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TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF REGISTRATION WITH THE INTERNET GROUP LIMITED Our Services to You Thank you for becoming a registered subscriber to The Internet Group for Internet access services. Some of the services are subject to separate terms and conditions. We can refuse to give you a subscription to any service without giving a reason for such refusal. Business and Domestic Use These terms and conditions apply to both business and private use of our services. If you are acquiring our services for the purposes of a business (as defined in the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993) then the Act applies and nothing in these terms and conditions limits your rights under it. If you use our flat rate service as a "leased line" or permanent connection (whether or not for business purposes) we will suspend or close your account because this use creates an undue load on our system resources. What we Provide to You We agree to provide Internet access to you through our host computers but only on the following basis We will provide you with an identification code to enable access to our service. We will make genuine and commercially reasonable efforts to make the services you have subscribed for available to you 24 hours a day (other than on a permanent connection basis) and, if the system malfunctions, to restore those services as soon as reasonably possible. But if in spite of those efforts, we cannot provide or restore the service (even if the failure is our fault) we are not liable to you. We explain what this means in the section entitled "Limits on our Liability". The reasons for these limits on our service levels are because: We do not own or control all the facilities and communication lines necessary for access, and therefore, we cannot guarantee that the service will be uninterrupted or error free. Our services may be used by you for purposes we do not know about and have no control over. Your Obligation to Pay Us In return for access to our service, you agree to pay the specified subscription and other charges (as notified on the IHUG web pages). In particular, you agree as follows: You will be billed in the first 5 days of each month, payment due on the 20th day of that month following the date of invoice. If the account is not paid within 10 days of the due date you will be charged a fee equivalent to 15% of the unpaid portion of your account. You also agree to pay interest charges on overdue accounts and our reasonable costs incurred in recovering outstanding amounts from you including debt collection and legal fees. If your account is unpaid for a period of 3 months it will automatically be closed and your details referred to our debt collection agency or credit reference agency without notice to you. Where total debt collection agency costs, legal and other costs arising from collection of any amount owing by you exceed the debt collection fee charged, you agree that our debt collection agent is also entitled to recover those additional costs from you. You agree to give us not less than 30 days written notice that your account is not longer required. Until we receive this notice your are responsible for anything done with the services to which you have subscribed. Any charges incurred through the use of those services are payable by you whether you authorised them or not. For means of giving us notice see "Communications and Notices". Refunds Our refund policy is as follows: You are entitled to a full refund of all money that you have paid if you make a request for refund within 10 days of becoming registered, return the Manual and Software that you have been issued with and your account usage does not exceed 60 minutes. We will give you a refund when you close an account only if it has a credit balance of $10.00 or more. However, if you subscribe under advertised fixed term special deals you are not entitled to a cash refund if you cancel before the end of the fixed subscription period. At our discretion, if we consider that you have received poor service from us we may provide a credit to you. If you subsequently close your account, that credit will not be refunded to you. If an account is closed any credit balance not eligible for refunding will not be carried over upon the reopening of an account with us. Your Use of our Services We provide a passive interconnection service. We do not own or control the various sites or offerings available through the Internet or the facilities and information line through which access is provided. In using our services you agree to the following: You will maintain the security of your accounts and password. You agree to change your password when requested to do so by us. As we do not own or control all of the various facilities and communication lines through which access may be provided to you, we are not responsible for security. You agree not to use the service to breach anyone else's rights or to break the law. By way of example only, this means, without the owner's clear permission, using our services to download or transfer any copyright programs, files, picture, trade names, trade marks or brands, moving images (such as cartoons, films or videos) or sound or music, or anything else owned by someone else. You agree that you will not cause or help to cause the security or integrity of this or any other linked computer system to be compromised whether by way of hacking, introducing harmful code or in any other way. You agree to be a responsible citizen of the Internet. This means that you must respect the privacy of other Internet users. You agree that any messages you post to the Internet such as to news groups or Internet Relay Chat (IRC) will be posted only to discussion topic areas and not for advertising purposes. Any "one-to-many" Internet communications used for advertising purposes, whether IRC email or other link or medium is a serious breach of these terms and conditions. If you do not comply with this requirement you will be immediately disconnected from our service without warning. You agree to pay us upon demand any costs or losses incurred by us as a result of your using our service in those ways. If you do not follow these rules and we are sued or suffer loss you agree that we can recover our costs and losses directly from you upon demand. Email Our email service is important to you and our other subscribers. As a condition of your use of our email service you agree as follows: You agree to remove your email from our mail server promptly and to keep the space used by your files on the system below 1 megabyte. We have the right to remove email data in excess of 1 megabyte left by you on our mail server. If you have not made a special arrangement with us, we will not be liable for any loss of data because of your failure to housekeep your email. You agree not to send multiple , unsolicited email (SPAM or UCE), to single or multiple users whether or not this is for business purposes. Generally, you agree to obey the developing rules of Netiquette. These are the general rules of good and considerate behaviour on the Internet as a world wide and open community. Any failure to obey these rules will result in a warning. If we consider the breach sufficiently serious (at our discretion) you agree that we may disconnect your service without liability to you. Email enables a rapid, immediate and wide-spread response. You must not use the email service for communication which is defamatory or contrary to generally accepted community standards of behaviour or good taste. While we do not intend to be a censor, we have the right, at our discretion, to decide what those standards are and to review your use of our services at any time and to disconnect you if we consider that you have breached these standards. If you defame anyone through your use of the email service and we are sued, you agree that we have the right to recover all costs and losses incurred by us as a result of your action from you directly upon demand. You agree that we can provide a help desk service to assist you with connection problems from 9:00am to 10:00pm on weekdays and from 10:00am to 8:00pm on Saturday or during such other times and days notified to you. For further detail see "Communications and Notices". Confidentiality We each agree that the Internet is a medium which lacks consistent security and confidentiality and we have the right to check your use of the system. We will take reasonable commercial efforts to protect your confidentiality. However, you should assume that you use of our services is not confidential. If we consider in our discretion that your use of our services is defamatory, contrary to accepted community standards or illegal you acknowledge that we have the right to disclose those activities to any person including the news media and the police. We can check your use of the system for the purposes of ensuring that your use is not breaching these terms and conditions or for assessing any charges which may be payable by you. Use of Personal Information If you are an individual, when you complete your application for our services you authorise us and our agents to collect information about you and hold it at our head office. We will use this information for statistical analysis and to provide services to you and for marketing, private development and research purposes. You authorise us and our agents to supply and disclose personal information as to your credit-worthiness. Personal information about you may be used to enable us, our agents and third parties selected by us to access, maintain, investigate or market products or services. Under the provisions of the Privacy Act 1993 you may request access to and correction of your personal information. Requests must be in writing which includes email. We may charge a fee for the reasonable costs incurred in responding to these requests but we will disclose the costs to you before those costs are incurred. Other Things that we Can Do We can terminate any of the services that you have subscribed for without notice or liability to you if you breach these terms and conditions. Subscriber use of our services may sometimes result in overload. In addition to prohibiting "leased lines" or permanent connections on our flat rate accounts we have the right to share services amongst all subscribers on a fair basis by automatically disconnecting any user after 3 hours of continuous use during peak times, to be determined at our discretion. If you are disconnected for this reason you will be able to reconnect without penalty. Communications and Notices We can change or remove any of these terms and conditions at any time. These changes include alterations to our pricing structure. We will inform you by email or posting a message in the appropriate location on the system which includes (but is not limited to) posting a message in an IHUG newsgroup or any other news group such as ihug.announce or on the world wide web on our home page or any other appropriate means including message of the day (MOTD). Once we have posted the email or other message you are deemed to have received it, and if you have not terminated your subscription within 30 days or if you continue to use the services afterwards you are deemed to have accepted the change. Internet Surprises Internet services allow access to material which may be the subject to copyright, third party ownership or unreliable or offensive material. You access such material at your own risk and we are not responsible in any way for your accidental or deliberate accessing of that material. Limits on our Liability By using our services you do so at your sole risk. We do not warrant that our service will be uninterrupted or error-free. We do not make any warranties to the results to be obtained from the service or information or the experiences had with the Internet which is a matter of your own assessment given its unique nature. We distribute our service on an "as is" basis without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. In particular, we are not liable to you ╨ whether in contract or tort or under any other legal principle ╨ for any direct or indirect losses or damages of any kind. These damages include but are not limited to loss of business, profits, work stoppage, computer or software failure or malfunction or any other damage or loss. Your exclusive remedy against us is to cancel your subscription. If you are using our services for personal, household or domestic use, this limitation may not apply to you and you have the rights and remedies available under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993.