2Shell Communications (2SHELL) Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

$Revision: 1.7 $
Mar 20, 2003

This document is subject to periodic and continuing revisions. We expect each customer (USER) to consult this page periodically to stay informed about 2SHELL's usage policies.

If you have comments or questions please email them to webmaster@2shell.net

We expect our USERs to act like responsible netizens (internet citizens). This means...

Not acting like a responsible netizen and/or any of the following activities (forbidden on our resources) makes a USER subject to USER Termination:
Abuse of the community
You may not use your account, or involve your account in any way, for a purpose that causes abuse of the Internet community or any portion of it even if the abuse does not originate from your account at 2SHELL. There are kinds of Internet uses that are generally recognized as abusive. Remember that on the Internet you are dealing with a community of individuals, and you should interact with them, much as in other areas of society, either as individuals or as specific groups of individuals in which you have a participatory interest. Any attempt to treat any part of this community as a target is almost certainly abuse. Such abuse includes (but is not limited to):

Sharing of accounts
shell accounts are intended for use by a single person or a single family. Accounts may not be shared with other users. An account may be accessed via multiple ssh sessions at the same time, however, more than 4 is considered unnecessary. If is permissible to run 'X' terminals and display back to your desktop. Please do not leave them idle for long periods of time.
Harassment
including abusive email, unwanted email, or other forms of harassment.
Forgery
including representing yourself as another person or network entity.
Unsolicited and unwanted correspondence
Any email or other direct correspondence to any recipient where such correspondence is unsolicited, targeted to the recipient without their request, and so forth. This includes but is not limited to bulk email.
Risk to the community
When you are connected to the Internet you must take adequate steps to ensure that you are not presenting a risk to the community. Even though you yourself may not be directly abusing the community, you must prevent potential abusers from using your facilities in abusive ways. Such prevention includes (but is not necessarily limited to):
Security attack participation
You must also ensure that any facilities connected to the Internet can not be used as an agent in denial of service attacks, or as agents in any other kinds of security attack.
Inappropriate use of USENET newsgroups
There can be various kinds of abuse of newsgroups, many of which derive from a failure to understand the nature of communication that takes place in newsgroups. In general, each newsgroup exists primarily for the community of participants in that newsgroups and for the topic covered by that newsgroup. Before posting to any newsgroups you should familiarize yourself with the nature of USENET news. Before posting to a specific newsgroup you should read that group for a period of weeks in order to study the community before participating in it. That community shall not be targeted for any purpose that conflicts with the newsgroup's purpose. This includes:
SPAM
Off-topic postings and trolling
It is 'off-topic' to use a newsgroup for discussions that are not part of that newsgroup's charter. Trolling is the posting of a message or messages merely to cause conflict in that newsgroup. i.e., trolling for a reaction.
Moderation
You may not interfere with the moderation of a moderated newsgroup.
Operation of the news
You may not interfere with the proper operation of the news system. This includes moderated newsgroup as mentioned above, but also generation or interception of control messages or any other operational mechanism.
Tampering with service
You may not attempt to interfere with any service provided by 2SHELL or any other portion of the Internet.
Unauthorized access
You may not attempt to access any systems or portions of systems to which you are not authorized, files you do not own, or programs that are not user programs, whether those items are at 2SHELL or elsewhere on the net.
Denial of service
Including denial of service directly or indirectly caused by your action whether or not that action occurred as part of your account at 2SHELL

Bulk E-Mail and SPAMMING

It is not permissible for our USERs to engage in any bulk E-mailing or use of any mail servers or mail relays (commonly referred to as "SPAMMING"). It is also not permissible for our USERS to post a message to an excessive number of newsgroups. On the face of it one can not both appropriately participate in a newsgroup community and post SPAM, since you would not legitimately engage a large number of communities with your message.

Forwarding 10 unsolicited pieces of mail within a 24 hour period shall be considered "spamming". USER shall be liable to 2SHELL for any and all damages caused as a result of USER'S failure to comply with this provision.

CPU Usage

USER agrees that it shall not use excessive amounts of CPU processing on any of 2SHELL'S servers. See also Cooperative CPU projects

Bandwidth Usage

2SHELL has a finite amount of bandwidth and expects its USERs to conserve bandwidth. This means limiting usage of it to small amounts and/or to off-peak times.

Cooperative CPU Projects

Any of a class of processes of a distributed nature such as:

Running Servers

Users running a server (background process that opens and listens on IP port(s) or socket(s)) is not allowed. It is a potential security problem for 2SHELL and its customers. 2Shell does run some servers for all to take advantage of (may be for a fee), such as:

If there is a server (background process) that you would like to have running, request it by sending email to: webmaster@2shell.net