Hosting Terms and Conditions

Hosting Terms and Conditions

Following are additional terms and conditions governing hosting services provided for any VisitorCamp.com package that include hosting, current as of December 17, 2008.  By signing a work order for any VisitorCamp.com package, you hereby agree to be bound by the following terms and conditions for your hosting.

1. Term and termination - your hosting service begins and ends when you initiate or terminate an associated VisitorCamp.com package, and supplied bandwidth, hardware and other services shall be as specified in the package work order.  Termination rights for you or Polar Design are shall be as specified in the package Terms and Conditions.  Additionally, you understand that agree that the services defined in your package include limited bandwidth, hard drie space and other services which, if exceeded, will result in automatic overage charges that Polar Design may bill you on the credit card you provide for your account.

2. Payment and Service - You agree and understand that provision of your hosting service is subject to timely payment for your VistorCamp.com package and that provision of hosting may be terminated for any payments that are thirty (30) days past due.

3. IP Addresses - You will be hosted on an IP address shared with other clients that can change at any time. 

4. User Content and Conduct - You agree to abide by the Acceptable Use Policy speciifed in Appendix B below.

5. Performance Guarantee - in the event of disruptions to your hosting service, you are entitled to credits as specified in Appendix A below.  This is your sole recourse for hosting service disruptions and your hosting service warranty is otherwise subject to the limitations set forth in the Package Terms and Conditions.

6. Additional Support - No additional development, design or support services are included as part of the hosting service.  Any service requests that exceed supplied hosting or the package services will be billed at Polar Design's standard hourly rates for custom design or development.

7. Training - You will be provided with one training session upon start of your hosting service.  Additional training sessions will be billed per Polar Design's standard hourly rates for training.

8. Client's Duties - You agree to document and promptly report any errors that occur during use of the hosting and related services provided to you.  You will ensure that your staff participate in training in use of the hosting services or are properly trained by you.

9. Force Majeur - Neither you or Polar Design will be help responsible for non-performance under this agreement due to causes beyond reasonable control, including communications outages, fire, flood, or acts of God.

10.   Polar Design's liability (including, for purposes of this paragraph only, any of it employees, agents, or representatives), to you (either directly or as a third party defendant in any action or proceeding) for any claim arising out of or relating to this Agreement or Service Orders or the provision of any Services under Service Orders (including, without limitation maintenance and support) shall be limited to the amount of fees paid by Client to Polar Design under this Agreement. 

Polar Design shall take suitable precautions to protect the Client's data from loss, corruption, or access of said data by unauthorized third parties, as well as precautions to ensure availability of the Client's web site as delivered by Polar Design' Hardware and Software.  In no event shall Polar Design be liable for any loss of data, loss of profits, cost of cover, or any other special, incidental, consequential, indirect or punitive damages, however caused and regardless of theory of liability if Polar Design shall have observed its standard precautions.  This limitation will apply even if Polar Design has been advised of, or is aware of, the possibility of such damages.

Polar Design may provide as part of Services under a Service order intrusion detection, server monitoring and other security services, but Polar Design is not responsible and will not be held liable, for the consequences of unauthorized access or modifications to the client's deployed applications where the cause was due to the client's deployed software and not the Software, Hardware and Services provided by Polar Design to the client.  The aforementioned exclusion shall exist even in the case of failure of Polar Design's Software, Hardware or Services. 

Client further agrees to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Polar Design for any claims or liabilities arising due to damages or claims by third parties as a result of failures, insufficient security, or malfunctioning features in Client-provided and deployed software.

Polar Design shall not be liable for failure or delay in performing its obligations hereunder if such failure or delay is due to circumstances beyond its reasonable control, including, without limitation, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, sabotage, embargo, fire, flood, strike or other labor disturbance, interruption of or delay in transportation, unavailability of interruption or delay in Polar Design shall make all reasonable efforts to accelerate its performance once the aforementioned causes for the delay cease.

11. Governing Law and Forum - This Agreement shall be governed and interpreted according to the internal laws of the State of Massachusetts, excluding choice of law provisions, and the parties agree that the courts therein shall have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes related to or governed by this agreement.  In connection with all actions in which Polar Design is awarded amounts due from Client, Polar Design shall be awarded (either in that action or by way of a separate action) its costs and expenses of litigation (including reasonable attorneys' fees), through trial and appeal.

Appendix A: Service Guarantee

Current as of July 11, 2005

Polar Design guarantees uptime of 99.9% for the hosting Hardware, Software, and Service provisioned under this agreement and any Service Orders.

If the Hardware, Software or Services should become inaccessible to as a result of failure of said Hardware, Software or Services for a period of more than one (1) cumulative hour, and if such failure shall arise as a result of circumstances within POLAR DESIGN's control, then POLAR DESIGN shall credit the portion of time that such Hardware, Software or Services shall have become inaccessible.

POLAR DESIGN shall not be liable for downtime that arises a result of failures in Software, including scripts, applications and databases provided by third parties, or provided by POLAR DESIGN and not a part of Service Orders executed by the Client for hosting Hardware, Software, and Services.  Further, POLAR DESIGN shall not be held liable for downtown arising due to general Internet failures, events beyond POLAR DESIGN's control, force majeur, failures in third party networks or systems (e.g., Internic's IP addressing system), or the actions of third parties.

Nothing in this Service Guarantee shall be construed to offer any additional guarantees or refunds, financial or otherwise, nor shall POLAR DESIGN be held liable for loss of data, lost profits, lost customers, cost of cover, or any other special, incidental, consequential, indirect or punitive damages, however caused and regardless of theory of liability.  This limitation will apply even if POLAR DESIGN has been advised of, or is aware of, the possibility of such damages.

Client must document and present evidence of said downtime within thirty (30) days of its occurrence to be eligible for credit.

Any staging or development servers will be exempted from this guarantee, however the Client can expect reasonable uptime on said server.  Therefore, POLAR DESIGN will provide a credit should the development server experience downtime of 48 consecutive hours, weekends, and holidays excepted.

Appendix B: Acceptable Use Policy

Current as of June 3, 2005

This Acceptable Use Policy specifies certain actions prohibited by POLAR DESIGN for users of the Hardware, Software, and Services provided by POLAR DESIGN.  POLAR DESIGN reserves the right to modify this Policy at any time to stay in compliance with any laws, regulations, and security requirements. By using POLAR DESIGN services, any customer, employee, or third party unconditionally accepts the terms of this policy.

ILLEGAL USE

POLAR DESIGN'S Hardware, Software, and Services may be used only for lawful purposes. Transmission, distribution, or storage of any material in violation of any applicable law or regulation coming to or from any unauthorized network or system is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property rights used without proper authorization; government and military data protected by law and national security; university and academic data protected by public policy; and material that, in POLAR DESIGN'S sole discretion, is obscene, defamatory, constitutes an illegal threat, facilitates identity theft or other fraud, or POLAR DESIGN Services or any other network is strictly prohibited.

NETWORK AND MACHINE RESOURCES

POLAR DESIGN reserves the right to monitor and allocate network and machine resources. Any IP addresses or CGI addresses shall be allocated in a manner that remains with the best interests of POLAR DESIGN's Hardware, Software, Services, their proper functioning and security.  POLAR DESIGN in its sole discretion and upon reasonable notice to customer, reserves the right to discontinue any hosting account and/or any script which causes excessive server load and/or uses excessive server and network resources.

To protect Internet, network, and machine resources on behalf of the entire POLAR DESIGN customer base, no individual customer may do the following:

1.  Offer adult content of any kind, as determined in POLAR DESIGN's sole discretion.

2.  Utilize CGI/PERL chat, JAVA chat, or any other chat scripts in a manner that adversely affects the operations or performance of other POLAR DESIGN customers, or of the POLAR DESIGN system(s) or network(s).  The adverse effect of such use shall be determined by POLAR DESIGN in its sole discretion.

3. Use more than 1 Mbps throughput during peak network hours (9AM to 6PM ET). The Client agrees that in the event of such usage, it will agree to negotiate a new Service Agreement with Polar Design to cover such usage based on Polar Design's standard hosting fees or else permit Polar Design to terminate this agree "with cause", providing the Client 60 days written or e-mail notice of such termination.

Moreover, in a shared hosting environment, for the same reasons indicated above, no individual customer may do the following:  (NOTE:  The restrictions listed immediately below do NOT apply to collocation plans, server appliance plans, I-MHIP plans, or any other dedicated server offerings.)

1.  Use their web site to store web pages, files, or data for other IP addresses or domain names, or as a repository for files, data, or "Warez group" download transfer.

2.  Use their web site for data transfer from any database server, or for streaming audio and/or video downloads; or use their web site as a storage area for files that are not linked to the customer's web pages hosted on the same web site on POLAR DESIGN's Hardware.

POLAR DESIGN may immediately suspend service without prior notice to any web site that violates these rules. In the event of any dispute regarding these rules, POLAR DESIGN may determine violations of these rules in its sole discretion.

Customers utilizing bandwidth in excess of plan limitations, or in violation of these rules, will owe POLAR DESIGN compensation therefore at the applicable rate for excess bandwidth.

SYSTEM AND NETWORK SECURITY

Violations of system or network security are prohibited, and may result in criminal and civil liability. POLAR DESIGN will investigate incidents involving such violations and may involve and cooperate with law enforcement authorities if a criminal violation is suspected. POLAR DESIGN respects the privacy of customer data and vigilantly protects that data and ALL customers who host with POLAR DESIGN. If any violation of the law or this AUP is suspected, POLAR DESIGN reserves the right to investigate. Use of the POLAR DESIGN network constitutes consent to monitoring. Examples of unlawful acts, system, or network security violations include, without limitation, the following: Unauthorized access to or use of data, systems or networks, including any attempt to probe, damage, scan or test the vulnerability of a system or network or to breach security or authentication measures without express authorization of the owner of the system or network. Unauthorized monitoring of data or traffic on any network or system without express authorization of the owner of the system or network. Interference with service to any user, host or network including, without limitation, mailbombing, flooding, deliberate attempts to overload a system and broadcast attacks. Unauthorized access to any data, system, or network from an unauthorized system or network for any purpose which is not lawful or which is intended to do harm. Forging of any TCP-IP packet header or any part of the header information in an email or a newsgroup posting. Electronic forging of any kind to include but not limited to IP addresses, domains, business names, etc.

EMAIL

Sending unsolicited email messages, including, without limitation, unwanted advertising and informational announcements, is explicitly prohibited, whether sent in bulk or not, and whether commercial in nature or not. The use of POLAR DESIGN resources to sell or enable the sale of "bulk" and/or "stealth" email software (to include so-called "spoof" software) is strictly forbidden. The use of POLAR DESIGN resources to sell or enable the sale of software designed to "harvest" email addresses is also categorically prohibited. A user shall not use another site's mail server to relay mail without the express permission of the site owner. Legitimate mailing lists and subscriber lists are acceptable. Otherwise, it is spam.