TCAST offers its customers the services and products to acquire and disseminate a wealth of public, private, commercial and non-commercial information. It’s important that TCAST customers are informed of their rights and obligations—and those of TCAST—in connection with their use of any communications services offered by TCAST. In doing so, TCAST provides this Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”), which supplements and provides more clarification of certain terms of each customer’s service agreement (“Service Agreement”).

From time to time, TCAST may revise this AUP. It is the Customers are responsibility to monitor this web site (http://www.tcastcom.com) for changes and updates. A customer’s use of TCAST’s services after changes to the AUP are posted on TCAST’s website will constitute the customer’s acceptance of any new or additional terms of the AUP that result from those changes.

The basic reality about the Internet is that no one owns or controls it. This reality accounts for much of the Internet’s broad content and significance, but the broad content available also requires judgment and responsibility of those who use the Internet, both in the information they acquire and in the information they disseminate to others. When our customers obtain information through the Internet, they must keep in mind that TCAST cannot monitor, verify, warrant or vouch for the correctness and quality of the information that customers may acquire. Keeping this in mind, the customer must exercise his or her best judgment in relying on information obtained from the Internet, and be aware that some material posted to the Internet is sexually explicit or may be offensive in one fashion or another. Because TCAST cannot monitor and censor the Internet, and will not attempt to do so, TCAST cannot accept any responsibility for injury to its customers (or any of their end users or accounts holders) that results from inaccurate, unsuitable, offensive, illegal or unlawful Internet communications.

If a customer distributes information over TCAST’s network, they must also keep in mind that TCAST does not review, edit, censor or take responsibility for any information its customers may generate. When users place information on the Internet, they have the same liability as other authors for copyright infringement, defamation and other harmful speech. Also, because the information they create is carried over TCAST facilities or the facilities of TCAST’s third party providers or peering partners, and may reach a large number of people, customers’ postings through communication services offered by TCAST network may affect other network users and may harm TCAST’s goodwill, business reputation and operations and/or the goodwill, business reputation and operations of TCAST’s third party providers or peering partners.

The bulleted items below are just some examples, identified by TCAST, as “system abuse.” These examples are expressly prohibited under this AUP. The examples listed below are not exhaustive and are provided solely as guidance to the customer.

TCAST customers may not use the TCAST network or services in any manner which:

• violates any applicable law, regulation, treaty or tariff
• violates the acceptable use policies of any networks, machines, or services which are accessed through TCAST’s network
• infringes on the intellectual property rights of TCAST or others;
• violates the privacy of others
• involves deceptive online marketing practices including, without limitation, practices that violate the United States Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines for proper online marketing schemes; or
• otherwise violates this AUP.

Prohibited activities also include, but are not limited to, the following:

• attempting to interfere with or denying service to any user or host (e.g., denial of service attacks);
• falsifying header information, user identification or user information;
• introduction of malicious programs into the network (e.g., viruses, worms, Trojan horses, etc.)
• monitoring or scanning the networks of others without permission (e.g port scan)
• attempted or successful security breaches or disruption of Internet communication, including without limitation accessing data, machines or networks of which the customer is not an intended recipient or user or logging into a server or account that the customer is not expressly authorized to access (e.g. hacking or cracking);
• executing any form of network monitoring (e.g., packet sniffer) which will intercept data not intended for the customer;
• using any program/script/command, or sending messages of any kind, designed to interfere with a third party customer terminal session, via any means, locally or via the Internet;
• sending unsolicited commercial email or unsolicited bulk email (e.g. UCE, UBE, or spamming) through the TCAST Internet network; or sending unsolicited commercial or bulk email through another provider advertising or implicating, directly or indirectly, the use of any service hosted or provided by TCAST, including without limitation email, web, FTP and DNS Services. Without in any way limiting TCAST’s rights under the AUP and/or the Services Agreement, Customers who send unsolicited commercial or bulk email agree to pay TCAST the cost of TCAST labor to respond to complaints, with a minimum charge of $200.00.
• hosting websites that sell products or services that are used to gather email addresses or to assist in the sending of unsolicited email;
• providing (with or without an associated fee) automated tools, software and/or support services that allow others to engage in spamming (e.g., spamware);
• maintaining an open relay mail server;
• collecting e-mail addresses from the Internet for the purpose of sending unsolicited e-mail or to provide collected addresses to others for that purpose (e.g., database scraping and/or database harvesting);
• transmitting or receiving copyright infringing material, including but not limited to copyrighted music, video, software, books, programs or other published material.
• transmitting or receiving obscene, indecent, offensive, racist, defamatory, unreasonably violent, threatening, intimidating or harassing material.
• Export Control Violations—The law limits the ability of persons to export encryption software, over the Internet or otherwise, to points outside the United States.
• Other Activities, whether lawful or unlawful, that TCAST or any of its third party providers or peering partners determines to be harmful to its customers, subscribers, operations or reputation, including any activities that restrict or inhibit any other user from using and enjoying the service or the Internet.

The customer has the responsibility for steering clear of the unsafe activities described above. As a common practice, TCAST will not monitor the communications of customers to ensure that they are in compliance with TCAST policy or applicable law. When TCAST becomes aware of unsafe or detrimental communications, or upon notification or becomes aware of actual or potential violations of this AUP, TCAST may take any action to stop the unsafe or potentially detrimental activity, including but not limited to: filtering; denying access to TCAST Services; suspending or terminating the Service access of customers; and/or taking any other actions as deemed appropriate by TCAST. TCAST shall have the sole discretion to determine which action is appropriate under the circumstances. TCAST may take action immediately without regard to any cure periods that may be set forth in the customer’s applicable Service Agreement. TCAST shall have the sole right to interpret the meaning of any provision of this AUP or whether a customer’s or any of its end-user’s or account holder’s activity violates this AUP.

Customers who violate this AUP may incur criminal or civil liability. TCAST may refer violators to civil or criminal authorities for prosecution, and will cooperate fully with applicable government or regulatory authorities in connection with the civil or criminal investigations of violations.

TCAST is also aware that many of its customers are, themselves, providers of communications services, and that information reaching TCAST’s facilities from those customers may have been originated by end users, account holders or customers of those customers or other third parties. The provisions of this AUP (as such AUP may be revised by TCAST from time to time), apply to TCAST’s customer’s end users, account holders and customers. TCAST customers who provide services to their own users and customers must affirmatively and contractually pass on the restrictions of this AUP to its users and customers and take steps to ensure compliance by their users and customers with this AUP, including without limitation the ability to terminate the Internet access of its end users, account holders or customers for violations of this AUP. TCAST customers who provide services to their own users must also maintain valid postmaster and abuse email addresses for their domains, comply with all applicable Internet requests for compliance (RFCs), maintain appropriate reverse DNS information for all hosts receiving connectivity through TCAST’s network for which DNS responsibility has been delegated to the customer, maintain accurate contact information with the appropriate domain and IP address registrars, take reasonable steps to prevent IP spoofing by their users and downstream customers, provide 24/7 contact information to TCAST for dealing with security and abuse issues and act promptly to ensure that users are in compliance with TCAST’s AUP. Reasonable steps include, but are not limited to, using IP verify unicast reverse path wherever appropriate and using IP address filtering wherever appropriate. Failure to cooperate with such corrective and preventive measures is a violation of TCAST policy. Notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, a violation of this AUP by a customer, account holder or end-user of any TCAST customer shall be considered a violation of this AUP by such TCAST customer and TCAST may take immediate action, without regard to any cure periods in the TCAST customer’s applicable Service Agreement, in response to such violation, including without limitation termination of the customer’s services under the Service Agreement

Usenet Newsgroups: TCAST places the following restrictions on newsgroup postings by its users.

• no illegal content, including pyramid/ponzi schemes, infringing materials or child pornography, is permitted;
• all postings should conform to the various conventions, guidelines and local culture found in each respective newsgroup and Usenet as a whole;
• commercial advertising is typically off-topic and/or a violation of charter in most Usenet newsgroups.
• posting twenty or more copies of the same article in a 45 day period or continued posting of off-topic articles after being warned is prohibited. Users who engage in such action using TCAST services will be charged the costs of labor to issue cancellations and respond to complaints, with a minimum charge of $300.00. Users who engage in such activity from another provider advertising or implicating, directly or indirectly, the use of any service hosted or provided by TCAST is prohibited and grounds for termination of those services to those users.
• excessive crossposting is prohibited.
• posting articles with false header information is prohibited;
• users may not issue cancellations for postings except those which they have posted themselves, those which have headers falsified so as to appear to come from them, or in newsgroups where they are the official moderator.

TCAST also is concerned with the privacy of on-line communications. In general, the Internet is neither more nor less secure than other common communications media, including mail, facsimile and voice telephone service, all of which can be intercepted and otherwise compromised. As a matter of prudence, however, TCAST urges its customers to assume that all of their on-line communications are insecure.

TCAST cannot take any responsibility for the security of communications transmitted over TCAST’s facilities. TCAST will comply fully, however, with all applicable laws concerning the privacy of its customers’ on-line communications. In particular, TCAST will not intentionally monitor or disclose any private electronic mail messages sent or received by its customers unless required to do so by law. TCAST may, however, monitor its service electronically to determine that its facilities are operating satisfactorily. Also, TCAST may be required to disclose information transmitted through its facilities in order to comply with court orders, statutes, regulations or governmental or regulatory requests. Finally, TCAST may disclose information transmitted over its facilities where necessary to protect TCAST and its customers from harm, or where such disclosure is necessary to the proper operation of the system.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act Policy – It is the policy of TCAST to respond expeditiously to claims of intellectual property infringement. TCAST will promptly process and investigate notices of alleged infringement and will take appropriate action under the Digital Millennium and Copyright Act (“DMCA” ) and other applicable intellectual property laws. Notices of claimed infringement should be directed to TCAST’s registered copyright agent at the following address: Legal@tcastcom.com.