 
Internet Terms of Service
Acceptable Use
Hood Canal Communication’s Internet Services may only be used for lawful purposes. Transmission of any material in violation of any U.S. or state regulation is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, or threatening or obscene material. Any web site hosted on our servers found to contain pornographic or obscene material is not allowed and will be removed at the discretion of our staff. Harassment of others in any form, e-mailing viruses, unsolicited E-Mail, malicious or destructive behavior, sending unsolicited commercial e-mail, bulk e-mail, or chain letters are prohibited and will result in the immediate termination of your account. Wireless internet devices must be password protected, open wireless connections pose significant security risks and are against HCC's terms of service. User is responsible for penalties, fines, damages, or other assessments that result from these activities. Any use of software that creates a false presence of use or automatically redials your Internet connection when you are not present is prohibited and may result in termination of your account. As a courtesy to other customers, please disconnect your Dial-up Internet connection when not in use.
Your Responsibilities for Proper Account Use and Information
You represent that you are at least Eighteen (18) years old. You are fully responsible for how your account is used. If you allow others to use your account, you are fully responsible for what they do. You will notify Hood Canal Communications of any changes in account contact information, such as your address or telephone number. Hood Canal is not responsible for the content and information found on the Internet. It is the purchaser’s responsibility to determine the suitability of such content for members of purchaser’s household or business.
Server Disk Storage
Personal websites are allowed a full twenty-five (25) megabytes of storage. In addition, users are allowed two-hundred (200) megabytes of storage for each E-Mail account. Additional storage may be purchased.
Payment Policy
Any payment received more than fifteen (15) days after the date of invoice shall be considered late and subject to a standard late fee of $4.95. Hood Canal Communications reserves the right to disconnect unpaid accounts at any time.
Disclaimer
Hood Canal Communications makes no warranties of any kind, whether expressed or implied, including any implied warranty or merchantability of fitness of this service for a particular purpose. Hood Canal Communications takes no responsibility for any damages suffered by you including, but not limited to, loss of data from delays, non-deliveries, misdeliveries, or service interruptions caused by Hood Canal Communications’ own negligence or your errors and/or omissions. Use of any information or software obtained via this service is at your own risk. Hood Canal Communications specifically denies any responsibility for the accuracy or quality of information obtained through our services. Advertised transfer rates are subject to change without notice as Hood Canal Communications deems necessary.
Limitations and Indemnification
The account holder agrees to indemnify and hold Hood Canal Communications harmless from any claims, including attorney's fees, direct or indirect damages or losses which may be incurred by the account holder or others. In no event will Hood Canal Communications be liable for indirect, special, incidental, cover or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the Services, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. In addition, Hood Canal Communications is not responsible for any costs arising out of the use of Services including, but not limited to, costs incurred as a result of lost profits or revenue, loss of clients, loss of use of computer programs, loss of data, the costs of recovering programs or data, claims by third parties or similar costs. In no event shall Hood Canal Communications' liability exceed the amount paid by you for the Services.
Open Internet Policy
HCC adopts this Open Internet Policy to promote the Internet as an open platform enabling customer choice, freedom of expression, end-user control, competition, and the freedom to innovate without permission.
HCC is a responsible and unbiased Internet Service Provider (ISP) whose policy is to keep its network and Internet access as open as safely possible. HCC only applies access control or content restrictions where network security is being compromised or exploited, or illegal activity has been reasonably suspected and documented.
A few examples where HCC may restrict Internet access are:
1) A cyber attack against an HCC network or HCC customer, we block the offending IP address and contact the administrator of that system. After a reasonable amount of time with no further issues we once again allow that address to have access to our networks.
2) When we receive a copyright complaint from a legitimate entity, such as Warner Bros., where they have the documented date, time, IP address, and title of infringed work. In cases like this we limit the customer's speed to hinder illegal file sharing. Once we have contacted the customer and discussed the seriousness of copyright violations, the speeds are returned to normal.
3) Any type of known illegal activity or known consumer fraud, such as child pornography or attempts to trick unwary users out of personal information or money. Such activity is documented, and depending on the situation, may be forwarded to local authorities for further action.
4) Any type of known virus we detect that is entering or leaving our system.
5) Certain ports and protocols that are extremely vulnerable to hacker attacks and should not be available to the open Internet, such as Microsoft local area network protocols and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
No Unreasonable Discrimination: HCC does not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic over a customer's broadband Internet access service, subject to reasonable network management. Reasonable network management practices are set out below.
HCC does not:
Discriminate among specific uses, or class of uses, of its network
Impair, degrade or delay VoIP applications or services that compete with its voice services or those of its affiliates
Impair, degrade, delay or otherwise inhibit access by customers to lawful content, applications, services or non-harmful devices
Impair free expression by actions such as slowing traffic from particular web sites or blogs
Demand pay-for-priority or similar arrangements that directly or indirectly favor some traffic over other traffic
Prioritize its own application, services or devices or those of its affiliates
No Blocking: HCC does not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices, subject to reasonable network management. Network management practices are set forth below.
NETWORK MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
General: HCC uses a variety of tools to protect its network and customer records. However, HCC cannot guarantee that it can prevent spam, viruses, security attacks, network congestion and other actions which can affect service, but does use various filters, monitoring efforts and other measures to minimize the effects of spam, viruses, security attacks, network congestion and other actions which can affect the service provided to customers.
Congestion: HCC has not experienced substantial problems with congestion. However, it may be possible that there are congestion events that may occur in the future, particularly as it may be related to the service capacity from third parties used by HCC to provide the customer with access to the world. Such service capacity is outside the control of HCC.
Where feasible, HCC will address congestion issues through improvements to its network or the capacity purchased from other providers needed to connect to the outside world. Such processes take time to implement and may not be feasible in all situations. Therefore, HCC reserves the right to monitor and identify which customer accounts are using the greatest amount of bandwidth during periods of heavy congestion and to work to provide solutions to address those issues. If a preferred solution cannot be worked out with the customer or customers, HCC reserves the right to manage the Internet traffic of high volume customers during periods of significant congestion. This means that the affected customers will still be able to access the Internet and engage in activities that they desire, but during certain periods of time they may experience conditions such as longer times to download or upload files, slower access and slower movements during online game playing. It is expected that any periods of traffic management due to congestion will be brief and infrequent.
Use of Network: In no case will HCC discriminate among customers on the basis of the type of content, applications, services or devices which the customer uses.
Applications: Customers may use any lawful and commercially available application which they desire. HCC does not normally monitor the contents of the traffic or applications of the customers and undertakes no obligation to monitor or investigate the lawfulness of any specific application used by a customer. HCC will only take steps regarding an application-specific behavior by a customer if there is a reasonable belief that the application will cause harm to HCC's network or is unlawful.
Devices: A customer may use any lawful, compatible type-accepted and commercially available device which they desire on the network provided by HCC, as long as such device does not harm the network and is not unlawful.
Security: HCC undertakes no obligation to monitor or protect customer traffic from spam, viruses, denial of service attacks or other malicious, unlawful or unwarranted activities. HCC does not guarantee that it can protect customers from any or all security breaches. The customer is using this service at its own risk. Customers are cautioned to purchase their own spam filtering and antivirus software from commercial vendors to meet their needs. However, a customer that is subject to spam, virus, denial of service attack or similar malicious, unlawful or unwarranted activities is urged to contact HCC as soon as possible. HCC will work with the customer on how the customer can take appropriate and economically reasonable efforts to address the matter.
PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS
The pricing and other terms and conditions for the service provided by HCC can be found at hcc.net/serv-broadband.php. The service provided depends on the customer's location and may be cable modem provided over fiber and coaxial cable or a DSL type of service consisting of fiber optic and copper digital facilities. Expected access speeds in the DSL portions of the network are 6 mbps, depending on the actual lengths of the respective fiber trunks and copper lines. The expected access speeds in the cable modem portion of the network range from 7 mbps to 10 mbps.
Actual access speeds and delay times or latency are impacted by the length, capacity and congestion of transport facilities purchased by HCC from third party providers. HCC cannot guarantee that it will be able to obtain capacity from these third party providers at commercially reasonable prices if and when additional third party capacity is needed to reach Internet nodes.
HCC's ability to deliver the speeds set forth above may be affected by significant use of specialized services such as Internet-based video services. This is a growing area and its effect on HCC's ability to provide service at the speeds listed above are unknown at this time.
PRIVACY
As a general statement, HCC does not usually entail inspection of network traffic. HCC does retain and store certain traffic information for time periods required by federal and state law, including, but not limited to, the identity of the customer using a particular IP address during a specific period of time. HCC does assist law enforcement and provides traffic information that it may have available to it when requested pursuant to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other applicable national and state security and criminal statutes.
HCC DOES NOT COLLECT, STORE OR USE TRAFFIC INFORMATION TO PROFILE ITS CUSTOMERS IN ORDER TO SELL ADDITIONAL SERVICES TO THEM OR FOR NON-NETWORK MANAGEMENT PURPOSES.
COMPLAINTS
If a customer has complaints about the service, they are urged to contact info@hcc.net. A customer always has the right to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission at www.fcc.gov.
RESERVATION OF RIGHTS/AMENDMENTS
In the event of any conflict between material found on other links on HCC's web site and this Open Internet Policy, the more specific terms at the other links shall control.
HCC may modify this Policy and other policies it has linked for the customer from time to time at its discretion. Notice of such changes will be posted on this web site. However, individual notice to customers, content providers, application providers, service providers or device providers by any means whatsoever shall not be provided unless specifically required to by federal or state law. Notice of changes will be provided in advance normally upon a thirty day basis. However, HCC reserves the right to use a shorter notice period when circumstances so warrant.
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