Terms and Conditions for Web Hosting from NetInvent

Breaking these restrictions is an abuse of the terms and conditions

These restrictions apply to all sites, whether they were designed by us or not, and whether you have a hosting only or design and hosting package - what matters is that you have maintenance access. Sites that are maintained by NetInvent do should not worry about these restrictions, as we do not break our own rules.

Review our web hosting package options.

• NetInvent does not allow the hosting of 'adult' content or illegal content, including the illegal distribution of copyrighted works.
• Email lists without a double opt in are prohibited.
• Attempting to elevate your access priviledges is prohibited.
• Tampering with server log data is prohibited.
• Hosting of web content designed to exploit browser or server vulnerabilities.
• Spamming, hacking, phishing or cracking scripts, are prohibited.
• Building sites that impersonate those of other businesses for the purposes of committing fraud is prohibited.
• Sending email that pretends to be from another business for the purposes of committing fraud is prohibited.
• Manufacturing misleading email headers is prohibited.
• Intentionally distributing a worm or virus is prohibited.
• Anonymizers, proxy servers, IRC scripts or bots are all prohibited, regardless of the implementation technique or particular script variant employed.
• To assist in enforcing the above, certain scripts and script packages are prohibited. Some other scripts are prohibited on groups of excessive resource consumption (typically more efficient alternatives are available in the script library).
  Banned scripts include the following at this time:
  • Flat file based CGI based forums such as UBB, iKonboard, UltimateBB.
  • Eggdrops
  • The Anonymizer
  • Matt Wright's formmail
  • The webmail module for php-nuke
• To try and keep spam and resource hogs under control we also impose the following limits:
  • Maximum of 200 outgoing emails per domain name per hour.
  • Maximum of 1000 outgoing emails per domain name per day.
• If you are consuming excessive resources, we will try to inform you in a timely manner so that you can correct the problem, but in some cases excessive resource hogs may have their account suspended without prior warning, for the benefit of all users.
• Violating these restrictions is an abuse and may lead to termination of your package
• Violating the terms and conditions is an abuse and may lead to termination of your package
• We reserve the right to make additions to the restriction list that are not unreasonably restrictive in the proper use of your site for legitimate business purposes.

Terms for the Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum Packages

These terms are not related to web design packages. If your site is designed by NetInvent then you have a web design package, not a web hosting package.

The basic principles of the terms and conditions are as follows:

• Our liability in any case is limited to the fee paid to us. If we fail to provide your service, or any part of it, or you are somehow unsatisfied, we are not liable for any additional expenses or losses you, or a third party may incur as a result.
• We provide a service 'as is'. It is your responsibility to ensure that your web site operates correctly with the software we currently provide.
• We may make changes to the specific software or hardware that supports the hosting service at any time. We don't have to tell you if we make changes, though we may well do so. At the time of writing we operate Apache 1.3.33 under Linux kernel 2.6.9-11.ELsmp with PHP 4.3.10, PERL 5.8.7 and MySQL 4.0.25, but this will almost certainly change if there are critical security updates to any of that software.
• If we make a change to hardware or software, such as changing the version of the web server or php support available. We are not at fault if it causes a problem with your site.
• We will not make gratuitious changes to software, and we will typically not downgrade software - but we reserve the right to do so if forced to by operational circumstances, such as unpatched vulnerabilities or performance problems.
• We make no promises about the physical location of your server. We may move your data for operational reasons at any time.
• We claim 99.5% uptime is assured. If you can show irrefutably that we failed to meet this target, then you may terminate your package and receive a refund based on the length of your package yet to run.
  For practical reasons, we must define uptime as when the server is up and running, and connected to the internet. We cannot make promises about any particular person's ability to connect to the server due to the nature of the internet, which is typically prone to failures and performance drops beyond our control.
• Though we have a lot of terms and conditions, primarily to protect ourselves against the greedy and litigous, it is our intention to provide a good quality service and not to annoying things for no apparent reason. We will generally provide information about changes that have been made that might effect the operation of your site.
• You can stop being hosted by us at any time, though you will only get money refunded if we were at fault.
• You may terminate your package within the first 30 days without giving a reason and receive a full refund, provided you have not committed abuses.
• We may terminate your service at any time, and without giving a reason. If you have not committed abuses we will offer a partial refund of fees, based on the length of your package yet to run.
• If we make changes to the terms and conditions, and you are not happy with them, then you may terminate your package and receive a partial refund based on the length of your package yet to run.
• We may allow you to upgrade your package during its lifetime, but we do not allow downgrades.
• Packages are one year agreements. You can buy a new package and arrange for it to start exactly when the old one finishes, but that package is a new and separate agreement, with its own terms and conditions as published at the time of commencement.

Statutory Rights

Normal statutory rights apply. The hosting agreement is under Australian law in the state of Victoria. Victoria has a fair business policy which prevents unfair contracts.

Contact Details

You are obliged to provide us with a contact address, that is not a post office box, and an email contact address. You must keep the email address in good working order. If we attempt to contact you by email and we fail because of problems with your email account, we are not at fault. We call this email address the 'registered contact address' or 'registered contact email'.

If you require an SSL service, we may require additional identification.

If we agree to provide you with an SSH service, we will require proof of identity via photo id, and proof of address. Typically, only properly certified copies of documents will be accepted. No package contains SSH by default, but we may agree to provide this service for an additional fee, or we may choose not to without giving a reason.

Termination and Suspension

If your package it terminated, it means:

• We stop hosting your site
• We stop performing domain name server functions for your domain or domains
• We may delete any data that was in your area on our servers
• We may refund some, or all, of your fee, but not if we terminated your account for abuses

If you break the terms and conditions, or violate the restrictions on usage, or commit abuses, then your package may be suspended or terminated without refund. We will make no refunds for time that your package is suspended due to abuses.

If we suspend your package, we will stop hosting your site, but we will not delete any of your data. You will not have access to your data until your account is released from suspension.

In the event that you persist in abuses, or we determine by reasonable means that you are a nuisance to internet users, then your package will be terminated immediately without refund.

We are very unlikely to suspend your account due to spamming complaints without inspecting your email logs.

You may terminate your package prematurely with us at any time, you do not have to give a reason. Whether or not you receive a partial refund depends on the circumstances.

If you terminate your account without showing that we were at fault, then you are not eligible for any refund, unless you do so within the first 30 days.

You may terminate your package within the first 30 days and receive a complete refund. You do not have to give a reason. There is an exception to this if you purchase packages 'in advance', the grace period begins at the point of payment - see refunds for more info.

We may terminate your package at any time. If we do not give a reason we will make a partial refund for hosting not yet provided. In the case of packages that have not yet commenced the refund will be complete.

Package Purchase, Duration and Renewal

We may refuse to sell you a package without giving a reason.

The fee payable for a web hosting package entitles you to one year's worth of web hosting. Your entitlement ends at 11am Victorian time, on the date your payment cleared with the year incremented. We will not commence a package on February 29^th, and will either wait until March 1^st before commencing it, or begin it on February 28^th. For example, if your payment cleared on 14^th of March 2006, then your service entitlement terminates at 10am on the 14^th of March 2007.

Your fee does not entitle you to abuse the hosting server, or the rules that apply to all sites hosted by NetInvent. Abuses may lead to us terminating your package without refund.

When your package expires you are under no obligation to buy another. If you do buy another package, it doesn't have to be the same type of package. You may upgrade or downgrade at will when purchasing a complete new package.

When your package expires, we are under no obligation to provide you with another.

We will issue a reminder to your registered contact email in advance of your package expiring. You may then pay for another package, and we will arrange for it to commence so that there is no break in your hosting service and a maximum of two days ovelap. Typically it will start on the same day of the month as your previous package. If we don't hear from you before your package ends, then that's it, the package is terminated. We will usually warn you before terminating your package, though we are not required to do so.

When you buy a new package, it is a completely new agreement and will be regulated by whatever terms and conditions we are publishing at the time, and not necessarily under the same terms as the previous year's package, or any other packages you might already have. You should read the terms and restrictions before paying for another year to make sure you agree with them.

Payments for hosting are atomic payments, you may not make a part payment. If you make a part payment, we may refuse it, and we will not provide service until the package has been paid for in full.

While we usually allow you to pay for a package in advance so that you can continue your hosting without interruption, we do not allow you to have more than one continuing package pending on a given active package. e.g. You can only pay for two years at once, maximum. Because of our refund policy, it is not practical to allow you to pay for several years in advance.

Refunds

In the event of any partial refund we will normally only refund fees paid for services not yet provided. We do so on a pro-rata basis. We use the following formula to do this:
(Fee paid to purchase the package) * (entire days of hosting not yet provided) / (expected duration of package)
We round the refund to the nearest 50c. The expected duration may be 365 or 366 depending on the calendar.

If when you terminate your package, you can show that we substantially failed to provide a hosting platform for your site, or if we changed the restrictions of use and they are no longer acceptable, we will partially refund the fee for your package.

If you terminate your package, and you are not accused of abuses, and you can show we failed to provide service for some period of time before the termination took place, we will count the time we 'failed to provide service' as 'days of hosting not yet provided' for the basis of calculating the refund - potentially increasing your partial refund amount.

You may terminate your package within the first 30 days and receive a complete refund. You do not have to give a reason. However, if you have paid for a package in advance, with the intention of it continuing immediately after another terminates, the 30 day grace period begins at the point that you pay for the new package. You are not required to purchase package continuations in advance, as long as we receive payment before your old package terminates there will be no interruption in your service.

Changes to Restrictions

From time to time we may need to change the restrictions on the packages. We will advise you of changes using your registered contact email. If the new restrictions are unacceptable you may terminate your package and we will make a partial refund. If you do not advice us in a timely manner that the new terms are acceptable, we will assume that you agree to them. If your site is in violation of the new rules, it will be suspended.

Data Access and Backups

We are entitled to keep backups of your data for the purposes of protecting you against data loss. This does not mean we will necessarily backup your data, or be able to restore it in the event of loss.

We reserve the right to inspect the data on your site, along with usage logs. We will not release this information to third parties without informing you, except to law enforcement or government agencies. We will not sell any of this information for commericial purposes.

We make no claim to ownership of your data or usage logs, however, we do reserve full access rights to them. However, this does not mean that we will access them. We are not necessarily aware of the contents and composition of your data.

If you host illegal material it is an abuse. You must not host illegal material. If we discover you are hosting illegal material your package will almost certainly be suspended immediately without warning, and ultimately terminated without refund. The relevant law enforement authorities may also be informed of your activities.

We are not responsible or liable for any illegal data that you upload to our servers. Uploading illegal material to the servers is an abuse and will lead to account termination. You must not upload illegal material. However, if you do, we are not responsible or liable for it, and we assert that we are not necessarily aware of it either. We will always take action to remove illegal material that we are aware of.

You are responsible for the content of your own site. We can not be expected to have full knowledge of all the data present or whether it is legal. Whenever suspect content is brought to our attention we will act promptly to suspend access to the site and the package.

If we are required to surrender your data to an authority, we will inform you providing that the authority allows us to do so.

If law enforcement or government agencies obtain rights to access to your data without your knowledge, we are not required to inform you, and we are not liable for anything they do with the information they obtain, or anything that happens because they obtained it, wanted to obtain it, or because we didn't tell you about it. In any event, our liability is limited to the fee originally paid to us.

You are responsible for the safeguard of your data. While we take all reasonable precautions to prevent the loss of your data, we are not liable for the replacement, results, damages, lost business or consequential effects of the loss of data. The only recompense you are entitled to is partial refund of fees paid for hosting not yet performed if you choose to terminate your package as a result. We recommend that you keep backups of all data.

If your data is lost due to a server failure (not due to your error), and then restored by us, then we will provide a partial refund of fees paid based on the time.

If somebody commits abuses and steals or destroys your data, no matter who, we are not liable for the results, damages, lost business or consequential effects. However, we will take all reasonable steps to avoid this situation. The only recompense you are entitled to is partial refund of fees paid for hosting not yet performed if you choose to terminate your package as a result. If we believe the loss was occurred through the use of legitimate access passwords (e.g. you failed to protect passwords), we are not at fault. It is your responsibilit to set secure passwords and protect them adequately.

If you become aware that your access to our server(s) has been compromised in any way, or if you believe that your data has been modified without your consent by third parties, known suspected, or unknown, you must inform us immediately by email and preferably also by telephone.

Limitations to Liability

If criminal or civil action is brought against you relating to data published on your site, we are not responsible or liable in any way for your losses, or for 'publication' of the work. We are not a publisher and we do not publish works.

If criminal or civil action is brought against us relating to data published on your site, you are fully responsible and liable for any of our losses and expenses. We assert that we are not responsible for your activities, and that we are not your publisher.

If we fail to provide your package, or hosting, we are not liable for any damages, lost business or incidental consequences. The only recompense you are entitled to is refund of fees paid for hosting we did not perform.

We make no assertions of guarantees that the server and software provided performs to any particular specification. We will make known to you on request, details of the software that we are running, such as version numbers, as far as we know them. Beyond that we can make no guarantees of particular functionality beyond 'web hosting' and the availability of particular generic applications (such as PHP) determined by the package purchased. We are free to change the specific versions and implementations of software available at any time. We are not required to notify you if we make changes to the versions of software packages available, unless we deem it 'likely' to cause a problem in code compatibility, though we may well inform you anyway.

If we make software available that is in excess of that promised in your package, we make no promises about its continued availability. You use such software at your own risk. If its removal or modification causes a failure in your web site, we are not at fault. We would likely only remove software if there was an unpatched vulnerability, or we believed it was being used to perform an exploit, but we make no specific promises in this regard. Furthermore, if we make changes to such software, we are not required to inform you, though we may well do so.

We make no assertions that any particular operating system will be available. We are free to host your data under any OS we deem suitable. For example, we may decide to host your site from a machine running under Windows, Solaris, or a variety of Linux. We are not required to notify you if we make changes to the server OS, though we may well do so.

Any library scripts we make available are provided as is, and we make no promises about functionality or fitness for any particular purposes. If your package allows, you may run other scripts, or modify scripts from the library for your own use, or write completely new scripts. It's not our concern, as long as you do not commit abuses.

Sometimes, to ensure that abuses are stopped, we may have to suspend your package without warning. This may happen even if you have not done something specifically on our abuses list. This will only happen if we have received complaints.

Assured Uptime

If you can show we failed to keep our promise of 99.5% uptime, you may terminate your account and we will make a partial refund of fees for hosting not yet provided.
Just because you could not ping or trace to our servers from your particular subnet, or some particular subnet chosen at random does not show failure. If we have access logs or server statistics to contradict your claim, we will not respect it.
In the event of a widespread internet failure or difficulty, such backbone router failure, underwater cable failure, or other major difficulties afflicting a large number of internet users, we are not at fault.