Last Updated: January 15, 2010

Ashworth Consulting provides web hosting services to subscribers around the world. The following terms of service are designed to provide the highest level of service available.

Content
All services provided by Ashworth Consulting are to be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United States Federal, State or Local law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, material that jeopardizes national security, or material protected by trade secret or other laws. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Ashworth Consulting, from any claims resulting from the subscriber’s use of Ashworth Consulting’s services which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Note: Pornography and sex related merchandising are prohibited on any Ashworth Consulting shared account. This includes sites that may imply sexual content, or link to adult content elsewhere. This is also true for sites that promote any illegal activity or content that may be damaging to Ashworth Consulting servers or any other server on the Internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited. Exceptions may be granted on a review basis. Please contact us if you have a need for such hosting and we can recommend a solution for you.

Examples of prohibited content or links include (but are not limited to):

• IRC Software
• Pirated software
• Hacking sites, programs or archives
• Warez Sites
• Distribution of music files or any other material in which the account holder does not own the copyright.
• Adult Sites
• Game Servers (dedicated game server programs)

Ashworth Consulting will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. Content that does not meet these standards will be removed without prior notice to the subscriber.

Housing of any of the following files is considered a violation of the terms of service:

IRC – We currently do not allow IRC, Egg Drops, BNC, or IRC bots to be operated on our servers or network. Files with references to IRC or any likeness thereof are prohibited. Also any program that acts like an IRC server or that provide chat functions that run as background processes are not allowed.

Proxies – We do not allow proxy servers of any kind, whether for personal or business use. Files with references to any proxy or likeness thereof are prohibited.

PortScanning – We do not allow any kind of portscanning to be done on or from our servers or network.

Commercial Advertising – Email –

• High volume email deployments of any type are not permitted with any Ashworth Consulting shared account.
• Spamming, i.e. the sending of unsolicited email, from any Ashworth Consulting server or any server located on the Ashworth Consulting network is STRICTLY prohibited. Ashworth Consulting will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. This also includes Optin Optout mail programs and mail that either directly or indirectly references a domain contained within an account at Ashworth Consulting.
• Running Unconfirmed Mailing Lists. Subscribing email addresses to any mailing list without the express and verifiable permission of the email address owner is prohibited. All mailing lists run by Ashworth Consulting customers must be Closed-loop (“Confirmed Opt-in”). The subscription confirmation message received from each address owner must be kept on file for the duration of the existence of the mailing list. Purchasing or selling lists of email addresses from 3rd parties for mailing to or from any Ashworth Consulting-hosted domain, or referencing any Ashworth Consulting account, is prohibited.
• Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet Service Provider, which includes, but is not limited to, the facilitation of the means to send Unsolicited Bulk Email, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, denial of service attacks is prohibited.
• Email address cultivating, or any unauthorized collecting of email addresses without prior notification of the email address owner is strictly prohibited.
• Operating an account on behalf of, or in connection with, or reselling any service to, persons or firms listed in the Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database at www.spamhaus.org is prohibited.

ShoutCast Servers – We do not allow Shoutcast Servers due to bandwidth and load issues.

Background Running Programs – We ask that users request permission before enabling persistent background processes of substantial load.

PHP Shell – PHP Shells or any likeness thereof are prohibited. Files with any reference to PHP Shells or likeness thereof are prohibited.

Server Abuse – Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to an Ashworth Consulting server or subscriber of Ashworth Consulting is strictly prohibited including, but not limited to:

• Logging into a server or account that you are not authorized to access
• Accessing data or taking any action to obtain services not intended for you or your use
• Attempting to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of any system, subsystem or network
• Tampering, hacking, modifying, or otherwise corrupting or breaching security or authentication measures without proper authorization
• Transmitting material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines or engines with the intent or effect of damaging, destroying, disrupting or otherwise impairing a computer’s functionality or the operation of the System
• Interfering with, intercepting or expropriating any system, data or information
• Interfering with service to any user, host or network including, without limitation, by means of overloading, “flooding,” “mailbombing,” or “crashing” any computer system

Resource Usage

User may not:

1. Use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds. There are numerous activities that could cause such problems; these include: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.
2. Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.
3. Run any type of web spider or indexer (including Google Cash / AdSpy) on shared servers.
4. Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.
5. Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client. You may link to legal torrents off-site, but may not host or store them on our shared servers.
6. Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities
7. Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, battlefield1942, etc
8. Run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes.
9. Run any MySQL queries longer than 15 seconds. MySQL tables should be indexed appropriately.
10. When using PHP include functions for including a local file, include the local file rather than the URL. Instead of include(“http://yourdomain.com/include.php”) use include(“include.php”)
11. To help reduce usage, do not force html to handle server-side code (like php and shtml).
12. Only use https protocol when necessary; encrypting and decrypting communications is noticeably more CPU-intensive than unencrypted communications.

INODES

The use of more than 250,000 inodes on any shared account may potentially result in a warning first, and if no action is taken future suspension. Accounts found to be exceeding the 100,000 inode limit will automatically be removed from our backup system to avoid over-usage, however databases will still be backed up. Every file (a webpage, image file, email, etc) on your account uses up 1 inode.

Sites that slightly exceed our inode limits are unlikely to be suspended; however, accounts that constantly create and delete large numbers of files on a regular basis, have hundreds of thousands of files, or cause file system damage may be flagged for review and/or suspension. The primary cause of excessive inodes seems to be due to users leaving their catchall address enabled, but never checking their primary account mailbox. Over time, tens of thousands of messages (or more) build up, eventually pushing the account past our inode limit. To disable your default mailbox, login to cPanel and choose “Mail”, then “Default Address”, “Set Default Address”, and then type in: :fail: No such user here.

You will be held responsible for all actions performed by your account whether it be done by you or by others. All sub-networks of Ashworth Consulting and all dedicated servers must adhere to the above policies.

Scheduled Maintenance and Downtime
Ashworth Consulting will use its commercially reasonably efforts to provide services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Subscriber acknowledges that from time to time the services may be inaccessible or inoperable for various reasons, including periodic maintenance procedures or upgrades (“Scheduled Downtime”); or service malfunctions, and causes beyond Ashworth Consulting’s control or which are not reasonably foreseeable by Ashworth Consulting, including the interruption or failure of telecommunications or digital transmission links, hostile network attacks, or network congestion or other failures. Ashworth Consulting will provide at least 48 hours advance notice to the subscriber for Scheduled Downtimes, and will use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize any other disruption, inaccessibility and/or inoperability of its web servers. Ashworth Consulting has no responsibility for downtime resulting from a user’s actions. Also, the 100% network uptime guarantee does not apply for shared accounts.

Refunds
Refunds will be posted for monthly hosting clients only, with the exception of plans including a 30 day money back guarantee (shared hosting only). Pre-paid hosting plans longer than 30 days, Virtual Dedicated, Virtual Private, and Dedicated servers are not included for the 30 Day Money Back Guarantee. Notice of cancellation must be given before the month in question begins. Setup fee is NON refundable. Domain name costs are not refundable and will be deducted from the money refunded if the user’s domain was registered via Ashworth Consulting’s domain registration method.

Any violation of Ashworth Consulting’s Terms of Service Agreement shall result in no refund.

Promotional Use
Ashworth Consulting may refer to You, Your company, or your logo’s for promotional purposes. Your company name, logos and the services that were provided to the customer by Ashworth Consulting may be used in promotional materials, advertising, marketing releases, newsletter, public disclosures and on the Ashworth Consulting website. This reference will be strictly limited to disclosure that Ashworth Consulting has provided services to the company and will not contain any confidential, sensitive or proprietary information in such a reference. The reference will also not provide any personally identifiable information about the individual or technical information regarding the server configuration and design used by the customer at Ashworth Consulting. However, Ashworth Consulting may disclose any information requested by law enforcement or when compelled by court order, applicable laws or regulations.

Any work or professional services performed or provided by Ashworth Consulting under this Agreement shall not be deemed .Work For Hire,. but Ashworth Consulting shall grant a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to You, for the duration of this Agreement, its employees, affiliates, and third parties commissioned by Ashworth Consulting.

Microsoft Software License Policy.
Microsoft, as well as Ashworth Consulting company policy, does not allow mixing of Microsoft license ownership. For an example, a customer cannot use an Ashworth Consulting purchased Windows Server license in conjunction with their own customer license of MSSQL or any other Microsoft Product. This is a violation of Microsoft’s licensing policies. The customer would have to obtain all Microsoft licenses through Ashworth Consulting. In some instances, we can allow the customer to supply all Microsoft licensed products, including the OS. However, all licenses must be provided by the customer and may not be mixed with Ashworth Consulting licensed Microsoft products. Any questions regarding this policy can be addressed to sales@ashworthconsulting.com

Limitations on Use
Any account using 10% or more of the server CPU or memory can be suspended and/or terminated.

Any account that uses excessive amounts of bandwidth can and will be subjected to bandwidth throttling.

Background Processes. Unauthorized background processes shall result in immediate termination of the account. Ashworth Consulting maintains the right to cancel accounts at its discretion.

Account Setup, Termination, and Billing:
The account will be charged on the day the order is processed, regardless of the account billing date. The account will not be charged again until the next month’s billing cycle. Billing dates are on the first and 15th of every month.

Check Orders: Accounts for subscribers who wish to pay by check will be setup when the check is received by Ashworth Consulting

Disabling of accounts due to overdue payment: Accounts will be disabled if payment is not received within 14 days of the invoice date. If your account has been disabled, you may be charged a reconnection fee of up to $50 in order to re-enable your account.

Termination of accounts due to overdue payment: If the account is not paid within 30 days of the invoice date, the account will be terminated and all information within the account will be deleted.

Cancellation Procedure: Valid proof of account ownership will be required to terminate an account. This includes, but is not limited to, billing information in the form of a partial credit card number or other payment information, or the billing password. Non-secure information, such as the contact email address or account billing address, is not sufficient as a security verification. Cancellation requests must be submitted in writing to billing@ashworthconsulting.com at least 15 days prior to your next renewal date. Dedicated and failover hosting customers are required to give 30 days notice of cancellation. Any fees collected for service will not be pro-rated as a result of cancellation and service will be terminated as requested upon the next renewal date.

Parked Domain Names: There is a one-time fee of $15 for parking additional domain names. This fee is nonrefundable.

Virtual Domain Names: Additional domains that point to a sub folder (Virtual Domains) are $5 per domain per month. This is a nonrefundable fee.

Domain Name Transfers: Ashworth Consulting shall not be held responsible for domain transfers. The account holder is responsible for completing any necessary domain name transfers.

Free Domain Name Registration: Ashworth Consulting will register any available .com, .org, or .net domain for free upon creation of a new account. The free domain offer does not apply to existing accounts, or to orders that did not request the free domain registration at the time the order was placed.

Free registration is for the first year only, subsequent renewals are $15 per year that the domain is renewed for.

Courtesy Services for Customers

All services such as backup and Cpanel are provided for the courtesy of the subscriber. It is the sole responsibility of the subscriber to maintain the subscriber’s own backup of any data. Ashworth Consulting is not responsible for lost data or for lost data due to third party software that is not maintained by Ashworth Consulting programming staff. (Cpanel is not associated with Ashworth Consulting)

Limitation of Damages
Recovery of damages from Ashworth Consulting may not exceed the amount of fees it has collected on the account during the given calendar year in question.

General
Terms Of Service are subject to change without any prior notification.

These Terms of Service are a legally binding contract between the subscriber and Ashworth Consulting

By opening an account, the subscriber agrees to the above-stated terms.

Anything not listed in the Terms of Service is open to interpretation and change by Ashworth Consulting administrators without prior notice.

All prices, with the exception of the 30-day money back guarantee, are nonrefundable and nonnegotiable.

The 30-day money back guarantee does not pertain to Virtual Dedicated and Full Dedicated server plans.

Any violation of these Terms of Service will result in termination of the account. Ashworth Consulting maintains the right to terminate accounts without prior notification.

We reserve the right to remove any account with 15 days prior notice.

Dispute Resolution
Any dispute between Ashworth Consulting and a subscriber shall be determined by arbitration conducted by the American Arbitration Association pursuant to its commercial arbitration rules. The arbitrator shall decide any dispute in accordance with Washington law, without the application of choice of law principles. Each party shall bear its own expenses and legal fees for the arbitration. The arbitration shall be conducted in Clark County, Washington, unless both parties agree in writing to a different location. The arbitration award is enforceable as a judgment of any court having proper jurisdiction.