Acceptable Use Policy

1. Posting, transmission, re-transmission, or storing material on or through any of ETC Maryland’s products or services, if in the sole judgment of ETC Maryland such posting, transmission, re-transmission or storage is in violation of any local, state, or federal regulation (including rights protected by copyright, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property or similar laws or regulations). Each customer shall be responsible for determining what laws or regulations are applicable to his or her use of the products and services.

2. Installation or distribution of “pirated” or other software products that are not appropriately licensed for use by customer.

3. Deceptive marketing practices.

4. Actions that restrict or inhibit anyone – whether a customer of ETC Maryland or otherwise – in his or her use or enjoyment of ETC Maryland’s products and services, or that generate excessive network traffic through the use of automated or manual routines that are not related to ordinary personal or business use of Internet services.

5. Introduction of malicious programs into the ETC Maryland network or servers or other products and services of ETC Maryland (e.g., viruses, trojan horses and worms).

6. Causing or attempting to cause security breaches or disruptions of Internet communications. Examples of security breaches include but are not limited to accessing data of which the customer is not an intended recipient, or logging into a server or account that the customer is not expressly authorized to access. Examples of disruptions include but are not limited to port scans, flood pings, packet spoofing and forged routing information.

7. Executing any form of network monitoring that will intercept data not intended for the customer.

8. Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account.

9. Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the customer’s host (e.g., denial of service attack).

10. Using any program/script/command, or sending messages of any kind, designed to interfere with, or to disable a user’s terminal session.

11. Sending unsolicited mail messages, including the sending of “junk mail” or other advertising material to individuals who did not specifically request such material, who were not previous customers of the customer or with whom the customer does not have an existing business relationship (e.g., E-mail “spam”); or distributing, advertising or promoting software or services that have the primary purpose of encouraging or facilitating unsolicited commercial E-mail or spam.

12. Unlawful harassment, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages.

13. Unauthorized use or forging of mail header information.

14. Solicitations of mail or any other E-mail address other than that of the poster’s account or service, with the intent to harass or collect replies.

15. Creating or forwarding “chain letters” or other “pyramid schemes” of any type.

16. Exporting, re-exporting, or permitting downloads of any content in violation of the export or import laws of the United States or without all required approvals, licenses and exemptions.

17. Websites on shared web hosting that cause excessive resource usage that affects other sites on said server could be suspended.  Excessive resource usage includes but is not limited to more than 2 server process, and/or script execution times that exceed 5 minutes.

18. ETC Maryland may be flexible if your site gets popular and you need a temporary incremental accommodation. If you consistently require more transfer ETC has other products that have a much greater transfer allocation.  If your site exceeds its transfer allocation, the account holder will be billed for the overage at a rate of $2/Gigabyte.  If your site exceeds double its allocation your site will be suspended until the next month or upon receipt of overage charges AND payment for an upgrade to the next highest tier of service.  If another tier is not available the account holder will be quoted for a dedicated server with both managed and unmanaged options.

19. ETC also does not allow IRC/bitcoin or any other kind of bot or program designed to use as much resources as it can on an ongoing basis.

20. ETC does not allow adult content, file hosting, image hosting, or illegal content of any kind. Mass e-mailing programs of any kind, IRC chat systems or any kind, and file sharing systems such as bittorrent are not allowed. Violations will lead to an immediate cancellation of your account without notice or refund.

21. DMCA violations will be forwarded to the account owner. A response within 24 hours is required or your site will be disabled until the issue is resolved.

22. ETC reserves the right to cancel your account for any other reason. ETC may attempt to contact you before this drastic action is taken.

No failure or delay in exercising or enforcing this policy shall constitute a waiver of the policy or of any other right or remedy. If any provision of this policy is deemed unenforceable due to law or change in law, such a provision shall be disregarded and the balance of the policy shall remain in effect.  This policy is covered and executed in the State of Maryland and all disputes will be adjudicated within the state of Maryland, USA.