National Subscriber Acceptable Use Policy
1. Introduction
Road Runner supports the free flow of information and ideas over
the Internet. Road Runner does not actively monitor nor does Road
Runner exercise editorial control over the content of any web site,
electronic mail (e-mail) transmission, mailing list, newsgroup or
other material created or accessible over Road Runner services.
However, Road Runner reserves the right to remove any materials
that, in Road Runner's sole discretion, are potentially illegal,
may subject Road Runner to liability, or violate this Acceptable
Use Policy ("Policy"). Your violating this Policy may result in
the suspension or cancellation of your Road Runner services. Engagement
of any violation using the service of another provider, but channeling
such activity through Road Runner account of network resources,
constitutes a violation. Customers must abide by the terms and conditions
of other Internet Provider’s Acceptable Use Policy, while using
the Road Runner service.
2. Policies
Illegal Purposes
Road Runner reserves the right to cooperate with legal authorities
and/or injured third parties in the investigation of any suspected
crime or civil wrong. Activities, which are in violation of any
local, state or federal laws, statutes, regulations, treaties and/or
tariffs, would constitute a flagrant violation of the Acceptable
Use Policy. Activities which are prohibited as potentially illegal
include, but are not limited to:
- The distribution, dissemination, storage, copying and/or sale
of materials protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret or
other intellectual-property right laws. This could include, but
not limited to, the digitization and distribution of photographs
from magazines, books and web sites, illegal copying and distribution
of MP3 resources, illegal copying of pirated software (warez)
and/or violating US exporting laws.
- Participation in illegal gambling, lottery or other similar
activities.
- Transmission of scams such as “Make-Money-Fast” schemes, chain
letters and Pyramid scams.
- Making fraudulent offers by e-mail, USENET or other means of
products, items or services, originating from your account, or
through a third party which implicates your account.
- Threatening bodily harm, property damage or acts of death against
individuals or groups.
- The attempt to access the accounts of others or other computers
and/or networks to penetrate security measures, whether or not
the intrusion results in damage or not.
E-mail and Newsgroup Services
The following actions would violate the Acceptable Use Policy when
utilizing e-mail and news services through the Road Runner network,
backbone and/or infrastructure.
- Road Runner provides an uncensored newsfeed. As such, Road Runner
does not control the content of the newsgroups available to you.
Road Runner believes that decisions about which newsgroups and
messages to read are best left to its customers. Screening software
is available from third parties, and it is your responsibility
to use such tools if desired. Road Runner is not responsible for
the content of any newsgroup message, whether or not a Road Runner
customer posted the message.
- If e-mail or newsgroup postings are in violation of the acceptable
use policy, Road Runner at times may restrict or cancel subsequent
postings if they affect the service.
- These prohibitions extend to the sending of unsolicited mass
mailings or Usenet posts from another service, which in any
way implicate the use of the Road Runner service, Road Runner
equipment or any Road Runner e-mail address(es).
- Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail messages, (UCE) including,
without limitation, commercial advertising and informational announcements,
is explicitly prohibited. Unsolicited e-mail is defined as e-mail
that is sent to another user, which has not expressed an interest
in receiving the e-mail.
- A user shall not send unsolicited bulk e-mail, (UBE) by using
any form of a commercial software or hardware mechanism for the
purposes of “broadcasting” large amounts of unsolicited e-mail.
- A user shall not use another site's mail server to relay mail
without the express permission of the site.
- The sending of multiple similar articles to newsgroups, and/or
the sending of any amount of unsolicited e-mail messages ('spamming')
to users constitutes a violation.
- Harassing others by 'mail-bombing' or 'news-bombing'. 'Mail-bombing'
constitutes sending more than ten (10) similar mail messages to
the same e-mail address. 'News bombing' constitutes sending more
than 10MB of data to a newsgroup.
- Expressly prohibited from utilizing Road Runner’s service, Road
Runner’s equipment or any Road Runner’s e-mail address in connection
with the sending of the same or substantially similar unsolicited
e-mail message, whether commercial or not, to a large number of
recipients. This prohibition extends to the sending of unsolicited
mass mailings from another service, which in any way implicates
the use of Road Runner’s service, Road Runner’s equipment or any
Road Runner’s e-mail address(es).
- The cross posting of advertisements for products, items, or
services which exceeds the commonly held thresholds and guidelines
of the USENET community, will not be tolerated. Article posts
should be on-topic to the particular newsgroup charter. Articles
that disrupt any newsgroup with frivolous, excessively vulgar
or repetitious postings is not allowed.
System and Network Security
Violations of system or network security are prohibited, and may
result in criminal and civil liability. Road Runner will investigate
incidents involving such violations and may involve and will cooperate
with law enforcement if a criminal violation is suspected. Examples
of system or network security violations include, but are not limited
to the following:
- Unauthorized access to or use of data, systems or networks,
including any attempt to probe, scan or test the vulnerability
of a system or network or to breach security or authentication
measures without express authorization of the owner of the system
or network.
- Unauthorized monitoring of data or traffic on any network or
system without express authorization of the owner of the system
or network. This would include use of sniffers or SNMP tools.
- Interference with service to any user, host or network including,
without limitation, mailbombing, flooding, deliberate attempts
to overload a system and broadcast attacks.
- Forging of any TCP-IP packet header or any part of the header
information in an e-mail or a newsgroup posting.
- You must adopt adequate security measures to prevent or minimize
unauthorized use of your account, including proper levels of security
on mail, web and news servers maintained at your location.
- You may not attempt to circumvent user authentication or security
of any host, network or account ("cracking"). This includes, but
is not limited to, accessing data not intended for you, logging
into or making use of a server or account you are not expressly
authorized to access, or probing the security of other networks.
Use or distribution of tools designed for compromising security
is prohibited. Examples of these tools include, but are not limited
to, password guessing programs, cracking tools or network probing
tools.
- You may not attempt to interfere with service to any user, host,
or network ("denial of service attacks"). This includes, but is
not limited to, "flooding" of networks, deliberate attempts to
overload a service, and attempts to "crash" a host.
- Users who violate systems or network security may incur criminal
or civil liability. Road Runner 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.
- Distributing viruses to and from Road Runner systems.
- Installation of 'auto-responders', 'cancel-bots' or similar
automated or manual routines which generate excessive amounts
of net traffic, or disrupt net newsgroups or e-mail use by others.
- Engaging in any of the above activities using the service of
another provider but channeling such activities through a Road
Runner account or re-mailer, or using an Road Runner account as
a mail drop for responses.
- Customers are liable for having unsecured services, and would
be held liable if unknown 3rd parties utilize these
services at any time. It is the customer’s responsibility to monitor
these services. Examples of unsecured services would be use of
SMTP relay, incorrect configuration of Proxy or SOCKS services
or unsecured operating systems.
- Customers are responsible for configuring their services to
prevent the disruption of service to other customers. (PC Anywhere,
SNMP Broadcasters, etc)
Network Performance
The Internet is known as a “shared resource”, and Road Runner accounts
operate using these resources. Excessive use or abuse of these shared
network resources by one customer may have a negative impact on
all other customers. Misuse of network resources in a manner, which
impairs network performance, is prohibited by this policy and may
result in termination of your account.
You are prohibited from excessive consumption of resources, including
CPU time, memory, disk space and session time. You may not use resource-intensive
programs, which negatively impact other customers or the performance
of Road Runner systems or networks. Road Runner reserves the right
to terminate or limit such activities.
3. Road Runner Liability
Road Runner has no practical ability to restrict all conduct, communications
or content which might violate this Policy prior to its transmission
on Road Runner’s systems, nor can Road Runner ensure prompt removal
of any such communications or content after transmission or posting.
Accordingly, Road Runner does not assume liability to subscribers
or others for any failure to enforce the terms of this Policy.
4. Policy Revisions
Road Runner reserves the right to modify this Policy at any time.
Notice of modifications to this Policy may be given to subscribers
by posting such changes to the Road Runner home page (http://www.rr.com),
by electronic mail (e-mail), or by conventional mail.
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