Ask A Pro -- Information about South Carolina, includes web hosting services

As a provider of web site hosting, and other Internet-related services, ASKaPRO.net offers its clients, and their customers and users, the means to disseminate a wealth of public, private, commercial, and non-commercial information. ASKaPRO.net respects that the Internet provides a forum for free and open discussion and dissemination of information, however, when there are competing interests at issue, ASKaPRO.net reserves the right to take certain preventative or corrective actions. In order to protect these competing interests, ASKaPRO.net has developed an Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP"), which supplements and explains certain terms of each customer's respective service agreement and is intended as a guide to the customer's rights and obligations when utilizing ASKaPRO.net?s services. This AUP will be revised from time to time. Customers will be informed of changes to the AUP via E-mail. A customer's use of ASKaPRO.net's services after changes to the AUP will constitute the customer's acceptance of any new or additional terms of the AUP that result from those changes.

One important aspect of the Internet is that no one party owns or controls it. This fact accounts for much of the Internet's openness and value, but it also places a high premium on the judgment and responsibility of those who use the Internet to disseminate information to others.

When information is disseminated through the Internet, they also must keep in mind that ASKaPRO.net does not review, edit, censor, or take responsibility for any information its clients may create. 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 ASKaPRO.net?s network and may reach a large number of people, including both clients and non-clients of ASKaPRO, clients' postings to the Internet may affect other clients and may harm ASKaPRO.net?s goodwill, business reputation, and operations. For these reasons, clients violate ASKaPRO.net policy and the service agreement when they, their customers, affiliates, or subsidiaries engage in the following prohibited activities:

Sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial messages over the Internet (known as "spamming"). It is not only harmful because of its negative impact on consumer attitudes toward ASKaPRO.net, but also because it can overload ASKaPRO.net's network and disrupt service to ASKaPRO.net clients. Also, maintaining an open SMTP relay is prohibited. When a complaint is received, ASKaPRO.net has the discretion to determine from all of the evidence whether the e-mail recipients were from an "opt-in" e-mail list.

Engaging in any activity that infringes or misappropriates the intellectual property rights of others, including copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets, software piracy, and patents held by individuals, corporations, or other entities. Also, engaging in activity that violates privacy, publicity, or other personal rights of others. ASKaPRO.net is required by law to remove or block access to customer content upon receipt of a proper notice of copyright infringement. It is also ASKaPRO.net?s policy to terminate the privileges of customers who commit repeat violations of copyright laws.

Because the Internet is a global communication tool, it is difficult to dictate what is considered "adult material." However, it is not our function to discriminate against those who choose to utilize adult content or adult related material. This being said, there are still several reasons why ASKaPRO.net has been forced to create its no adult sites policy for its virtual server users.

Bandwidth and Resources
A virtual server is a shared environment where many servers reside on each particular machine. This being said, consider that an average "adult site" gets more hits than 100 standard websites. Some of the smaller adult sites get around 5 GB of transfer per day. With these types of resources being utilized, our servers would be severely slowed if we allowed these high traffic sites to also reside on our servers. On top of that, we would be forced to raise our prices to pay for the additional bandwidth. We strive to keep our servers fast and inexpensive, and our bandwidth clear; therefore, adult sites are not an option.

ASKaPRO.net reserves the right to decide what it considers "adult content", "adult material", "sexually explicit", or "sexually related". Let us know if you are unsure of the approval of your site before placing an order.

ASKaPRO Internet Services has been established to provide web hosting services for small to medium-sized businesses. Our prices are based upon this type of client. Large graphic, video, audio or other large files make excessive use of our resources and may severely slow our servers. These files are therefore prohibited. Likewise, large listserves make excessive use of our resources and may severely slow our servers. These are also prohibited. Also prohibited is the storage of files not contributing to the display of your website. We strive to keep our servers fast and inexpensive, and our bandwidth clear. We reserve the right to determine what is excessive use of our resources and will, at our discretion, refuse or discontinue service for a site which we consider abusive of our resources.

Using ASKaPRO.net?s network as a means to transmit or post defamatory, harassing, abusive, or threatening language.

Forging or misrepresenting message headers, whether in whole or in part, to mask the originator of the message.

Accessing illegally or without authorization computers, accounts, or networks belonging to another party, or attempting to penetrate security measures of another individual's system (often known as "hacking"). Also, any activity that might be used as a precursor to an attempted system penetration (i.e. port scan, stealth scan, or other information gathering activity).

Background Daemons in general are prohibited on ASKaPRO.net servers, including, but not limited to, IRC bots, eggdrop, BitchX, XiRCON, warez sites and any other program that interferes with normal server operation. ASKaPRO.net will be the sole arbitor of what constitutes a violation of the above policy.

Distribution of Internet Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses, or Other Destructive Activities

Distributing information regarding the creation of and sending Internet viruses, worms, Trojan horses, pinging, flooding, mailbombing, or denial of service attacks. Also, activities that disrupt the use of or interfere with the ability of others to effectively use the network or any connected network, system, service, or equipment.

Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP, which includes the facilitation of the means to spam, initiation of pinging, flooding, mailbombing, denial of service attacks, and piracy of software.

Exporting encryption software over the Internet or otherwise, to points outside the United States.

ASKaPRO.net reserves the right not to accept postings from newsgroups where we have actual knowledge that the content of the newsgroup violates the AUP.

Engaging in activities that are determined to be illegal, including advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, fraudulently charging credit cards, and pirating software. ASKaPRO.net will be the sole arbitor of what constitutes a violation of the above policy.

ASKaPRO.net offers monthly, quarterly and annual payment options to our clients. Any invoice not paid by the Due Date indicated on the invoice is subject to a $29.00 Late Fee. Additional Late Fees will be imposed for each additional month that the payment is late. ASKaPRO reserves the right to discontinue hosting and place a lien on customer's domain name(s) for any unpaid fees. Full payment of invoice and late fees, plus a $50.00 reinstatement fee will be required to restore services which are turned off due to non-payment.