Forte Internet Services Inc. Terms of Subscription
THE FOLLOWING DESCRIBES THE TERMS ON WHICH FORTE INTERNET SERVICES INC. OFFERS
YOU A NNTP/USENET NEWS ACCOUNT (THE "ACCOUNT"). BY SELECTING THE "Yes" BUTTON,
YOU ACCEPT THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS BELOW. BY SELECTING THE "No" BUTTON, YOU
MAY DECLINE TO OBTAIN YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND YOU WILL NOT BE CHARGED. IF YOU
HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, PLEASE CONTACT US.
1. Accounts are available only to adults who are at least 18 years old. By
accepting this Agreement, you certify to us and all others that you are an
adult. You also agree that the current privacy policy, as provided on the Forte
web site, at "http://www.forteinc.com/main/privacy.php" is hereby incorporated
by reference into this Agreement.
2. Upon your acceptance of these terms, we will automatically charge your
credit card the amount of your subscription fee plus any applicable taxes we
are required to collect, and by submitting such data to us you authorize us to
do so. Thereafter, on the applicable anniversary of your subscription, we will
charge your credit card the then-current renewal rate for your subscription
period plus any applicable taxes we are required to collect, and you authorize
us to do so. All charges are stated in United States Dollars. You are
responsible for paying all applicable taxes (including those we are not
required to collect) and for all hardware, software, service and other costs
you incur to access your account on our servers.
3. If you pay by check or money order, your account will be activated after our
bank has received the funds. You must prepay at the end of your term or your
account will be terminated.
4. You may cancel your account at any time. However, we cannot provide refunds
for partially used accounts. Upon your notification of cancellation we will stop
all billing beginning with your next billing period.
5. We may terminate your account (and delete all information related to your
account) immediately if we are not paid in advance or if you breach this
agreement. In either case, no refund will be paid. We may also terminate your
account if we decide, in our sole discretion, to discontinue offering accounts,
in which event we will pay a pro-rata refund.
6. You may not transfer or share your account with anyone. You may not disclose
your password to any third parties. There may be an additional charge to reissue
lost passwords.
7. DO NOT use automated unattended news posting and retrieval programs with our
service. This category of software programs includes high capacity news server
software packages, but does not include most commercially available newsreaders
such as Forte Agent. Improper use of these automated unattended posting and
retrieval news programs can result in termination of your account or
interruption of service without notice. We will disable, at our discretion,
accounts of any customers that abuse the system with these (or other)
commercial, automated unattended news posting and retrieval programs. Forte
Internet Services Inc. Usenet accounts are designed and priced for individual
use and NOT for commercial-level archiving of gigabytes of data. Your
individual account is for personal, noncommercial use -- NOT for archiving,
news feeding, news sucking, or testing experimental software.
For purposes of this section and purposes of clarity, abuse of the system
includes, but is not limited to, downloading more than your account limit
during any calendar month. The level of service that you sign up for determines
your account limit.
Forte Internet Services Inc. and its service providers have built a significant
infrastructure to provide high-performance services for our Subscribers. For our
unlimited accounts, subscriber access is unlimited as long as there is no
excessive account usage. Excessive account usage is when an individual
subscriber's account usage is, in our opinion, substantially greater than the
average usage of all subscriber accounts during any calendar month. Forte
Internet Services Inc. reserves the right to discontinue service, at our
discretion, to any subscriber account, at any time, for inappropriate use,
abuse of the network (e.g. account sharing or automated access), or excessive
account usage.
8. You understand that we are providing you with unfiltered access to Usenet.
We cannot, nor do we try to, control the content that you will receive via
Usenet. By its very nature, Usenet groups may carry offensive, harmful or
inaccurate material, in some cases in postings that have been mislabeled or are
otherwise deceptive. We expect that you will use caution and common sense when
using Usenet. Furthermore, you shall comply with all applicable laws regarding
your access to your account. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Forte Internet
Services Inc. may adjust the Usenet groups carried by it at any time in its
sole discretion. The number and type of Usenet groups carried by Forte Internet
Services, Inc. may vary by service type, e.g. the measured service plan may
differ from the unlimited service plan.
9. Although privacy issues are very important to us, given the current
regulatory and technical environment you should not have an expectation of
privacy in your account or any files transmitted through it. We cannot ensure
that all private email will remain private.
10. WE PROVIDE YOUR ACCOUNT "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF
ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. We do not guarantee continuous, uninterrupted or
secure service, and we are not liable if you are unable to access your account.
Some states do not allow the disclaimer of implied warranties, so the foregoing
disclaimer may not apply to you. This warranty gives you specific legal rights
and you may also have other legal rights, which vary from state to state.
11. IN NO EVENT SHALL WE BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES, OR FOR INTERRUPTED COMMUNICATIONS, LOST DATA OR LOST PROFITS, ARISING
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THIS AGREEMENT. OUR LIABILITY TO YOU OR ANY THIRD
PARTIES IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT OF FEES YOU PAID IN THE 12 MONTHS PRIOR TO THE
ACTION GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY. Some states do not allow the limitation of
liability, so the foregoing limitation may not apply to you.
12. With respect to any content you distribute through your account:
a. You are solely responsible for your content, and we act as a passive conduit
for your online distribution and publication of your information. However, we
reserve the right to remove content from our servers if we believe it may
create liability for us, if we receive notifications from third parties
regarding your content or if you are in breach of this Agreement.
b. You represent and warrant that any content you distribute through your
account:
i. Does not infringe on any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, trade
secret or other proprietary rights or rights of publicity or privacy;
ii. Does not violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation (including
without limitation the laws and regulations governing export control);
iii. Is not defamatory, trade libelous or unlawfully threatening;
iv. Is not obscene and does not contain child pornography;
v. Does not violate any laws regarding unfair competition, antidiscrimination
or false advertising, or
vi. Does not contain viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or
other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally
interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or
personal information. You may not distribute "spam" through your account, nor
may you take any other action that imposes an unreasonable or
disproportionately large load on our infrastructure. We deploy automatic word
and "spam" filters that may terminate your postings without delivering them.
c. If you violate this term and distribute such content, we may, without prior
notice, ban you from any and all services, terminate your registration, delete
your messages or postings, and take any other action we deem appropriate in our
sole discretion.
13. Digital Millennium Copyright Act User Deletion Policy: Forte Internet
Services does not condone copyright infringement. In accordance with the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), Forte Internet Services may
terminate in appropriate circumstances a direct subscriber's access to Forte
Internet Services if the direct subscriber is a repeat copyright infringer.
A direct subscriber is a repeat copyright infringer if Forte Internet Services
receives notification from a copyright owner or owners that the direct
subscriber has, on more than one occasion, posted infringing material. Any
notification from a copyright owner to Forte Internet Services should comply
with Section 512(c)(3)(A) of the DMCA, and should identify each infringing
posting individually by its unique message identification tag, available from
the "Message ID" header in the posting. The first time that Forte Internet
Services receives such a notification, Forte Internet Services will attempt to
notify the direct subscriber of this fact and will delete the infringing
posting from the newsgroup. If Forte Internet Services receives another such
notification that a direct subscriber has posted infringing material within a
one-year period, Forte Internet Services will delete the infringing material
and terminate the access of the direct subscriber's account to Forte Internet
Services. Forte Internet Services then will attempt to notify the direct
subscriber of this fact.
Forte Internet Services also may terminate a subscriber's access to Forte
Internet Services if Forte Internet Services determines in its sole discretion
that the subscriber has abused his or her privilege of posting articles on a
newsgroup.
14. This Agreement shall be governed in all respects by the laws of the State
of California as such laws are applied to agreements entered into and to be
performed entirely within California between California residents. Both parties
submit to jurisdiction in California and further agree that any cause of action
arising under this Agreement shall be brought in a court in San Diego County,
California. If any provision of this Agreement is held to be invalid or
unenforceable, such provision shall be struck and the remaining provisions
shall be enforced. Our failure to act with respect to a breach by you or others
does not waive our right to act with respect to subsequent or similar breaches.
This Agreement sets forth the entire understanding and agreement between us
with respect to the subject matter hereof.
15. The services hereunder are offered by Forte Internet Services Inc., located
at P.O. Box 131477, Carlsbad, CA, USA 92013-1477. Current rates for using the
Service may be obtained from "http://www.forteinc.com/apn/index.php", and such
rates are subject to change at any time.
The Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the
Department of Consumer Affairs may be contacted in writing at 1020 N Street
#501, Sacramento, CA 95814, or by telephone at 1 (916) 445-1254.
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