Acceptable Use Policies at Vineyard Media are stated below. By using our services, you agree to abide by all of these policies. If you have a Service Agreement with Vineyard Media, these policies have been incorporated into that Agreement by reference. Questions or comments concerning the policies should be directed to aup@vineyardmedia.net or contacting customer service. Thank you for your courteous and responsible use of the Internet and the Internet Services of Vineyard Media.
I. Introduction. By establishing these policies, we hope to reduce the risk that irresponsible or illegal activities will adversely affect our customers or the Internet community. Please use common sense and good judgment in all of your Internet activities. Our concerns when addressing alleged violations of our policies include (1) the protection of our customers and our network resources, (2) the overall quality and security of our services, (3) the adherence to all laws, rules and regulations applicable to the use of our services, and (3) the protection of our reputation as a quality Internet service provider. If you engage in conduct which violates our policies, we reserve the right to suspend or terminate your Internet Service without prior notice. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who does not accept and adhere to our policies. Please keep in mind that Vineyard Media services are voluntarily subscribed to and used by our customers. We reserve the absolute right to control and regulate the services we provide and the manner in which our equipment is used. Understand we cannot and do not warrant that others will not from time-to-time violate our policies. Although we have no affirmative duty to monitor or otherwise police the use of our Internet Service, we will investigate any complaint about violations of policy we receive. Vineyard Media exercises no control whatsoever over the content of any information passing through its network and is not responsible for damages customer may suffer for any reason. The persons and organizations, including Vineyard Media customers, who publish materials and information which are accessible through the Vineyard Media networks are solely responsible for the content of such materials and information, and are solely responsible to know and to comply with all laws applicable to the publication of such materials and information. Vineyard Media will cooperate with legal authorities in the investigation of any suspected criminal or civil infringements.
II. General Rules of Use
1. Impersonation of others and use of fictitious names - You may not send communications using a name and address of someone other than yourself. Attempting to impersonate any person, using forged headers, or using other fraudulent identifying information is strictly prohibited. If we discover that our Internet Service has been used in deceptive or fraudulent manner, we will immediately report such use to proper authorities and will cooperate with any investigation which follows. The use of a fictitious or anonymous name, "handle", or nickname does not necessarily constitute a deceptive or fraudulent practice if such use is not made with the intention of misleading another into believing that you are someone other than yourself.
2. Network unfriendly activity - Any activities by you which adversely affect the ability of other people or systems to use our Internet Services or the Internet is strictly prohibited.
3. Unauthorized uses - Use our Internet Services by anyone other than you, or re-selling our Internet Services without our express written consent is strictly prohibited. The operation of a web, E-mail or FTP server from your site is prohibited unless we are advised in advance of such use and provided such use does not in any manner interfere with the use of our Internet Services by any other account holder.
4. Excessive bandwidth utilization - Vineyard Media accounts are classified by limits on bandwidth availability. Bandwidth usage in excess of those limits for which you are subscribed is not permitted. Bandwidth utilization is throttled to the speed authorized by your subscription. Although bandwidth on our system is shared with other users, we maintain sufficient capacity to meet all of the reasonable bandwidth utilization demands of our customers. Our system is not designed and is not intended to be used for constant, high bandwidth data transfer purposes such as with music files (KaZaA, BearShare, bit torrent, etc.), video or audio streaming.
5. Misuse of subscriber account - Your account cannot be transferred to or used by anyone other than you. Account sharing is strictly prohibited. Accounts which have been transferred to other parties, or which show other activity in violation of this condition, may be terminated without notice.
6. Service, network and system interference - You may not (a) attempt to interfere with or compromise the operation of the Vineyard Media network in whole or part, (b) interfere with any of the equipment comprising the system, or (c) access other accounts or restricted areas of the system. You may not use Vineyard Media's systems in a manner that adversely affects the availability of its resources to other Vineyard Media customers. Any such use will result in the immediate termination of your account. VINEYARD MEDIA WILL REQUEST CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF ANYONE ILLEGALLY ACCESSING OR INTERFERING WITH ITS NETWORK EQUIPMENT.
7. Network usage - You may only use those of our computer areas which have been available for your use or for general public use. If access to any part of our system is restricted or protected by a password, you may not attempt to enter that area unless you are authorized to do so. You may not make your password available to others or use the password of another person to gain access to such areas. You may not attempt to find out the password of another user, through "grinding" or by any other means, and may not aid any other person in such an attempt. Any attempt, whether successful or not, to gain access to any restricted network resources without authorization is strictly prohibited. Any such use will result in the immediate termination of your account. VINEYARD MEDIA WILL REQUEST CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF ANYONE ILLEGALLY ACCESSING OR INTERFERING WITH ITS RESTRICTED OR PROTECTED COMPUTER AREAS.
8. Privacy - We maintain system operations, access data, accounting logs, and other records to resolve service-related problems and to monitor the security of our resources. We reserve the right to access your mailbox or other data actually stored on our computers to resolve problems or system errors. We will cooperate with the appropriate legal authorities in investigating claims of illegal activity, including but not limited to illegal transfer or use of copyrighted material, postings or e-mail containing threats of violence, or any other illegal activity, including by making available data stored on our computers. No computer system is completely secure or should be considered 100% safe from intrusion. E-mail and other data transmissions over the Internet may pass through many computer systems and should not be considered a secure means of communication unless encrypted. Even then, such information is only as secure as the encryption method used. We do not generally monitor the activity of our customers except to measure system utilization and accumulate generic system performance and usage information. However, in our effort to protect the integrity of our network we will respond appropriately to any inappropriate use of our services.
9. Censorship - We do not monitor or make any effort to censor the content of communications passing through our system. Except for illegal conduct, we believe content choices are yours to make. Software tools are available to screen access to newsgroups and Web sites that might be considered by you as offensive. It is your responsibility to make use of such tools if desired. Newsgroup postings and other e-mail messages sent via Vineyard Media and the Internet are communications between the senders and consenting receivers thereof. Vineyard Media has neither the authority nor the responsibility to regulate such content. The views and comments expressed by Vineyard Media subscribers or other senders of such postings or messages are solely those of the authors and do not reflect any review, approval or endorsement by Vineyard Media. Vineyard Media will attempt to assist if you continually receive e-mail deemed objectionable if you request such assistance
10. Illegal activity - Internet access and all other services provided to you must be used for lawful purposes only. Use of the Vineyard Media Internet Services for the transmission or storage of any information, data, or material in violation of any law, rule or regulation (including material protected by copyright, trade secrets, and information that is confidential as a matter of law) is strictly prohibited. The subscriber may not use the Vineyard Media Service to transmit or store any information, data, or material that is threatening, libelous, or obscene.
11. Copyright infringement - It is assumed that, unless otherwise specified by the sender, all data distributed on the Internet by the sender is intended to remain the intellectual property of the sender or the party who furnished such data to the sender, and each subscriber transmitting any such data (or making it available for download or other transmissions) is assumed to warrant that he or she has full ownership rights or appropriate licenses to the reports, documents, photographs, graphic images, audio files, video files and other data placed on the subscriber's personal web pages or otherwise transmitted. You are solely responsible for any actions which may be necessary to protect your ownership rights in any such material. Removing or falsifying the source or origin of software or other material contained in a file that you have uploaded is prohibited. Knowingly receiving or downloading a file that cannot be legally distributed is prohibited, even though the file may have been mailed or posted by someone else.
III. E-mail
1.Filtering - Vineyard Media utilizes real time blacklist databases and spam filtering to screen as much unsolicited, bulk commercial e-mail (spam) as possible. We also scan e-mail in real time to filter out e-mail with malicious content such as viruses. Use of these filters does not absolutely guarantee you that you will never receive unsolicited e-mail and that all of your e-mail will be virus free. Vineyard Media makes no warranties or representations about the effectiveness of these services. It is ultimately your responsibility to protect your personal computer from unwanted or malicious e-mail. Similarly, it is possible our filters may block legitimate e-mail coming from someone using a blacklisted mail server. If this presents a problem for you, we can, upon written request, turn off spam filtering for your e-mail address.
2. Unsolicited e-mail - Using our servers to transmit bulk or unsolicited e-mail is prohibited. Vineyard Media attempts to identify and mark all such e-mail in the subject line as ***SPAM***. We do not permit our equipment to be used to send spam to our customers; likewise, our customers are prohibited from using our services to send spam to remote users. We reserve the right to filter e-mail for spam content and to block known spam sources from access to our servers. For more information on our spam filter, click here.
3. Mail bombing - Sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail to a single user, or group of users, commercial or otherwise, using our Internet Service is prohibited.
4. Harassment - Sending threatening or harassing e-mail (for example, making terrorist threats, or threatening physical injury or damage to persons or property) is prohibited. We are not responsible for the content or tone of any e-mail or other transmissions of anyone using the Internet. We will not attempt to mediate or otherwise become involved in any dispute between you another Internet user. However, we will cooperate with law enforcement agencies involved in investigating instances that may be reported to such authorities by anyone who believes he/she is being subjected to unlawful harassment.
5. Other e-mail related issues - You may not engage in any of the following activities while using the our Internet Service: Intercepting, redirecting or otherwise interfering or attempting to interfere with e-mail intended for other parties; Mailing or sending files that contain copyrighted, commercial software or other material protected by intellectual property laws (or by rights of privacy or publicity) unless the user owns or controls the rights thereto or has received all necessary consents; Knowingly or maliciously transmitting files that contain a virus or corrupted data; Knowingly deleting any author attributions, legal notices or proprietary designations or labels in a file that the user mails or sends; Publishing, posting, distributing or disseminating defamatory, infringing, obscene or other unlawful material or information; Using the our Internet Services to threaten, harass, stalk, abuse, or otherwise violate the legal rights (including rights of privacy and publicity) of others.
IV. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Violation of any accepted policies on IRC servers and the use of IRC bots is prohibited. If Vineyard Media is banned or threatened with being banned or restricted from any other site or server because of your activities, your account with us may be terminated without notice.
V. Miscellaneous Any other behavior not described above but determined by us after notice to you to be unacceptable is prohibited. This may include any behavior deemed unacceptable by other ISPs, in violation of generally acceptable "netiquette" practices, behavior which causes Vineyard Media to be viewed unfavorably by others, other behavior which may cause Vineyard Media to be adversely affected via e-mail or news blocking, or behavior which may cause Vineyard Media to appear on detrimental lists for spamming, etc.
VI. Acceptable use policy modifications We reserve the right to modify our Acceptable Use Policies at any time and in our sole discretion. Such changes will be posted here. Your use of our Internet Service after such posting shall constitute acceptance of such policies by you.
VII. Violations and Enforcement At Vineyard Media's sole discretion, violations may result in a warning to the offender, suspension of service and/or termination of service. Vineyard Media will enforce this AUP according to the severity of the offense and violator's history of prior AUP infringements. Repeated offenses will result in immediate termination of service Vineyard Media has no practical ability to monitor all conduct, communications, or content which might violate this AUP prior to its transmission on the Vineyard Media network, but may do so at its discretion. Therefore, Vineyard Media does not assume liability for violation of the aforementioned infringements.