.