ICOZA
INTERNET COMPANY SOUTH AFRICA ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY (AUP)
11 July 2003 - Version 1.0
This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") specifies the actions prohibited to users of
the network and systems ("infrastructure") of Internet Company South Africa
("ICOZA"), and is intended to enhance the use of the Internet by preventing
unacceptable use. Users are required to adhere to all the policies specified in
this AUP without exception.
LAWS AND REGULATIONS
ICOZA’s infrastructure may be used only for lawful purposes. Users may not
violate any applicable laws or regulations of South Africa within the territory
of South Africa. Should the user reside outside of South Africa, the laws of
the country in which the user resides shall apply. Transmission, distribution
or storage of any material on or through the infrastructure in violation of any
applicable law or regulation is prohibited. This includes, without limitation,
material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual
property right used without proper authorisation, and material that is obscene,
defamatory, constitutes an illegal threat, or violates export control laws.
THE NETWORK
The user acknowledges that ICOZA is unable to exercise control over the content
of the information passing over the infrastructure and the Internet, including
any websites, electronic mail transmissions, news groups or other material
created or accessible over its infrastructure. Therefore, ICOZA is not
responsible for the content of any messages or other information transmitted
over its infrastructure. ICOZA's infrastructure may be used to link into other
networks worldwide and the user agrees to conform to the acceptable use
policies of these networks. The user may obtain and download any materials
marked as available for download off the Internet but is not permitted to use
its Internet access to distribute any copyrighted materials unless permission
for such distribution is granted to the user by the owner of the materials. The
user is prohibited from obtaining and/or disseminating on-line any unlawful
materials, including but not limited to stolen intellectual property, child
pornography, and/or any unlawful hate-speech materials.
SYSTEM AND NETWORK SECURITY
All references to systems and networks under this section includes the Internet
(and all those systems and/or networks to which user is granted access through
ICOZA) and includes but is not limited to the infrastructure of ICOZA itself.
The user may not circumvent user authentication or security of any host,
network, or account (referred to as "cracking" or "hacking"), nor interfere
with service to any user, host, or network (referred to as "denial of service
attacks"). Violations of system or network security by the user are prohibited,
and may result in civil or criminal liability. ICOZA will investigate incidents
involving such violations and will involve and will co-operate with law
enforcement officials if a criminal violation is suspected. Examples of system
or network security violations include, without limitation, the following:
Unauthorised access to or use of data, systems or networks, including any
attempt to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of any system or network or to
breach security or authentication measures without the express authorisation of
ICOZA. Unauthorised monitoring of data or traffic on the network or systems
without express authorisation of ICOZA. Interference with service to any user,
host or network including, without limitation, mailbombing, flooding,
deliberate attempts to overload a system and broadcast attacks. Forging of any
TCP-IP packet header (spoofing) or any part of the header information in an
email or a newsgroup posting.
E-MAIL USE
It is explicitly prohibited to send unsolicited bulk mail messages ("junk mail"
or "spam") of any kind (commercial advertising, political tracts,
announcements, etc). This is strongly objected to by most Internet users and
the repercussions against the offending party and ICOZA can often result in
disruption of service to other users connected to ICOZA. Maintaining of mailing
lists by users of ICOZA is accepted only with the permission and approval of
the list members, and at the members' sole discretion. Should mailing lists
contain invalid or undeliverable addresses or addresses of unwilling recipients
those addresses must be promptly removed. Users may not forward or propagate
chain letters nor malicious e-mail. Public relay occurs when a mail server is
accessed by a third party from another domain and utilised to deliver mails,
without the authority or consent of the owner of the mail-server. Users' mail
servers must be secure against public relay as a protection to both themselves
and the Internet at large. Mail servers that are unsecured against public relay
often become abused by unscrupulous operators for spam delivery and upon
detection such delivery must be disallowed. ICOZA reserves the right to examine
users' mail servers to confirm that no mails are being sent from the mail
server through public relay and the results of such checks can be made
available to the user. ICOZA also reserves the right to examine the mail
servers of any users using ICOZA mail servers for "smarthosting" (when the user
relays its mail off an ICOZA mail server to a mail server of its own) or
similar services at any time to ensure that the servers are properly secured
against public relay. All relay checks will be done in strict accordance with
ICOZA’s policy of preserving customer privacy.
USENET NEWS
Users should, before using the service, familiarise themselves with the
contents of the following newsgroups: news.newusers.questions,
news.announce.newusers, news.answers Excessive cross-posting (ie, posting the
same article to a large numbers of newsgroups) is forbidden. Posting of
irrelevant (off-topic) material to newsgroups (also known as USENET spam) is
forbidden. Posting binaries to a non-binary newsgroup is forbidden. ICOZA
reserves the right to delete and/or cancel posts which violate the above
conditions.
COMPLAINTS
Upon receipt of a complaint, or having become aware of an incident, ICOZA
reserves the right to: Inform the user's network administrator of the incident
and require the network administrator or network owner to deal with the
incident according to this AUP. In the case of individual users suspend the
user's account and withdraw the user's network access privileges completely.
Charge the offending parties for administrative costs as well as for machine
and human time lost due to the incident. In severe cases suspend access of the
user's entire network until abuse can be prevented by appropriate means. Share
information concerning the incident with other Internet access providers, or
publish the information, and/or make available the users' details to law
enforcement agencies. Any one or more of the steps listed above, insofar as
they are deemed necessary by ICOZA in its absolute and sole discretion, may be
taken by ICOZA against the offending party.
All cases of violation of the above Acceptable Use Policy should be reported to
abuse@i.co.za
