Terms, Conditions and Acceptable Use

The term we, us, our, Ausics in this document refers to the service provider, that is, The Service that provides you with a type of account, or service.

The term you, your, user, end-user, client, member, host and virtualhosts in this document refers to the remote user, using The Service, for example: the account holder, or any person authorised on their behalf to access The Service, regardless of if monies are paid or not.

Throughout this document the term you applies to both members and hosts, ie: everyone.
The term members refers specifically to a local user, that is, one who uses an ausics.net or ausics.org Email, and a web address of members.ausics.net/username.
The term hosts and virtualhosts refers specifically to those using virtual hosting, that is, with their own domain name, or a sub-domain provided by The Service.

The term Minor for the purpose of this document is a person under the age of 18 years.
The term Adult is a person who is 18 years of age or over.
The term Adult content is content that should only be viewable by an adult, typically this is classifications above, but not including, MA-15.

The conditions outlined within are governed by the laws of the State of Queensland, Australia, and by use of The Service you agree to submit exclusively to the jurisdiction of the Courts of The State of Queensland, in The Commonwealth of Australia.

By use of The Service you agree to indemnify and keep indemnified us, our agents, representatives, and upstream service provider(s) for any and all losses, damages, liabilities, or proceedings by any person(s), companies or organisations.

By use of The Service you are agreeing to all terms and conditions contained herein.

Breaches may result in pending suspension, immediate suspension, or immediate termination, with, or without notice and liability.

If, by Act of Parliament, either Queensland or Federal, any point in these conditions are invalidated, then only that point becomes void with the remainder of these conditions remaining in full force.

1. Account

1. You must keep all contact and personal details for the account current at all times, if you move or change contact details supplied at registration time, you must notify us within 7 days of the changes.

2. You should check your primary Email account regularly as this is the only address we will use for administrative and account related information. If you forward your Administrative Emails to a third party service (for example but not limited to, Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, etc), you will be deemed to have received the message regardless of if you have or have not seen it.

3. You acknowledge that we reserve the right to mass Email all active Email accounts (for Web Hosts, this means you and all of your Email users) in very urgent public safety situations such as a Police Issued Child Abduction AMBER Alert.

4. You must at all times use a strong and secure password, one nobody else knows, and never written down.
   Do not use anything that some may associate with you, such as, but not limited to, person/animal names or aliases, dates of birth, addresses, or phone numbers. If you change your password use mixed upper and lowercase letters and numbers, also, a good idea to include a non alphanumeric characters, try using occasional number substitutions (for example: imlazereds could be changed to 1mL4z3reD%). Passwords must be at least eight (8) characters long, they may and we encourage, much longer, they should not be reused (identical to any password you use elsewhere).

5. You must not give out your login details to any third party.

6. You acknowledge that it is your responsibility to notify us immediately if you suspect unauthorised use of your account.

7. You acknowledge that in the event of Account Closure, your Web content may be kept from zero (0) to an infinite number of days given s5.3, and that your Emails may be kept for up to seven (7) days given s5.2

8. You acknowledge that upon confirmation that you wish to close your account, we will do so at our earliest, typically within 48 hours (excluding public holiday periods).

9. You acknowledge when your account is closed, your contact details remain in our databases for as long as required under law, or, for two (2) years, which ever is the greater. You will not however receive any correspondence from us. Please ensure you have downloaded all Emails and Web content prior to requesting an account closure, as once closed, all data on the Host and Mail Servers are deleted, although still subject to s5.2.

10. Hosts acknowledge that if you close an Email account, that data is deleted either immediately, or by the top of the hour. There is no backup of existing messages in this process, so please ensure you retrieve your users messages prior to deletion.

11. Hosts acknowledge we only accept requests for account changes or closures using your administrative contact address.
    Such requests will require SMS confirmation, so ensure all phone numbers are up to date at all times.

2. Services

1. You acknowledge that The Service is provided as is without warranty, guarantee or liability.
   We agree in best efforts to keep The Service available at all times, however this may not always be possible due to many factors including many outside of our control. Although we operate monitoring and alerting systems which should alert us to problems, you indemnify us from any losses, damages or liabilities, because of any service unavailability.
   • We maintain multiple geographically separated external DNS Servers.

2. You acknowledge that as a hobbyist service with no full time or paid staff, all support requests are processed via our integrated Email Helpdesk Ticketing System, typically within a day or two, but may take longer. This excludes Qld Public Holidays, and in particular, from Christmas eve week until two weeks after the start of the New Year, as well as Easter, where responses may not occur until after such periods.

3. Hosts acknowledge that since functionality and security is preferred over eye candy, we provide a basic management interface that allows you to administer your shared-host account, we do not provide commercial control panels (eg: directadmin, cpanel, plesk, etc) allowing us to maintain absolute control and security over our systems.

   Did you know that 990 out of every 1000 Webhosts hardly ever login to their control panel?
   They...

   • only really ever login with FTP to initially upload their webite and to back it up
   • don't need, nor use multiple FTP accounts
   • occasionally login with FTP to update their website if they can't upgrade from within their program
   • login to phpmyadmin to upload, setup, and backup their Databases
   • nearly always only login to their own front-end (eg: Wordpress or OpenCart etc) to manage their website
   • ocassionally login to add or delete Email users or Aliases as staff changes occur
   • of course always connect to Email
   • rarely login to check their Web Stats and Quotas
   • rarely login to portals to check or pay their Invoices as they are automatic and recurring (N/A with us)
   
   You can do all these things with us and without fuss (except paying invoices since we don't charge), we just don't see the need for over priced highly restrictive eye candy control panels.

   For the remaining very rare few who feel they need the pretty eye candy and features of a commercial control panel, then as a no frills service, our shared hosting services are likely not for you.

   The reasons for dislike of commercial control panels are many, some points are...

   • We dislike their design methods. It's no longer 1995.
   • They still put all your eggs in one basket not having separate Email and Web servers, some don't even have separate DNS servers, in any event, in case of problems, it ensures your wiped off the face of the planet, no website access, no Email access.
   • Some store passwords in clear plain text or decrypt-able formats. Passwords must be one way crypto hashes that are not human readable, and not decryptable. Should a server be compromised, you have no security.
   • Flat text files for authentication are inefficient, have a higher risk rate of corruption, and don't work with clustering.
   • Non technical people have reported the myriad of useless features often confuse and frustrate them.
   • Non standard requirements and changes they require to the underlying operating system reduce server security.
   • Add unnecessary complexity, which in itself introduces more possible points of failure, and in the event of problems, often longer trouble shooting, and recovery times.
   • We disagree with their requirement to use a very limited choice of Linux Operating System distributions, all of which we have less faith in, than the distribution we choose to use (Slackware - one of the earliest and oldest maintained Linux distributions in existence)
   • We disagree with their choice of server daemon software - we use the server daemon software's we do because they have excellent track records in security, performance, and capabilities, especially for expansion, clustering and complete service separation, we use physical separation, no SAN that holds everything, our way might be old school, but it is a method proved reliable.
   • We most certainly are not alone with our dislike of those control panels either.

4. You acknowledge that The Service uses Disk Quotas for Webspace Storage, Email Storage, and Data Transfers.
   • Hosts that find they are often exceeding their Data Transfer Quota very early on in their period, may request Quota Slicing.
     NOTE: Quota Slicing is only of use to high data transfer websites, it is disabled by default.
   • This means a period will be divided into 4 slices (4W/1W = 4).
   • For example, if your quota is 10G, each slice (week) is allowed 2.5G (10G/4=2.5G) data transfer limit.
   • Any excess is rolled-over, so if you only use 2G in the first week, the limit is recalculated (8G/3=2.666G) leaving you with 2.666G per week, and so on until all your quota is used up, meaning if you use 100MB in weeks one, two and three, then you will have 9.7G in the last week.

3. Legals

1. You acknowledge that you are responsible for the actions of all persons using The Service under your account regardless of if the actions were authorised or not.

2. You must not breach any standards, content requirements, or codes of conduct, that are set out by a relevant Federal authority or Internet industry body in Australia.

3. You must not use The Service in any way for any activities, or host content, that is in breach of the laws of the State of Queensland, or the Federal laws of the Commonwealth of Australia.

4. You must not posses, store, display, transmit, relay, link to, or reference, material that discriminates, in particular against a persons race, sex, sexual orientation, disability, or political beliefs.

5. You acknowledge your use of The Service must not be used for material that is deceptive, fraudulent, defamatory, obscene, offensive, malicious, or harmful.

6. You must not use The Service to bully, taunt, harass, demean, intimidate, threaten or affront, any person or persons.
   1. Bullying is completely unacceptable, and we have a zero tolerance policy, any use of The Service to partake in any form of bullying, will be regarded as a most severe breach resulting in account termination.

   2. Section 474.17 of the Australian Commonwealth Criminal Code makes it an offence for a person to use a carriage device to menace, harass, or cause offence to another person. (Penalty - 3 yrs imprisonment)

   3. Section 474.15 of the Australian Commonwealth Criminal Code makes it an offence for a person to use a carriage device to threaten to cause serious harm or kill. (Penalty - 7 to 10 yrs imprisonment respectively)

   4. Section 474.29A of the Australian Commonwealth Criminal Code makes it an offence for a person to use a carriage service to provide material which incites suicide. (Penalty - 1000 units)

   5. Section 474.29B of the Australian Commonwealth Criminal Code makes it an offence for a person to use a carriage device for possessing, controlling, producing, supplying or obtaining suicide related material for use through a carriage service. (Penalty - 1000 units)

   6. As of January 1 2023, one penalty unit is equal to Two Hundred and Seventy Five (275) Australian Dollars.

   7. The definition of Carriage Device is any form of public or private Telecommunication Device, including but not limited to Radio Frequency and Terrestrial Devices used in 3G, 4G, and newer designations, WiFi, RF, xDSL, Cable, Dialup, ISDN, Fibre, Ethernet, Landline, Mobile, SeaPhone, SatPhone, VoIP, FTTx services and newer technologies.

7. You must not use The Service for any form of attack (including, but not limited to ICMP/Viruses/Mail Bombing) on any person(s), machine(s) or network(s).

8. You must not use The Service to gain access to any system(s) or network(s) where you have no direct authority to do so, nor to alter, copy, move, delete, create, view or access in any method any data that you do not have direct authority to do so.

9. You must not use The Service to impersonate other persons, companies or organisations, nor may you suggest, hint, or imply, that you represent someone or some organisation that you do not.

10. You acknowledge we reserve the right to alter these terms at any time, with 30 days notice for major changes or new additions, or with no prior notice for clarification of existing conditions, cosmetic only changes will not be announced.

11. You acknowledge we reserve the right to immediately enforce additional conditions upon any Host or Member we deem is placing an unfair burden on The Service.

4. Content

1. You acknowledge you are responsible for any and all information, literature, software, works of art, or any other material or referenced links you make available via The Service.

2. You acknowledge that in distributing any material, you must not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others, and that the material is
   • Open Source, or
   • Shareware or Freeware, and there exists a licence that permits their re-distribution, or
   • You are the exclusive copyright holder, or an authorised distribution agent, of that material.

3. You must restrict access to Adult material.
   • Content that exceeds MA15+ in Australia must be protected by password or PIN, and
   • Have some form of age verification process, and
   • Not knowingly supply a password to a minor, and
   • Immediately revoke access if a minor is detected as accessing the content.
   • Optionally, you may also wish to make Ausics.Net aware of the situation in case of complaints.

4. You acknowledge that we perform anti-virus scanning of all data uploaded onto, or stored on our systems, and any material that fails a check will be automatically and without prior warning, deleted.

5. You acknowledge that although we do not as a rule, we reserve the right to examine, restrict access to, or if legally required, delete any material on our servers.

6. You must ensure that any scripts, code, or software you place on The Service, are secure and not exploitable.

7. You acknowledge we reserve the right to issue a "fix immediately" notice to anyone found running insecure versions of software regardless of it having been exploited yet or not - prevention is far less painful than dealing with the aftermath of a hack.
   In the event of a serious situation, such as hacked site, we reserve the right to immediately suspend the site, and if necessary, delete any dangerous material.

8. You must not run any form of IRC related service including Scripts, Bouncers, Bots, or any other related material that relates to the operation of an IRC server or client, relay, or proxy.
   This prohibition excludes IRC Channel related Forums and Web Sites, which are permitted).

9. You must not run any form of proxy or related scripts/programs.

10. You must not use The Service to send Unsolicited Commercial or Bulk Email - AKA spam. Any mailing lists, mailouts, advertising, promotional marketing, or newsletters of any kind, must be wholly subscriber confirmed opt-in, you must obtain the subscribers express and direct permission prior to adding them to any mailout list. You must not use a default checked box on any sign-up forms, and you must not host a web-form of any kind where you have a notify a friend type option.
    • We have a ZERO tolerance on spamming, this is a material breach of usage terms and grounds for instant termination of service, the Australian Spam Act also provides for substantial penalties.
    • Organisations that are exempt under Australian Spam Act of 2003 (rev) are not afforded the protections or privileges in relation to use of The Service, the exemption only means the ACMA can not prosecute you, it does not mean you are not spamming.
    • If the recipient did not ask for, or give you their express authority to include them in such mailouts, then including them is unsolicited, and spamming.

11. Hosts acknowledge we do not, and will not, provide catch all Email addresses to prevent spam and abuse.

12. Member websites (members.ausics.net/username) should not be used for commercial purposes.
    However, you may use your private Email for commercial purposes.

5. Misc

1. You must posses a current backup of your entire Website and Emails at all times.

2. You acknowledge that for the sole purpose of Network Disaster Recovery, we maintain a nightly backup of Members and Hosts data, including Emails that are on our servers at that precise point in time. These are kept only on a rolling seven (7) day basis.
   A fee may apply to restore data deleted because of a user related error.

3. You acknowledge that with the exception of Email, due to privacy obligations and their exclusive storage location, that in our Systems backups, none, some, or all of your data, may, or may not be, included in one or more, of our Systems backup archives.
   Systems backups (Server Configs etc), may be kept for an indefinite period.

4. You acknowledge we do not archive or store copies of Emails that pass through our network. (see s5.2)

5. Members using The Service for Internet activities accept we use special DNS lists (most of which are from reputable anti-malware services) that allow us to block advert sites and completely fail access to certain dangerous websites, we are against Internet censorship, especially by governments, however the world we live in today includes seasoned fraudsters and other criminal organisations, as well as extremists who publish harmful material that the average person should not be subjected to. We are also obligated to block sites if requested to do so by select Australian Law Enforcement agencies
   
   

6. Members using some browsers may soon experience issues whilst using our VPN service, certain Internet companies, such as, but not limited to, Cloudfare and Google, are attempting to centralise the DNS of the Internet via browsers for DNS over HTTP, you may need to contact your browser provider for instructions on how to disable those look-ups should all of your browsing fail.
   
   The reason we run DNS Safe lists and RPZ's is to protect you and The Service from virus's malware and phishing/fraud material, something we can not do unless we outright control your local DNS whilst on our service, those DoH servers also log and use your DNS queries anyway, where as we do not, and contrary to a lot of bad information being spread, Australian laws do not require us to log your DNS requests.
   Centralising the Internet is for obvious reasons, very, very dangerous, and must be avoided at any, and all cost.

6. Complaints

• As The Internet is globally accessible, you should consider that laws will differ between countries.
  What you may perceive as unlawful, may not be in Australia.
  You are generally subject to the laws of the land where the content is physically hosted and if different, also the laws of countries where your business or organisation is registered to trade, in Ausics's case, that's solely in the State of Queensland, Australia.

• Court Orders, Police User-Info Requests, or Take Down Requests must be actionable in the State of Queensland, Australia.

• International Court Orders and Information Requests will be declined, these need to be directed to The Australian Federal Police, who will determine if such requests are valid under Australian Law, or any International agreements, and if so, The Australian Federal Police will make the requests on your behalf.

• This protects us from breaches of the Privacy Act, and Civil actions for Wrongful doings.

• If your complaint is of a general abuse or spam related nature, please provide as much detailed information as possible including dates, times, and copies of full Email or Usenet Headers.

• Copyright Infringement -
  • In Australia, Copyright infringement is a Civil wrong, and not a Criminal wrong.
  • As such, Rights Holders can directly lodge a Cease and Desist complaint with us against a Host or Member for violation of Copyright or Intellectual Property.
  • It is still important to note that no personal or identifying information of any alleged infringers will be released without an order from the Federal Court of Australia.
  • Infringement allegations will be forwarded on to the Host or Member concerned by Ausics.Net. They may or may not choose to respond to you.
  • A reasonable amount of time (14 days) must be allowed for Ausics.Net (with un-manned helpdesk) to action your allegations, and also for the Host or Member concerned to receive your allegations, and take whatever action they need to (ie: delete or dispute).
    You must also accept that these time frames will be much greater over established holiday periods such as Easter and Christmas-New Years periods.
  • If the Host or Member fails to delete or dispute, and is continuing after fourteen (14) days to infringe the named copyright material, we will then accept a Second Notice where Ausics.Net will then step in and discuss the matter with the Host or Member concerned directly, mediating if necessary between the two parties.
  • Complaints must also include a declaration that you are the legal Rights Holder or legally Authorised Agent of such material, it must come from a contactable human, it must include that persons full name, email address, business hours phone and extension numbers - it must not be from a bot.

• All Complaints must be very detailed with clear evidence to support any allegations.

• Complaints should be submitted via our contact form.