FRTC Acceptable usage Policy

Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative Rules and Regulations and Acceptable Use Policy

By using the services and resources owned by Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative, you agree to abide by the following Rules and Regulations and Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP" for short). For the purpose of this AUP, the Customer shall sometimes be referred to as [User(s)]. Although a great majority of these provisions have the dial-up client in mind, the general provisions are equally applicable to our Web Development and dedicated access clients.

The Internet is a far-reaching communications medium. The Internet can be used to communicate with colleagues, to research demographics, and to transmit business communications, but the Internet and the Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative computers you use to connect to it are shared with thousands of others users. Therefore, Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative has constructed a list of Rules and Regulations to provide a better understanding of how to use this service. This document also details your rights and responsibilities as a Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative subscriber.

1. Privacy

We will not release any of your personal information to other people or agencies unless we receive a signed consent form from you, except under subpoena by a court of competent jurisdiction.
With certain exceptions, you can choose any username for your account on Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative as long as there are no duplicates in the username list and it is not considered obscene. We do have a couple of additional practical restrictions in place. The first restriction is that the username begins with an alpha character. The second restriction is that we cannot accept your first name or last name only as your username; this restriction is becoming more important as the Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative user base grows, and the chance for duplicate usernames grows with it. Finally, the username is subject to a technical limitation of our current accounting system; therefore, usernames are restricted to a maximum of 12 characters. The username will always appear in your news group postings and when you forward electronic mail. The username is your login authorization. The username will be shown in systems utilities, such as "who" or "finger," which show current users on the system.
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative retains the right to reserve certain usernames for internal use.
Although you may want to use a made-up username for your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative account, your full legal or entity (company) name must be used when you sign up with Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative.

2. Account Suspensions and Cancellation

Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative subscribers have the right to cancel their accounts in accordance with the Dial-Up Internet Service Agreement, or other similar applicable agreement with Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative. Cancellations take effect at the times specified in such agreements. If you wish to cancel your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative account, you must send notice to Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative in writing by mail to Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc., ATTN: Customer Service, PO Box 240, Staffordsville Ky., 41256. You may also cancel your service by calling our business office - you will need to provide positive identification
As described in such agreements,Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative reserves the right to suspend or cancel your account without notice, for non-payment or for violation of the provisions of this AUP.
Whether you cancel your service or we cancel your service for cause, your service fees are not prorated within the current month. Refunds for unused service are governed by such agreements. You have 60 days to contact us with questions or concerns about your bill. Setup fees are nonrefundable in any case.

Customers receiving DSL service from Foothills must pay all fees owed for their service(s) by their payment due date located on their monthly Foothills statement. Any amount(s) disputed by the customer from their monthly statement(s) must be made aware to our business office prior to payment due date. Failure to pay the balance owed to Foothills by the DSL customer's payment due date may result in Foothills disconnecting the customer's DSL service from the telco. If Foothills disconnects the customer's DSL service(s) from the telco and customer wants their DSL service reactivated, the DSL customer must first pay all outstanding balances owed to Foothills. Customer must also pay all reconnect and activation fees prior to reactivation. The reconnect and reactivation fee is $50.00 and may take 7 to 10 business days for the DSL service(s) to be reconnected as when the customer's DSL service was originally provisioned. Foothills offers free installation and activation when the DSL customer originally activates their DSL service. However, if Foothills has to disconnect and then reconnect the customer's DSL service(s) with the telco because the customer fails to make their payments by their payment due date, Foothills must charge the customer a reconnect and activation fee of $50.00. Customers receiving DSL service can avoid these reconnect fees by making sure their payment is received by their payment due date located on their monthly statement or by contacting our business office prior to their payment due date. Customers not willing to pay the reconnect and reactivation fee to re-establish their DSL service will still be responsible for the normal Foothills disconnection penalties, all outstanding balances, and the DSL modem charge as pointed out in this agreement. Foothills will credit customer's account for the DSL modem once the modem is returned in its original package and is found to be in working condition. If the customer has any unpaid balances owed to Foothills after 60 days from the customer's payment due date or customer does not contact Foothills' business office to dispute charges or make payment arrangements, Foothills will turn the customer's account over to collections.

3. File Transfer Restrictions

By law, you may not upload any commercial software, any software that is subject to distribution limits, or any material you don't have the right to share with other people. Likewise, you may not download any software or material you do not have the right or license to use, such as commercial software from other Internet users. You may not upload anything, such as certain cryptographic applications, that will violate local, state, or federal law. If, upon reasonable suspicion and after reasonable investigation, Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative finds a violation of this provision, Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative reserves the right to notify appropriate state and/or federal authorities. As a User, you covenant to always use the Internet and the services provided by Foothills in compliance with all laws, rules and regulations.
Your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative account entitles you to E-mail storage space of up to 2 megabytes. If additional storage space is required, up to 10 megabytes (issued in 2 Meg blocks), Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative will charge for additional disk usage according to then-current Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative pricing. Difficulties in downloading e-mails due to size are the responsibility of the User(s) and Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative reserves the right to delete messages if necessary to facilitate download.

4. Change of Terms, Condition and Services

Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative reserves the right to alter the pricing, offerings, terms and conditions of service at any time, as set forth in your agreement with Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative. An electronic, online copy of this AUP in effect is at the following Web address: http://www.foothills.net/aup.html under the "Acceptable Usage Policy" link. As the account holder, you are charged with the responsibility of checking this page for any updates, and your continued use of Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative services constitutes your agreement to the modified terms.
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative does provide configuration assistance and limited free technical support for browser, dial up and e-mail client programs that are essential to getting on the Internet.
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative does not provide technical support for software that is not Internet, nor does Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative make any warranties as to any software you may use in connection with your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative account; the respective author/copyright holder's warranties apply. Further, Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative does not provide technical support for any hardware you use for your Internet connection, which you did not purchase from Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative.
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative cannot guarantee overall Internet performance, nor the performance or availability of any server, service or site on the Internet at large which you may otherwise access through your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative account.

5. System Use Policies

Foothills Telephone provides unlimited Internet access. This should not be construed to mean full-time or completely unregulated access. There are a great many users sharing Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative network facilities, and we are committed to providing good, consistent service to all subscribers. For this reason, the subscriber should observe the following guidelines in the usage of your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative account:
1. Do not maintain a connection to your dial-in account when you are not actively using the Internet, and be sure to log out of the system when you are ready to end an Internet session.
2. Multiple, simultaneous logins of the same account are prohibited.
3. Our flat-rate accounts (i.e., Foothills' Plan A) are not intended to serve as extended or full-time (24 x 7) connections to the Internet. If you find that you need a full-time (24 x 7) connection to the Internet, please contact us for information on our dedicated access services.
4. Our network is configured to terminate your dial-in session after eight (8)hours. We do not mind if you log back in if you are disconnected, but unless you are paying for a dedicated connection, you should not expect to be able to stay logged on indefinitely.
5. In order to ensure all users equal access to Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative resources at peak times, we reserve the right to terminate any particular user session which has idle time of 20 minutes or more. As well, we reserve the right to terminate one or all multiple connection sessions when we encounter your username logged in multiple times simultaneously at one or multiple locations.
6. Content posted to Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative Personal Pages will be removed if that content violates copyrights, libels others, or contains code which could harm systems which visit the site.
7. Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative is not responsible for backing up User(s) personal page content. Content backup of a personal page site that comes with a dialup account is the customer's responsibility.
8. Sexually explicit and patently offensive content; materials that otherwise violate federal, state or local law; and materials and content that threaten the security or utility of the Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative network, are strictly forbidden in any Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative Web service to which you subscribe--personal or commercial.
9. Customer has no ownership of static IP numbers that may have been assigned to the customer by Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative. Foothills reserves the right at any time to remove these static IP assignments with advance notice to the Customer from Foothills. If deemed necessary, Foothills also reserves the right to reassign static IP allocation at its sole discretion.
10. You may not use Foothills Internet Service to gain, or attempt to gain unlawful access to other computers or other computer systems.
11. You are responsible for your phone line, and the operating condition of your computer and modem. Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative is not responsible for any of the hardware or software of your computer and computer system.
12. You are responsible for assuring that Foothills Internet Service is a local call from your location. Foothills Internet Service is not responsible for any local or long distance call charges or other phone company imposed fees and charges.
13. A dial-up service connection may be used from different computers, but only one connection at a time.
14. You are responsible for assuring that the contents of your web or similar directory or directories do not violate any law.
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative reserves the right to remove from public view any material or content brought to its' attention which violates this AUP.
The services you purchase from Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative are not transferable. You may not resell or share your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative account services.

6. Roaming

"ISP affiliate" means any Internet Service Provider with which Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative has a roaming arrangement to allow Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative clients to connect to the Internet through the ISP affiliate's facilities outside the area served by Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative.
"Roaming" consists of dialing an ISP affiliate's Internet connection number to connect to the Internet.
Roaming may be subject to regulation via provisions of this AUP.

7. Information Policy
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative will not filter information that is received from the Internet, except in accordance with this AUP and applicable law; however, some newsgroup material may be offensive to some people. If you find a newsgroup that you do not like, please do not attempt to read or reply to that newsgroup. We will not discontinue a particular newsgroup due to someone's belief that said newsgroup is `offensive' or `wrong.' You are free to subscribe to any mailing lists, but as with newsgroups, some information may seem offensive to you. Just follow proper procedures for subscribing and, if you don't like what you are receiving please change, or unsubscribe from that list or newsgroup. As a Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative client, you are solely responsible for monitoring usage of your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative Internet accounts, including use by your children.

8. Procedures & Accounting Matters

Our AUP is under constant review. We consider comments from our users and from experienced staff. We will change this document from time to time. You are subject to the AUP in effect at the time you sign up for Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative, and to each revision of the AUP that becomes effective subsequently, without further notice.
Account cancellations should be directed in writing to our business office via E-mail to frtcc@foothills.net, via fax at 1-606-297-2012, or via snail mail at P.O. Box 240, Staffordsville, Ky. 41256.
Requests for change of username or password on your dial-up account should be directed to our business office.
Returned checks are subject to a $17.00 Returned-Check Fee. Your account will be debited electronically for both the face amount of the check and any returned check fees if returned unpaid.
Failure to pay invoices by the specified due date will result in a late fee charged against your account. This rule also applies to credit card and ACH Debit customers.
All customers have until the due date listed on their bill to pay for current services. If payment(s) is not received within these guidelines, the customer's service(s) may be interrupted. A reconnect fee will be charged for each service that is interrupted. If service(s) are interrupted, the customer will have to pay for delinquent invoices before services are restored. If further explanation of this policy is needed, please contact our business office.

9. User responsibility

Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative considers the complaints and comments from other users on the Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative system, as well as those of system administrators from other Network Service Providers. We will take immediate action against any Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative subscriber who abuses any of our facilities or services. Some of the types of conduct which is inappropriate on the Internet, and thus prohibited while using your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative account, are (a non-exhaustive list):
1. posting commercial/marketing/advertising/sales materials in non-commercial areas (for example, in a newsgroup dedicated to the discussion of the political significance of the two-party system of government, you should not post a message that you have a watch for sale), or sending unwanted/unsolicited commercial E-mail ("UCE"). This activity is called, aptly enough, "spamming";
2. posting "chain letters"--these are *illegal* under federal and state law, and are inappropriate on paper and on the Internet;
3. E-mailing or posting (in newsgroups, IRC or otherwise) abusive, vulgar or threatening messages; and
4. gaining unauthorized access to any network, either by use of an access account that is not yours, or by engaging in otherwise illegal methods.
In addition to this AUP, the provisions of all applicable laws apply to your use of Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative facilities.
Users that access the Internet through Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative must comply not only with Foothills Internet Service's AUP as well as the AUP's of the Network Service Providers whose networks they access.
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative will review all complaints or instances of your inappropriate use brought to our attention and will decide what action to take, which action may be termination of your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative account.
If you have any complaints about another subscriber's use of Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative facilities, or if you are subjected to any inappropriate use of Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative facilities, please contact our office immediately. You may send E-mail to abuse@foothills.net
If you suspect or have proof of a hacking or break-in attempt on your machine you may call toll-free 1-866-438-6648 and leave a message for the Security Response Team.
If your account is cancelled for non-payment, there will be a reconnection fee charged to establish service again.
It is sole the responsibility of the User(s) to ensure that no long distance calls are being made in order to connect to the Internet. Each User(s) should verify that the dial-up number they are using to connect to the Internet is a local call by contacting their local telephone company before connecting to the Internet. Do not solely rely on a Foothills representative to determine whether or not a dial-up number is a local call in your area. As a rule of thumb you should not have a ten (10) digit number (i.e., 606-XXX-XXXX) in your Internet connection dialer. If you have a ten digit number in your Internet connection dialer you may be charged toll each time you connect to the Internet. Foothills is not responsible for any long distance charges accrued due to user error of this sort.

10. The Strictly Legal Stuff

All services provided to you by Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative may only be used in accordance with any applicable laws, statutes, regulations and rules and solely for lawful purposes. Transmission, promulgation, theft, procurement, communication, alteration, publication or storage of any information, protected material or property, data or any other material in violation of any national law of any sovereign nation, any International law, the United States Annotated code, or of any state or local law, regulation or rule is strictly prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, any material, data, matter, software/soft code, intellectual property protected by copyright, trademark, privacy of property right, personal or property right, trade secret, or any other statute. Further, it is unlawful and a violation of this AUP to communicate, transmit, or promulgate in any manner, means or medium, any threatening, harassing, or obscene material, matter, communication of any sort, or to otherwise use Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative for any illegal or unlawful purposes.
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative does not "patrol" the content published by its clients. Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative does, however, review complaints submitted with respect to other potential violations of this AUP and applicable laws, and will investigate those complaints and take action it deems appropriate, up to and including cancellation of a user's service.
You will indemnify and hold harmless Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative, its officers, shareholders, agents, employees and its other subscribers from any and all claims, costs, expenses, judgments, causes of action, attorney fees, litigation and court costs, resulting from the subscriber's use of Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative in any manner, whether directly or indirectly or by any act of omission or commission.
You are solely responsible for the knowledge of and adherence to any and all laws, statutes, rules and regulations pertaining (1) to your use of any Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative service, and (2) the communications means by which you connects your terminal, personal computers or other device to Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative or to any services provided by Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative.
Your rights herein granted cannot be transferred, shared, sold, or used by anyone other than yourself. Only one login session per account may be used at any given time. Accounts that have been transferred to other parties or show other activity in violation of this paragraph are subject to immediate cancellation.
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative has the right to delete all E-mail, data files, or other information that is stored in your account if your Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative account is terminated, for any reason, by either you or Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative.
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative shall have the right to suspend or cancel your account at any time, for reasonable cause, without notice. "Cause" includes, but is not limited to, nonpayment for services; violation of this AUP; excessive idle time online, as determined by ISP's network administrator; and use of your account to engage in violation of any federal, state or local statute.
No warranty is made by Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative regarding any information, services or products provided through, in connection with, or located on the computer systems of Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative or any other services provided by Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative, and Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative hereby expressly disclaims any and all warranties, including without limitation (i) any warranties as to the availability of Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative products or services, or the accuracy of content or information, products; and (ii) any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative shall have no liability for damages caused or allegedly caused by any failure of performance, error, omission, interruption, electrical surge or damage or interference, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, communication line failure. Theft or destruction of or unauthorized access to, alteration of, or use of records whether for breach of contract, tortuous behavior, negligence, or under any other cause of action, shall be strictly limited to the amount paid by you or on your behalf to Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative for the current month.
No agent, employee, or representative of Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative has any authority to bind Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative to any affirmation, representation, or warranty concerning the services provided by Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative.

11. Disclaimer and limitation liability

User(s) agrees that the use of all services provided to each User(s) by Foothills is at User's own risk. All warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement of proprietary rights, are expressly disclaimed to the fullest extent permitted by law. Foothills cannot guarantee continuous service, service at any particular time, or integrity of data stored or transmitted via its system or via the Internet. Foothills shall not be liable to the User(s) for any claims or damages which may be suffered by User(s), including, but not limited to, losses or the loss of data, inability to access the Internet, or inability to transmit or receive information, caused by, or resulting from delays, non-deliveries, or service interruptions unless directly caused by the negligence of Foothills. Foothills shall not be responsible for the acts of third parties who may gain access to User(s) computer systems, private, financial, or proprietary information by improper or unlawful means.

12. Indemnification

User(s) will indemnify and hold Foothills, its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers, agents and employees free and harmless from any and all claims, damages or lawsuits of any kind (including reasonable attorney fees) arising out of the User's use of services provide to them by Foothills and negligent or illegal acts of User(s), its employees or agents, including, but not limited to, claims, damages or lawsuits arising out the use of those services.
Please enter your e-mail address and click the Submit button to signify that you agree to all the above listed terms and conditions.

� 2003, Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative