Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy

The following are unacceptable uses and shall be cause for the immediate termination of web services without notice to the customer:

Illegal Activity:
Unauthorized distribution or copying of copyrighted material, violation of US export restrictions, harassment, fraud, trafficking in obscene material, drug dealing, and other illegal activities are not permitted. Pearl-Design.net reserves the right to report such illegal activities to any and all regulatory, administrative and/or governmental authorities for appropriate prosecution.

Net Abuse:
Spamming (sending unsolicited advertising to numerous email addresses or newsgroups and/or generating a significantly higher volume of outgoing email than a normal user) , spoofing (using a return email address which is not the valid reply address of the sender or sending an email message which does not contain enough information to enable the recipient to identify the party who is really sending the message), passive spamming (promoting a web site hosted by Pearl-Design.net by spamming from some other source), trolling (posting controversial messages in newsgroups to generate responses), mailbombing (inundating a user with email without any serious intent to correspond), mail-bombing (sending multiple messages without significant new content to the same user) and subscribing someone else to an electronic mailing list without that person's permission are examples of net abuse.

Posting information, violating trademarks, copyrights or other intellectual property rights or intentionally inflicting emotional distress, posting of private, defamatory, scandalous, or information about a person without their consent violates our AUP. In all instances, Pearl-Design.net reserves the right to determine what defines the term 'Net abuse'.

Any customer repeatedly "mailbombed" or that attracts such behavior will be asked to leave. If you are not sure if your actions will be in violation, please ask first (abuse@pearl-design.net).

Misuse of System Resources:
Attempting without authorization to enter into a secured computer system. Hacking or otherwise altering of a site owned and operated by another person. Pearl-Design.net reserves the right to report such illegal activities to any and all-regulatory, administrative and/or governmental authorities for appropriate prosecution.

Running programs in the background on Pearl-Design.net's server without Pearl-Design.net's prior written authorization, or running chat rooms, Internet Relay Chat, IRC bots, and the like are not acceptable uses of Pearl-Design.net's servers. Further, any usage of ten percent (10%) or more of our system resources is an undue burden on our system and is unacceptable. Usage of scripts or other utilities to direct pointed domain names to subdirectories is not permitted and is grounds for termination of the account.

Pearl-Design.net supports free speech on the Internet and will not suspend or cancel a customer's account simply because it disagrees with the views expressed by the customer. Where there are allegations that a customer's on-line activity has violated the legal rights of a third party, Pearl-Design.net will not substitute itself for a court of law in deciding tort claims raised by the third party.

The following examples of unacceptable behavior are non-exclusive, and are provided for guidance purposes. If you are unsure if your actions will be a violation of our policies please ask abuse@pearl-design.net

Server broadcast messages or any message sent on an intrusive basis to any directly or indirectly attached network. Attempts to circumvent any user authentication or security of host, network, or account. Accessing data not intended for user. Probing the security of any network. Spawning dozens of processes. Port scans, ping floods, packet spoofing, forging router information, Denial of Service attacks, sniffers, flooding, spoofing, ping bombing, smurfs, winnuke, land, teardrop. Promulgation of viruses. IRC bots such as eggdrop or BitchX. Any activity, whether or not the intrusion results in the corruption or loss of data, will be investigated and proper action taken. The presence of any of these programs, whether or not run, will result in action against the user including suspension or termination.

Client Responsibility.
The client is responsible for all activity originating from the account unless proven to be a victim of outside hacking or address forgery. The client is responsible for securing their username/password. The client assumes responsibility for all material on their site that may be put on by a third party (such as the usage of Free For All links pages). Use of Pearl-Design.net's service requires a certain level of knowledge in the use of Internet languages, protocols, and software. This level of knowledge varies depending on the anticipated use and desired content of the web space by the client. The following examples are offered: Web Publishing: requires knowledge of HTML, properly locating and linking documents, FTPing Web contents, Graphics, text, sound, image mapping, etc. FrontPage web publishing: knowledge of the FrontPage tools as well as Telnet and FTP understanding and capability. CGI-Scripts: requires a knowledge of the UNIX environment, TAR & GUNZIP commands, Perl, C, Shell scripts, permissions, etc. Mail: a use of mail clients to receive and send mail, etc. The client agrees that he or she has the necessary knowledge to create and maintain their web space. Client agrees that it is not the responsibility of Pearl-Design.net to provide this knowledge or support outside matters specific to Pearl-Design.net's servers.

Pearl-Design.net shall be the sole arbiter of what is and is not a violation of these acceptable use policies. Pearl-Design.net reserves the right to terminate an account at any time and for any reason that causes harm to any Pearl-Design.net customer's web sites. Pearl-Design.net reserves the right to delete all content and files upon termination. Pearl-Design.net reserves the right to withhold any pre-paid funds for any site removed for violations of these policies. Pearl-Design.net reserves the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion.

Backups.
Full backups are made weekly, and backups of new/changed data made nightly. No guarantees are made of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of these backups. Backups are made for server restoration purposes only. It is the clients' responsibility to maintain local copies of their web content and information. If loss of data occurs due to an error of Pearl-Design.net, Pearl-Design.net will attempt to recover the date for no charge to the client. If data loss occurs due to negligence of client in securing their account or by an action of the client, Pearl-Design.net will attempt to recover the data from the most recent archive at a charge of $75/hour.

IP numbers.
Pearl-Design.net maintains control and any ownership of any and all I.P. numbers and addresses that may be assigned to the client and reserves in its sole discretion the right to change or remove any and all IP numbers and addresses.

Limitation of Liability.
Pearl-Design.net shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, which may arise from Pearl-Design.net's servers going off-line or being unavailable for any reason whatsoever. Further, Pearl-Design.net 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 Pearl-Design.net's servers.

Indemnification.
Customer agrees to indemnify and hold Pearl-Design.net and its affliates harmless in any legal action, which arises as a result of your use of our services, without exception or limitation. This indemnification extends to all issues associated with your account, including but not limited to domain name selection and web site content.

99.9% Uptime Guarantee.
If during any one month your web site is not on-line and available 99.9% of the time, Pearl-Design.net will, upon request, refund or credit your account with the pro-rata portion of the hosting fees paid represented by the outage. This guarantee only applies to outages caused by Pearl-Design.net or its backbone providers.
In order for you to receive a credit on your account, you must request such credit within ten (10) business days after you experienced no Web Site Availability. You must request credit by sending an electronic mail message to support@pearl-design.net. For security, the body of this message must contain your account number, the dates and times of the unavailability of your Web site, and such other customer identification requested by Pearl-Design.net. Credits will usually be applied within sixty (60) days of your credit request. Credit to your account shall be your sole and exclusive remedy in the event that there is no Web Site Availability.

Restrictions
Credits shall not be provided to you in the event that you have no Web Site Availability resulting from (i) scheduled maintenance at Pearl-Design.net, (ii) your behavior or the performance or failure of your equipment, facilities or applications, or (iii) circumstances beyond Pearl-Design.net's reasonable control, including, without limitation, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, sabotage, embargo, fire, flood, strike or other labor disturbance, interruption of or delay in transportation, unavailability of interruption or delay in telecommunications or third party services (including DNS propagation), failure of third party software or hardware or inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of your Web site.

Pearl-Design.net reserves the right to change the Acceptable Use Policy without prior notice or warning. Non-enforcement of any part of the Acceptable Use Policy does not constitute consent.

Violations of these Acceptable Uses Policies should be referred to:
abuse@pearl-design.net
All complaints will be investigated promptly.