Terms of Service of AJS Communications

AJS Communications provides web and multimedia services to subscribers around the world. The following terms of service are designed to provide the highest level of service available.

Content

All services provided by AJS Communications are to 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 Local law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, material that jeopardizes national security, or material protected by trade secret or other laws. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless AJS Communications, from any claims resulting from the subscriber's use of AJS Communications' services which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Examples of prohibited content or links include (but are not limited to):

IRC Software
Pirated software
Pornography
Hacking sites, programs or archives
Warez Sites
Virus, malware, bitcoin mining, or other malicious software
Distribution of music files or any other material in which the account holder does not own the copyright
Opinion posing as factual news or data designed to stoke nefarious anti-government behavior or actions
Hate speech or defamation targeting any group based on religion, belief, lifestyle, race, gender, or sexual preference

AJS Communications will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. Content that does not meet these standards will be removed without prior notice to the subscriber.

Housing of any of the following files is considered a violation of the terms of service:

IRC - We currently do not allow IRC, Egg Drops, BNC, or IRC bots to be operated on our servers or network. Files with references to IRC or any likeness thereof are prohibited.

Proxies - We do not allow proxy servers of any kind, whether for personal or business use. Files with references to any proxy or likeness thereof are prohibited.

PortScanning - We do not allow any kind of port scanning to be done on or from our servers or network.

Commercial Advertising - Email -

Spamming, i.e. the sending of unsolicited email, from any AJS Communications server or any server located on the AJS Communications network is STRICTLY prohibited. AJS Communications will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. This also includes Opt-in Opt-out mail programs and mail that either directly or indirectly references a domain contained within an account at AJS Communications.
Running Unconfirmed Mailing Lists. Subscribing email addresses to any mailing list without the express and verifiable permission of the email address owner is prohibited. All mailing lists run by AJS Communications customers must be Closed-loop ("Confirmed Opt-in"). The subscription confirmation message received from each address owner must be kept on file for the duration of the existence of the mailing list. Purchasing, selling, or utilizing lists of email addresses from 3rd parties for mailing to or from any hosted domain, or referencing any AJS Communications account, is prohibited.
Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet Service Provider, which includes, but is not limited to, the facilitation of the means to send Unsolicited Bulk Email, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, denial of service attacks is prohibited.
Email address cultivating, or any unauthorized collecting of email addresses without prior notification of the email address owner is strictly prohibited.
Operating an account on behalf of, or in connection with, or reselling any service to, persons or firms listed in the Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database at www.spamhaus.org is prohibited.
All commercial email marketing companies must adhere to the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003. In addition such companies are prohibited the sending of bulk mail from "disposable domain names" with whois privacy protection.

Server Abuse - Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a AJS Communications server or subscriber of AJS Communications is strictly prohibited including, but not limited to:

Logging into a server or account that you are not authorized to access
Accessing data or taking any action to obtain services not intended for you or your use
Attempting to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of any system, subsystem or network
Tampering, hacking, modifying, or otherwise corrupting or breaching security or authentication measures without proper authorization
Transmitting material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines or engines with the intent or effect of damaging, destroying, disrupting or otherwise impairing a computer's functionality or the operation of the System
Interfering with, intercepting or expropriating any system, data or information
Interfering with service to any user, host or network including, without limitation, by means of overloading, "flooding," "mailbombing," or "crashing" any computer system

You will be held responsible for all actions performed by your account whether it be done by you or by others.

AJS Communications will not be held responsible nor will it be required to correct your website or domain's reputation in the event that third-party services add it to their unsafe/blacklist for any reason.

All sub-networks of AJS Communications and all shared hosting accounts must adhere to the above policies.

Bandwidth Measurement and Overage Fees

As of August 5, 2004 all bandwidth listings for shared hosting accounts consist of the sum of incoming and outgoing bandwidth allowance. Incoming and outgoing bandwidth allowances are calculated on a 50/50 split of incoming to outgoing bandwidth based on the total bandwidth, therefore the incoming and outgoing bandwidth allowances are each half of the total listed bandwidth. If bandwidth is listed for your plan, any bandwidth usage exceeding either the incoming or outgoing bandwidth total will be billed at the rate of $55 per 100GB over.

Unmetered hosting, has no limit to the amount of data you can transfer, only the speed at which you can transfer it. Instead of being charged for how much data you use, you're always charged one predictable flat rate.

Although, extremely rare, AJS Communications may enforce limits on your account at any time.

Technical Support

Basic support and maintenance of accounts is provided at the discretion of AJS Communications. In the case of erroneous instances or support issues extending beyond what we determine to be within the realm of reasonable assistance, support is priced as follows:

$55/hour

You may purchase a Technical Support subscription from AJS Communications for maintenance, upgrades, and further technical assistance.

Scheduled Maintenance and Downtime

AJS Communications will use its commercially reasonably efforts to provide services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Subscriber acknowledges that from time to time the services may be inaccessible or inoperable for various reasons, including periodic maintenance procedures or upgrades ("Scheduled Downtime"); or service malfunctions, and causes beyond AJS Communications' control or which are not reasonably foreseeable by AJS Communications, including the interruption or failure of telecommunications or digital transmission links, hostile network attacks, or network congestion or other failures. AJS Communications will provide at least 48 hours advance notice to the subscriber for Scheduled Downtimes, and will use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize any other disruption, inaccessibility and/or inoperability of its web servers. AJS Communications has no responsibility for downtime resulting from a user's actions. Also, the 100% network uptime guarantee does not apply for shared accounts.

Refunds

AJS Communications offers no refunds except in rare cases in which we deem it appropriate. We do offer extremely easy to use billing managment via Stripe.com in which you may cancel your service at any time. Your account will remain open until the end of your current term unless your account has been terminated or for any other reason we deem appropriate.

Any violation of AJS Communications's Terms of Service Agreement shall result in no refund.

Account Setup, Termination, and Billing:

The account will be charged on the day the order is processed, regardless of the account billing date. The account will not be charged again until the next term's billing cycle. Billing dates are recurring on the day the account was opened.

A term can be defined as a month, every 3 months, every 6 months, once a year, or a one-time fee.

Check Orders: Accounts for subscribers who wish to pay by check will be setup when the check is received by AJS Communications.

Bank Accounts: Accounts for subscribers who wish to pay via direct deposit will be setup when the funds are received by AJS Communications.

Disabling of accounts due to overdue payment: Accounts will be disabled if payment is not received within 30 days of the invoice date. If your account has been disabled, you may be charged a reconnection fee of up to $100 in order to re-enable your account.

Termination of accounts due to overdue payment: If the account is not paid within 60 days of the invoice date, the account will be terminated and all information within the account will be deleted.

Cancellation Procedure: AJS Communications provides easy to use billing management via Stripe.com that allows you to cancel at any time. If you'd prefer to contact us directly, valid proof of account ownership will be required to terminate an account. This includes, but is not limited to, billing information in the form of a partial credit card number or other payment information, or the billing password. Non-secure information, such as the contact email address or account billing address, is not sufficient as a security verification.

Free Domain Name Registration: When offered by AJS Communications, we will register any available .com, .org, .net, .info or .biz domain for free upon creation of a new account as long as the client hosts and registers their domain with us for a minimum term length of one year. The free domain offer does not apply to existing accounts, or to orders that did not request the free domain registration at the time the order was placed.

If Free registration is offered for the first year only, subsequent renewals are a minimum of $20 per year and will be billed prior to expiration. The cost of renewing the domain name for AJS Communications will determine the base cost of its subsequent renewal fee to the subscriber. We maintain the right to change the cost of subsquent renewals at any time.

Courtesy Services for Customers

All services are provided for the courtesy of the subscriber. It is the sole responsibility of the subscriber to maintain the subscriber's own backup of any data. AJS Communications is not responsible for lost data or for lost data due to third party software that is not maintained by AJS Communications programming staff.

Promotional Use

AJS Communications may refer to You, Your company, or your logos for promotional purposes. Your company name, logos and the services that were provided to the customer by AJS Communications may be used in promotional materials, advertising, marketing releases, newsletter, public disclosures and on the AJS Communications website. This reference will be strictly limited to disclosure that AJS Communications has provided services to the company and will not contain any confidential, sensitive or proprietary information in such a reference. The reference will also not provide any personally identifiable information about the individual or technical information regarding the server configuration and design used by the customer at AJS Communications. However, AJS Communications may disclose any information requested by law enforcement or when compelled by court order, applicable laws or regulations.

Any work or professional services performed or provided by AJS Communications under this Agreement shall not be deemed Work For Hire, but AJS Communications shall grant a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to You, for the duration of this Agreement, its employees, affiliates, and third parties commissioned by AJS Communications.

Microsoft Software License Policy

Microsoft, as well as AJS Communications company policy, does not allow mixing of Microsoft license ownership. For an example, a customer cannot use a AJS Communications purchased Windows Server license in conjunction with their own customer license of MSSQL or any other Microsoft Product. This is a violation of Microsoft's licensing policies. The customer would have to obtain all Microsoft licenses through AJS Communications. In some instances, we can allow the customer to supply all Microsoft licensed products, including the OS. However, all licenses must be provided by the customer and may not be mixed with AJS Communications licensed Microsoft products. Any questions regarding this policy can be addressed to AJSCommunications.com.

Limitation of Damages

Recovery of damages from AJS Communications may not exceed the amount of fees it has collected on the account within the account's last subscription period, one-time payment, or last month of service.

General

These Terms of Service are a legally binding contract between the subscriber and AJS Communications.

By opening an account, the subscriber agrees to the above-stated terms.

Anything not listed in the Terms of Service is open to interpretation and change by AJS Communications administrators without prior notice.

All prices are nonrefundable and nonnegotiable.

Any violation of these Terms of Service will result in termination of the account. AJS Communications maintains the right to terminate accounts without prior notification.

We reserve the right to remove any account without prior notice.

Dispute Resolution

Any dispute between AJS Communications and a subscriber shall be determined by arbitration conducted by the American Arbitration Association pursuant to its commercial arbitration rules. The arbitrator shall decide any dispute in accordance with Pennsylvania law, without the application of choice of law principles. Each party shall bear its own expenses and legal fees for the arbitration. The arbitration shall be conducted in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, unless both parties agree in writing to a different location. The arbitration award is enforceable as a judgment of any court having proper jurisdiction.

Indemnification

Customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless AJS Communications its subsidiaries, their affiliates and each of their respective directors, officers, employees, shareholders and agents (each an "Indemnified Party") against any losses, claims, damages, liabilities, penalties, actions, proceedings, judgments, or any and all costs thereof (collectively, "Losses") to which an Indemnified Party may become subject and which Losses arise out of, or relate to the Agreement, Customer's use of the Products and Services, breach of any confidentiality obligation or any alleged infringement of any trademark, copyright, patent or other intellectual property right and will reimburse an Indemnified Party for all legal and other expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees incurred by such Indemnified Party, in connection with investigating, defending, or settling any Loss, whether or not in connection with pending or threatened litigation in which such Indemnified Party is a party.