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Acceptable Use Policy for Email
This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) covers the receiving and sending of email to and from any machine or user that exists on the Beebware internet domains.
Revision 1.02 - 16th August 1998
Revision 1.03 - 4th December 1998
Revision 1.04 - 1th August 2000

1. Introduction

Exchanging email with other Internet users is generally a matter of common sense and courtesy to others.
The majority of Internet users are able to use their own common sense of what is appropriate to guide their behaviour. From time to time however, email of unwelcome types (collectively known, along with other unwelcome activity, as NET ABUSE) is received.
It is not always obvious whether such mail is innocent, inadvertent, or intentional, however, certain activities will result in action being taken by Beebware International as described in Section 4 of this document.
Beebware International provides email services as part of its Internet accessibility scheme. Beebware International reserves the right to change this Acceptable Use Policy for email services at their sole discretion and without prior notice. Any decision made by Beebware International in relation to this service shall be final on all matters.

2. Definitions

For the purpose of this document, the following definitions will have affect:
"our domains" and "Beebware domains"
will mean the internet domains registered for use by Beebware International, these namely being beebware.com, beebware.co.uk and beebware.demon.co.uk.
"we" and "Beebware"
shall mean Beebware International, contactable via our contact page

3. What Constitutes NET ABUSE?

NET ABUSE is an abuse of Internet facilities and not necessarily abuse on the Internet. To qualify as NET ABUSE, an act must interfere with the net-use of an individual or group of individuals in some specific way. NET ABUSE also includes activities that are illegal or dishonest.
Under the terms of this AUP, NET ABUSE includes, but is not limited to, the following:
Chain Letters and Ponzi Pyramid-Selling Schemes
Such messages work (or rather, don't work) in much the same way as their paper-based cousins. The most common example of this in email is MAKE-MONEY-FAST. In addition to being a waste of resources, such messages are illegal in most countries.
"Illegal" Internet addresses
This includes uniform resource locators (URLs) which do not confirm to the 'internet conventions' as stated in the various RFCs. In particular this applies to citing domain IP addresses as a single number as opposed to the standard 'dotted quad' format.
Sending to un-authorized addresses
This means sending mail to either non-existent addresses, 'expired' addresses (i.e. those which have not been used for outgoing mail for more than thirty days), addresses which have been set up for a specific purpose (which the message sent to does not confirm to the purpose), addresses which have been allocated to receive mail from another internet domain, or any other un-authorised address
Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE)
Unsolicited Commercial Email is advertising material received by email without the recipient either requesting such information or otherwise expressing an interest in the material advertised.
Since many Internet users use a dial-up connection and pay for their online time, it costs them money to receive email. Receipt of unsolicited commercial advertising therefore costs them money and is particularly unwelcome.
It should be noted that a user has not expressed an interested by the mere act of posting a news article in any particular newsgroup or by posting their details on a world-wide-web site, unless of course they have made a specific request for information to be emailed to them.
Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE)
Similar to the above UCE but not attempting to sell anything. Its sole purpose is usually to annoy. The definition of 'bulk' for this term does not necessarily mean that the email has been addressed to more than one receipient, but that there is sufficient information that the mail was destined to be received by a single person.
Forged headers and/or Addresses
Forging headers or messages means sending mail such that its origin appears to be another user or machine, or a non-existent machine or user.
It is also forgery to arrange for any replies to the mail to be sent to some other user or machine.
However, in either case, if prior permission has been granted to you by the other user or the administrators of the other machine, then there is no problem, and of course 'null' reverse paths can be used as defined in the relevant RFCs.
Mail Bombing
Mail bombing is the sending of multiple emails, or one large email, with the sole intent of annoying and/or seeking revenge on a fellow Internet user. It is wasteful of shared Internet resource as well as serving no value to the recipient.
Due to the time taken to download it, sending long emails to sites without prior agreement can amount to denial of service, or access to email at the receiving site. Note that if binary attachments are added to mail this may increase the size considerably. If prior arrangement has not been made, the mail will be extremely unwelcome. The definition of 'long emails' for this term will mean any email longer than fifty kilobytes (six thousand and two hundred bytes).
Denial of Service attacks
Denial of Service is any activity designed to prevent a specific host on the Internet making full and effective use of their facilities. This includes, but is not limited to:
  • Mail bombing an address in such a way to make their Internet access impossible, difficult, or costly.
  • Opening an excessive number of mail connections to the same host.
  • Intentionally sending email designed to damage to receiver's systems when interpreted; for example, sending malicious programs or viruses attached to an email.
  • Using a smart-host or SMTP relay without authorization to do so.
Mailing List Subscriptions
Subscribing anyone, other than yourself or anybody who has allowed you to subscribe them to, a mail list or similar service without their prior permission.
Sending mail from a mailing list to somebody who has either:
  • not requested to be a member of the mailing list (this differs from requesting not to be added to the list).
  • requested removal from the mailing list more than 48 hours ago.
Illegal Content
Sending via email any item which is illegal to send or possess. This includes material which is prohibited under the various United Kingdom Acts of Parliament dealing with material sent over a public telecommunications network, notably the telephone system. The Acts passed by the European Courts also cover this subject in varying degrees. Various other governmental measures may cover the email depending on its source, destination and the path it took over the Internet. The Courts of the various countries of which the email passed through may precede at any point.
If the mail was sent to, from, or via any machine based within United States Territory the term unlawful material therefore includes, but is not limited to, copyrighted material, material legally judged to be threatening, obscene, in violation of the Communications Decency Act or any other section of the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, or material protected by trade secret.
Breach of Copyright or Intellectual Property
It is a breach of copyright to send copyrighted material or Intellectual Property via email unless you have permission to do so. Material that could be classed as being in the 'public domain' will not be accepted as such unless a measurable attempt has been made to contact the possible copyright holder, unless the copyright has expired on the material.

4. What Beebware International will do?

Serious NET ABUSE towards Beebware International will result in any or all of the following action:
  • The senders upstream provider informed by the breach of our acceptable use policy.
  • A charge being made to the sender or their upstream provider for a 'clean-up' fee of two hundred pounds sterling. This fee excludes any solicitors, lawyers, bank charges or any other miscellaneous fees that may be incurred. The fee will help cover the cost of the storage space, download time, administrative time and time taken to remove the mail from our system.
  • A 'net-block' may be placed on the sender or the sender's upstream provider blocking them from sending mail to or from the Beebware domains.
  • The sender, the senders upstream provider and all communications between them and Beebware International may be made public on various newsgroups and/or mailing lists which exist for the sole purpose of reporting this sort of incident.
  • All communications between the sender, the sender's ISP and Beebware International may be made public by Beebware International if deemed necessary for any or all of the following reasons:
    • To locate the precise origin of the message
    • To acquire a physical address for an invoice for the clean-up fee to be sent
    • To "name and shame"
    • To list the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses on various databases for the express purpose of informing others of the source, sender and relayer of the messages
  • Other action may be taken as deemed necessary by Beebware International.
Beebware International reserves their rights not to do any of the following:
  • Manually un-subscribe any user from mailing lists the user did not ask to be placed on
  • Contact the sender directly instead of going to their upstream provider
  • Reveal if the destination user does exist or if the mail was intended to a non-existent user
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