INTRODUCTION

Rosenet sells Internet access to the general public without regard to beliefs, affiliations, race, gender, or partisanship. Rosenet does, however, maintain certain standards and expectations of its customers as part of the global internet community.

To help clarify Rosenet expectations for our users, this Acceptable Use Policy will describe some of the behaviors that have caused difficulties for other individuals and computer systems. If you genuinely do not know whether something you'd like to do is illegal or harmful to the system or others, discuss it with Rosenet staff before you proceed.

ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES

You must not use your Rosenet account for anything that might be illegal. Rosenet's services may only be used for lawful purposes. Transmission, distribution, or storage of any information, data or material in violation of United States or state regulation or law, or by the common law, is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Illegal activities -- inciting specific illegal action relating to illegal drugs, gambling, pornography, prostitution, child pornography, robbery, spreading computer viruses, cracking into private computer systems, trafficking in credit card codes, or other crimes.

Defamation of another -- any false statement that injures another's reputation. Attack an idea, not a person.

Copyright infringement -- only the owner of software and text can place that material online. Furthermore, everyone owns what he or she writes. Ask before you forward someone else's postings. Rosenet reserves the right to remove, without notice, such illegal material from the system. Rosenet recognizes the concept of Fair Use of copyrighted material.

Harassment -- by language, frequency, or size of messages through email, talk requests, or IRC.

ABUSIVE ACTIVITIES

Email abusive activities:

Harassment, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages, is prohibited.

Rosenet users may not send email to any person who does not wish to receive it. If a recipient asks to stop receiving email, respect the recipient's wishes.

Rosenet users are explicitly prohibited from sending unsolicited bulk mail messages ("junk mail" or "spam"). This includes, but is not limited to, bulk-mailing of commercial advertising, informational announcements, and political tracts. Such material may only be sent to those who have explicitly requested it. If any question exists in the user's mind that he or she may be violating this policy, send email to abuse@rosenet.net asking for clarification. Violators of this policy are subject to billing by Rosenet to recover costs associated with the violation.

Rosenet users may not forward or otherwise propagate chain letters, whether or not the recipient wishes to receive such mailings.

Malicious email, including but not limited to "mailbombing" (flooding a user or site with very large or numerous pieces of email), is prohibited. Forging of header information is not permitted.

Rosenet accounts or services may not be used to collect replies to messages sent from another Internet Service Provider, where those messages violate this Acceptable Use Policy or the Acceptable Use Policy of that other provider.

Network News/USENET abusive activities:

Rosenet's news service is not subject to any filtering by Rosenet, therefore, Rosenet does not control the content of the newsgroups available to its users.

Rosenet is not responsible for the content of any USENET posting, whether or not the posting was made by an Rosenet user. Postings to USENET newsgroups must comply with the written charters or FAQs for those newsgroups.

Advertisements should only be posted in those newsgroups whose charters/FAQs explicitly permit them. The poster is responsible for determining the etiquette of a given newsgroup prior to posting to it.

Rosenet users are prohibited from posting the same or similar message to large numbers of newsgroups (excessive cross-posting or multiple-posting, also known as "USENET spam").

Rosenet users may not post chain letters of any type.

Rosenet users are prohibited from posting binary files to newsgroups not specifically named for that purpose.

Rosenet users may not cancel or supersede posts other than their own, with the exception of official newsgroup moderators performing their duties.

Rosenet users are prohibited from forging header information. This includes attempting to circumvent the approval process for posting to a moderated newsgroup.

A Rosenet user may not solicit mail for any other address other than that of the user's Rosenet account or service, with the intent to harass or collect replies after Rosenet service has been terminated.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and UNIX talk/ntalk/ytalk abusive activities

Rosenet users may not engage in unwanted, excessive or harassing talk requests on the Rosenet system. If another user indicates that they are not interested in a talk session with you, respect this request.

Rosenet is not liable for the content of any communications made on IRC.

IRC robots ("bots" or "clones") may not be run from Rosenet accounts. Many IRC servers will punish the entire domain of one user using a bot or clone. Respect other users by not endangering the Rosenet domain's access to IRC servers.

Rosenet users may not attempt to impersonate others or use IRC anonymously by disguising their hostname or username.

Rosenet users are prohibited from using IRC scripts or programs that interfere with or deny service to other users on any server or host. Users are also prohibited from engaging in activities which harass other users. This includes, but is not limited to, "flooding" (rapidly entering text with the intent to fill the screens of others), "flashing" (disrupting terminal emulation), "takeovers" (forcibly seizing operator privileges), attempting to send private messages to those who do not wish to see them (via "ignore"), attempting to return to a channel after being banned from it, and other disruptive behaviors.

ABUSIVE COMPUTER PROCESSES

This section mainly applies to shell users, and will be modified when the last of the shell accounts are converted to DIP accounts.

Abuse of processes on the Rosenet system can cause the system to slow and deny the use of the system to other Rosenet users. Some processes by their very nature are abusive: others can be if not used in a responsible manner. Rosenet system administrators are empowered at all times to kill processes that they deem to be abuse of the system, in their professional judgment.

Examples of processes that may be abusive:

Background processes, such as bots, screen, SLIRP, TIA, term, and chatrooms. SLIRP and TIA are explicitly banned on Rosenet as they consume excessive system resources and their functions are easily substituted with DIP (SLIP/CSLIP/PPP) account access which moves the process load to the user's computer.

MUDs, MOOs, MUCKs, and related games when excessively used during periods of high system load or during prime access periods. MUD and similar processes include TinyFugue (tf), tintin (tt), tintin++ (tt++), and other aliases for these processes.

Non-sysadmin approved cron programs or any script that runs on a periodic basis without active user intervention that take excessive system resources. Crontabs, at jobs, and hibernating shell scripts (scripts that direct processes to "sleep" for peRosenetds, then go active again) are examples of this type of system abuse.

The renaming of processes as a way to avoid detection of abuse or as an attempt to conceal the true nature of the process from system administrator scrutiny will be considered an aggravating factor in assessing sanctions.

Only one dialup session at a time may be run from any one user name, except by prior special arrangement with the billing department. Remote login sessions (such as via telnet, rlogin or SSH) do not count against this dialup session limit.

WINGATE and similar programs that allow a single connection to service a LAN may not be used with Rosenet accounts. These programs create a tremendous security risk in untrained hands.

Sanctions for running abusive processes:

If a system administrator determines that a process or processes are abusive, the following actions will be taken:

1. The process or processes in question will be killed and logged to the abusive processes log
2. The system administrator will send the user a standard letter (which includes this policy) informing them of the process or processes killed and providing them a warning that future excessive processes will lead to more serious sanctions against them.
3. The billing office will receive a carbon copy of this letter to the offending user.
4. In addition, the software of the abusive process will have its ownership changed to root, removing it from the control of the user until the user responds to the letter.

If the user continues to run excessive processes, the user's account may be terminated without further warning.

SYSTEM SECURITY

Rosenet needs to protect its computer systems and network. Actions that jeopardize the system hurt all the users, and may subject anyone engaging in such actions to sanction. Such include, but are not limited to:

Any attempt to circumvent system security on any host, terminal server, network, or account (a.k.a. cracking). Furthermore, attempts to probe the security of other systems connected to Rosenet, including those of Rosenet customers, are strictly prohibited.

Attempting to interfere with service to any user, host or network (a.k.a. denial of service attacks) on Rosenet or any system connected to Rosenet.

Uploading viruses, trojans, worms, time bombs, or other programs designed to deny system service to other users.

Stealing passwords, impersonating another, use of bugs, backdoors, protocol failures, or other methods to trespass into non-public areas or take system-level privileges.

Theft of copyrighted, confidential, or proprietary files from the online system, to include but not limited to password files or mailing-list distribution lists.

Creating files that grant indiscriminate access to Rosenet servers (i.e. inappropriate .rhosts file).

Having inappropriate permissions (i.e. world writable) or files or directories that have special meaning on UNIX servers. Such files and directories include a home directory, files that are executed when a user logs in or out (.cshrc, .profile, .bashrc, .login, .logout, etc.), or WWW directories.

Rosenet reserves the right to conduct periodic scans of its servers to help ensure that our systems have not been attacked or compromised. All information gathered is used to make the system more secure and educate users about security issues, and will be held in confidence. If a security problem is found involving a user's files, a system administrator will make every effort to contact the user immediately. However, Rosenet will take steps to correct the problem immediately if either the system administrators feel there is imminent danger to our systems, or the user cannot be contacted.

COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES

Most of the Newsgroups have a tradition of being commercial-free. Respect this tradition. Many mailing lists have the same tradition.

MINORS AND PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

Anyone under 18 is required to have a guardian signature before they can have an account. Rosenet is not able to monitor all messages and file transfers on the system. As stated by the Voters Telecommunication Watch, the most effective method of getting comfortable with your child's online access is to guide them as a parent. No other human being except you is more responsible for what is and isn't appropriate for them. By learning to use the Internet with your child (either one of you can teach the other) you can instill in them the values that you want them to use when selecting material online. The respect built between you and your child will function when no one is around, and will survive software upgrades, eternally changing international law, and other unpredictable events.

ADDITIONAL POLICIES

1. Rosenet has the right to make any necessary additional policies or rules.
2. Rosenet endorses the Library Associations Statements (the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read Statement, and the Freedom to View Statement).
3. The ultimate editorial and publishing responsibility lies with the organization or individual providing information. The user is ultimately responsible for her or his actions in accessing the network services.
4. Rosenet affirms Freedom of Speech and shall always endeavor to foster the free flow of information protected by the First Amendment.
5. Rosenet has the right to set time limits on user's use of the system.
6. Rosenet shall make every effort to keep the system secure, but user should not assume that anything put on the system will remain private.
7. Rosenet cannot guarantee perfect data backup; we encourage users to have their own offline backups of any documents stored on Rosenet servers. Rosenet customers are responsible for managing their own directory space on the Rosenet system; they must remain within their space and file quotas and remove unwanted or downloaded messages and files promptly.
8. Don't use the Rosenet system to harm, harass, interfere, snoop, stalk, steal, or defame. Use the system in ways that show consideration and respect.
9. The greatest danger to the Rosenet system is that Rosenet might be held accountable for the wrongful actions of our users. Users need to accept responsibility for their own acts. This need is accomplished by the following paragraph to all users:
   
   "You agree that Rosenet will not be responsible to you for any indirect, consequential, special or punitive damages or losses you may incur in connection with the Rosenet system or any of the data or other materials transmitted through or residing on the Rosenet system, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damage or loss. In addition, you agree to defend and indemnify Rosenet and hold us harmless from and against any and all claims, proceedings, damages, injuries, liabilities, losses, costs and expenses (including reasonable attorneys fees) relating to any acts by you or materials or information transmitted by you in connection with the Rosenet system leading, wholly or partially, to claims against Rosenet or our system by other callers or third parties."

DISCIPLINE POLICY

Rosenet reserves the right to suspend or terminate a users's account at any time, without prior notice, for any violation of Rosenet's Appropriate Use Policy. Rosenet will generally attempt to work with users to resolve misunderstandings of appropriate use pRosenetr to taking stronger actions.

Referral to law enforcement or other third party: Referral to law enforcement or other third party would occur if there is clear evidence of serious illegal activity such as theft, conspiracy, or menacing. Rosenet will cooperate fully with any resulting investigation. Examples: Systematic and intentional distribution of valuable copyrighted information including software, conspiracy to commit a serious crime, etc.

Recovery of Costs: Rosenet reserves the right to bill abusers for costs incurred by the Rosenet staff as a direct consequence of their actions, in addition to the sanctions outlined above. Such costs that may be included include, but are not limited to:

$250 for each incident of sending unsolicited bulk email from the Rosenet system, without respect to the content of the email. An incident consists of each individual message in a bulk emailing.

Billing for system administrator time (at $195 per hour, 2 hours minimum) for all abusive processes activity which results in the actual loss of system time (launching of fork bombs, electronic access into non-public areas, attempts at viewing password or other security files)