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SohoUniverse.com
POLICY AND SERVICE GUIDELINES
(ToS - Terms of Service)
SohoUniverse.com provides web hosting to many different kind of clients. Therefore we have the responsibility to protect each of our clients and their interests and to provide the best services available. The following guidelines were designed to ensure that these obligations are met.
FURTHERMORE, these Policies, Guidelines, and Disclaimer are intended for all domains residing on SohoUniverse.com servers or affiliates.
Content:
All services provided by SohoUniverse.com 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 is 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 SohoUniverse.com from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party.
Pornography and sex-related web hosting of any kind is prohibited on all SohoUniverse.com servers. This includes sites that may infer sexual content, or links to adult content elsewhere. SohoUniverse.com will be the sole arbiter in determining violations of this provision.
Also prohibited are sites that promote any illegal activity or present content that may be damaging to SohoUniverse.com servers or any other server on the internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited.
We also do not allow sites with political content as 'hate sites', Nazi stuff, or sites that propagate political activity against specific races or countries - especially against the United States of America.
Examples of unacceptable content or links or usage:
Pirated (cracked) software
Hacker programs or archives
Warez sites
Copyrighted Material (e.g. MP3's)
Any Site that consumes more than 5% of system resources
Following are a list of sites that will often require more than 5% of our systems resources: Multiple domains residing at a single IP address, domains with archives or galleries, (i.e. .gif, .jpg, .exe, .zip, .tar, etc.), and domain accounts offering download files.
We are not saying that your web site cannot contain such files as scripts (just one example), however if at any time they consume 5% or more of our systems resources you might be contacted to resolve the problem or if an emergency - your account would be disabled.
SohoUniverse.com will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of these terms.
Traffic Usage
All account plans come with a predetermined amount of traffic allowance. We monitor all accounts and bill $3.00 for each gig of traffic exceeded. This amount is not prorated, this meaning that 1 mb - 1 gig will be treated and billed as the same. Your account will be suspended automatically by our systems in the case of that the traffic limit has been reached. This is a) to protect you in case a 3rd party is mis-using your account without proper permission (eg. somebody hacked your account) and b) to protect us as we are responsible for paying the increased amount of bandwidth to our wholesaler.
Commercial Advertising - Email:
Spamming, or the sending of unsolicited email, from a SohoUniverse.com server or using an email address or domain that is maintained on an SohoUniverse.com machine as reference is STRICTLY prohibited. Selling software or services related to email advertising is prohibited, too. SohoUniverse.com will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.
If you are expecting to send a more than normal volume of email, you may be required to purchase and have setup a dedicated IP for your account. Please check with us first!
Concerning Yahoo and AOL email services:
Forwarding email from your SohoUniverse email account to Yahoo and/or AOL is prohibited. Any account found to be doing so, will be gently reminded about this the first time and upon a 2nd violation will be suspended. It is not fair to other people using our servers if you choose to forward any spam you may get to Yahoo or AOL and then cause entire servers to be "blacklisted" from sending legitmate emails to them. This is unfortunate, we realize, but that is what Yahoo and AOL does-- one complaint from one user, and the entire server's ip range is blocked. If your account has a dedicated IP, then this forwarding WILL be allowed. Please contact us if you have any questions about this.
Chat Rooms
We do not allow clients to install their own chat rooms, normally. These tend to be a large drain on system resources and we cannot allow it as an account option. You can, however, use the chat rooms provided through our control panel. There are a few other options available. Please contact us about this.
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 needed.
IRC
We currently do not allow IRC or IRC bots to be operated on our servers.
Forums:
You will be allowed to install any kind of Forums software. However - many cgi-based applications may use more system resources than like PHP based software. We recommend the use of applications like phpBB or vBulletin forum software. If necessary we will require you to shut down the forum or move to a dedicated server.
Server Abuse:
Any attempt to undermine or cause harm to a server, or customer, of SohoUniverse.com is strictly prohibited.
Refusal of Service:
We reserve the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion and with no further justification.
All Sub-Networks, distributive hosting sites and dedicated servers of SohoUniverse.com must adhere to the above policies.
BACKUPS:
It is the sole responsibility for each individual client of SohoUniverse to be responsible for backing up all of their account's data residing on any of SohoUniverse's servers. SohoUniverse is not responsible for keeping or restoring any backup data.
BILLING:
Recurring Billing:
All credit cards are billed automatically monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. It is the clients responsibility to ensure that they have sufficient credit to cover this transaction. In the event that there is insufficient credit, as a courtesy we will send an email notification at which point we will need to be provided with another credit card within 48 hours. If we do not receive a response within 48 hours the account will be deactivated and any accounts under that account plan. If you use a PayPal Subscription, it is your responsibility to keep such subscription in place.
Account Deactivations:
Any account deactivated due to non-payment will be deactivated and we require a reactivation fee of $15.00 to be paid prior to reactivating the account.
Reseller Account Deactivations:
Any Reseller account whose payment is overdue is subject to suspension just like individual hosting accounts. Should the Reseller account be suspended, and the overdue period and account deactivation due to non-payment in full of the overdue amount exceeds 48 hours, the Reseller's clients may be contacted directly by SohoUniverse to keep their sites going and to be given an opportunity to sign up for regular SohoUniverse shared hosting or, for a fee, given access to their data to move to a different provider.
Cancellation Refunds:
We DO NOT refund partial monthly fees to accounts canceling after their 30 day initial account activation period. Therefore only prepaid full monthly fees existing on account will be refunded.
Currency
All prices are in US-Dollars. We are not responsible for any currency exchange fees of your credit card company or your bank.
LIMITATION OF LIABILITY:
SohoUniverse.com shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, which may arise from SohoUniverse.com servers going off-line or being unavailable for any reason whatsoever. Furthermore, SohoUniverse.com 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 SohoUniverse.com servers. All damages shall be limited to the immediate termination of service. All clients are advised to pull regular backups of their sites. We cannot be held responsible for missing files, data or lost business out of this.
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless SohoUniverse.com from any and all liability, penalties, losses, damages, costs, expenses, attorneys' fees, causes of action or claims caused by or resulting indirectly from your use of the service which damages either you, SohoUniverse.com, or any other party or parties without limitation or exception. This indemnification and hold harmless agreement extends to all issues associated with your account, including but not limited to domain name selection and Web site content.
Violations of these Acceptable Uses Policies should be referred to
support@sohouniverse.com
All complaints will be investigated promptly. Failure to follow any term or condition will be reason for immediate account deactivation.
DISCLAIMER:
SohoUniverse.com cannot be held liable for unexpected system downtime, crashes, or data loss. We cannot be held liable for any predicted estimate of profits in which a client would have gained if their site was functioning. We are currently functioning as a reseller for the web hosting services. Thus, certain equipment, routing, software, and programming used by SohoUniverse.com are not directly owned or written by SohoUniverse.com. We also depend on the services and terms of the Seller of these services. If any of our ToS is (for whatever reason) out of the ToS of the seller - the seller's ToS apply. Moreover, SohoUniverse.com holds no responsibility for the use of our clients accounts. If any terms or conditions are failed to be followed, the account in question will be automatically deactivated. We reserve the right to remove any account without advanced notice for any reason without restitution as SohoUniverse.com sees fit. We cannot be held liable for links to other sites placed on our systems by clients - the client/owner of a site is responsible for the content and activity of his/her site!
ACCOUNT ACTIVATION:
By activating your account with SohoUniverse.com, you agree to the above policies and disclaimer. Upon requesting an account activation, 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 within your account information.
NOTICE: If you sign up for an account and do not follow our terms. No refunds will be given. We will however let you know by email or phone before any action is taken and you will have a chance to solve the matter.
FURTHERMORE, SohoUniverse.com retains the right to change 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. Our services may only be used for lawful purposes -- any use of these services which violates any laws which may apply to SohoUniverse.com, your local jurisdiction, or any jurisdiction that you or your site may be subject to is strictly prohibited. You also agree that you as the person legally responsible for all use of this account, are at least 18 years of age. If you are under 18 years of age, you need to have parental consent in order to sign up, and the account must be ordered by a parent or guardian, in their own name. You agree to supply SohoUniverse.com with a current and truthful name, postal address and telephone number for our records, and you have a continued obligation to keep this information current. You also agree that you are an authorized user of any credit card that you supply to us, and you understand and agree that we have an obligation to fully investigate any possible fraudulent credit card use.
30 Day Money Back Guarantee: If you do not like our service during the first 30 days and you would like to move on to a different web hosting provider we will refund your web hosting fees. Unfortunately we are not able to refund the setup fees (if there are any) as this is a one-time fee to activate your account. The guarantee is also void if you used more than 1 GB bandwidth on your account. This is to protect SohoUniverse.com from people who move from web host to web host by using similar guarantees to gain access to 'free' resources. 30 days as well as 1 GB bandwidth should give each customer enough time to test our services and performance of our support and of our servers. The 30 day money back guarantee only applies to web hosting services. Domain Name Registration or web design services or any other services we might provide are not included and not covered under this guarantee. The "Money Back" refund will only be given upon the submission of an appropriate support ticket entered in SohoUniverse's Client Support system within the first 30 days of the accounts activation. The refund will generally be given within 30 days of the request.
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 $25.00 Cancellation fee will apply. ** Also the proper federal (and your local) authorities will be notified of your actions.
Unless specified - none of the web hosting accounts includes the domain name registration fees. The customer is responsible for registering his/her domain name at the registrar of his/her own choice.
Our Mailing Address is:
SohoUniverse.com
668 Cox Road
New Tazewell, TN 37825
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