The following Terms of Service are in place to ensure that each and every customer is treated equally and fairly, and to maintain a high level of quality service for everyone.

By requesting services from Darkscape Internet Services, Inc. (Darkscape), you agree to act in a responsible manner. You also understand that your continued use of service constitutes an agreement to these and all subsequent terms and conditions.

Darkscape reserves the right to modify, update, change or revise the terms at it's sole discretion without notice. Changes become effective upon their posting. Continued use of service constitutes acceptance of such change.

Using Darkscape servers to perform a Denial of Service attack is prohibited, and will result in immediate removal from the system with NO refund. Any customer who causes Darkscape to be the recipient of a DoS attack will be removed without refund.

Spamming is prohibited, there is ZERO TOLERANCE. Any user who conducts this type of activity targeting accounts on our servers, or from our servers will be immediately removed with NO refund. This includes placing your ISP in jeopardy just to run your own SPAM program from your home computer, mass emailing using our services or your ISPs services, any unsolicited email, commercial advertisements in email, and newsgroup spamming. There is a $100 processing fee for each spam message sent. Your account is also subject to being reviewed for immediate termination and will incur a $250 Administrative Fee. A second violation will result in an Administrative Fee of $500 and immediate termination of your account. Users who violate this policy agree that in addition to these Administrative penalties, they will pay Research Fees not to exceed $175 per hour that Darkscape personnel must spend to investigate the matter. PLEASE, DO NOT SPAM from your account.

Failure to follow or attempt to stretch rules will result in account suspension and ultimately removal. Illegal, pirated material, copyrighted mp3s, mpegs, or links to such material of which the account holder is not the author or legal owner of, warez, hacking, cracking, are not allowed any Darkscape server.

Your monthly service fee is billed and due at the start of service. Darkscape will maintain your billing cycle as close to your sign up date as possible. This mostly affects those signing up after the 28th, or 30th. For example, if you signed up on the 31st, you would be billed on the 30th of any month not having 31 days, and on the 28th of February. Billing is based on 4.333 weeks per month.

An electronic notice will be sent to your contact email address at the start of your billing cycle. It will let you know if you have any amount due, and if it has been paid by an assigned credit card or if the assigned credit card has been declined. By default, payments must be made manually each month by logging in to the Control Panel. Credit cards may be stored for automatic payments in the Billing section of the Control Panel, or by filling out and faxing the authorization form to us. Credit cards declined for any reason may be subject to a $0.50 declination fee and have all subsequent attempts to use the card with Darkscape permanently denied.

If you believe you have been charged for services incorrectly, notify billing@darkscape.net within 60 days of the charge and let us know the details of your claim. We believe in fair billing practices and will correct any error on our part without hesitation. If the amount is substantial, we will credit the amount to your card and make a separate charge for the correct amount, otherwise it will count as prepayment for future service. If you dispute a charge to your credit card issuer that in Darkscape's sole discretion is a valid charge under the provisions of the Terms of Service and/or Acceptable Use, you agree to pay Darkscape an Administrative Fee of not less than $50 and not more than $150.

We accept MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover Card, and PayPal. We accept Checks only for quarterly service payments or more. Make sure that your account name or number is written in the memo field or it will either slow down processing of your payment, or require us to shred the check. Please send checks to the lockbox address listed on our contact page. Our PayPal address is paypal@darkscape.net. Payments made using PayPal usually post to your account effective within 48 hours. Thank you! No other forms of payment are accepted.

Payments made to Darkscape are non-refundable. Late accounts will be suspended immediately, it is important to make your payments before your due date and the next billing cycle. For accounts that have applied for credit, finance charges will be applied at the beginning of the billing cycle for the previous balance. Once the credit limit has been reached, the account will be immediately suspended. Credit accounts administratively closed are subject to $50 reactivation fee, between $50 and $150 administrative fee resulting from collections processing. If you desire to cancel your account, please follow the proper procedure to do this as outlined in these Terms of Service.

If a charge back is received that includes the registration of one or more domain names, Darkscape has the right to take control of the domain or domains that was paid for by the disputed charge. Darkscape will change the domain account information as needed to take control of the domain or set of domains. The user is not guaranteed to be contacted in the event that a chargeback is received.

Darkscape may temporarily deny service or terminate this Agreement upon your failure to pay charges when due. Such termination or denial will not relieve you of the responsibility for the payment of all accrued charges, plus reasonable interest and any collection fees.

Darkscape supports those that support our communities. We welcome organizations that promote welfare in our communities. We feel that it is very important that such organizations be well connected to and have a presence on the Internet.

Starting in February 2001, certain Non-profit and Not-for-profit organizations using Darkscape will receive a 20% discount on services.

To qualify for the discount the organization must:

1. Be a registered non-profit or not-for-profit organization as defined by the IRS, or equivalent. Proof (federal tax forms) must be provided.

2. The web content cannot have commercial material, other than trivial amounts for fund raising. The web site may be monitored and excessive commercial content will disqualify the account for this discount.

3. The web content cannot include offensive or adult/sexual material.

Shell access to the web server is only to aid in the development of websites, scripting, and file management. It will pay off to familiarize yourself with using SSH, which is encrypted telnet session. PUTTY is a fairly popular secure shell client which is available from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html and our local copy http://www.darkscape.net/files/putty.exe.

Background processes, password cracking, port scanning, IRC activity, and other related activity is prohibited. Users in violation of this policy will have their accounts revoked without refund. A refund is not given unless it is a special circumstance such as downtime. Downtime is exclusive of our maintenance window from 10PM to 5AM EST.

Darkscape does full backups of each account on the system so that it may be downloaded from the Control Panel. However, it is ultimately your responsibility to keep complete backups. Darkscape does not claim responsibility for any lost files, information, or data, nor does it provide any file retrieval services.

Our dialup connections are not dedicated connections. A dialup account is an account that can be used by a single user for an unlimited length of time. This means you can log in and stay logged in for several hours, as long as you are actively using your computer to access the internet.

You may not run an unattended or automated process that keeps the line open while you are not in front of the computer. You can not run a web server, mail server, or any other kind of server, nor can you run an automatic mail checker for the sole purpose of keeping the line open.

You are not permitted to share your login and password with any other user or non-user, except for members of the immediate family living under the same roof. The use of proxy servers or other means of sharing a single modem connection throughout an office or home are prohibited on dialup accounts.

If two or more users are connected at the same time using the same login, further logins by that user will be prohibited.

Darkscape disclaims any responsibility for damages resulting from lack of connectivity. We also disclaim any responsibility for any information you may receive over the internet. We provide connectivity to the internet, which is a vast collection of networked computers all over the world. Some of these computers may contain material that is illegal or offensive in a variety of ways. You are solely responsible for what you view and what you do with that information. You are also solely responsible to monitor others, including children, who may have access to your computer; and to control what material they can access.

You are solely responsible to determine whether an access number is local. Darkscape is not responsible for any telephone charges incurred in accessing our network. You can determine if a number is local by looking in the front of your phone book or by calling your operator and asking for a rate check.

To limit abuse schemes, accounts that have not remained open and in good standing for 90 days will have promotional privileges and services revoked and all material will become property of Darkscape. Alternatively promotional items may be billed and paid in full immediately upon account termination. This applies primarily during periods of Free Domain Registration activities.

Darkscape wishes to emphasize that in agreeing to the Darkscape Acceptable Use and Terms of Service, you indemnify Darkscape for any violation of the Acceptable Use and Terms of Service that results in loss to Darkscape or the bringing of any claim against Darkscape by any third-party. This means that if Darkscape is sued because of a customer's or a customer of a customer's activity, the customer will pay any damages awarded against Darkscape, plus all costs and attorney's fees.

In order to cancel hosting service with Darkscape, log in to the Control Panel (https://cp.darkscape.net) and enter the HelpDesk screen. Near the bottom you will find a link which will take you to the Terminate Service area. Please give us a brief message about why you are ending your relationship with us, so that we may make our service better for our existing and future customers. Please let us know what we did right, and what we can improve on. Thank you!

Accounts are not closed until proactively closed via the account control panel. This is especially important if you have elected for recurring billing. You will be removed from the billing cycle immediately after you submit your termination request. You will be logged out of the control panel and receive a confirmation email indicating your account has been successfully closed. Please retain this email for your records.

Please note that any and all chargebacks are referred to an outside collection agency. The amount of the chargeback plus processing and administrative fees will apply.