The following are the terms and conditions which define commercial Giganews Service. Your Giganews service will follow the guidelines set forth in this document. This document may change at any time. By logging on to your account you agree to the terms and condition of use.
Abuse Issues
Abuse Notifications
Giganews requires that you provide an email address for notifications about spam, floods, or other abuse originating from your networks. Giganews also requires that you provide a valid address for notifications of copyright infringements. These addresses will be included in the headers of all articles posted through our servers, from your network.
A requirement of the Giganews service is that you maintain sufficient staff to address abuse complaints and copyright infringement notifications. Copyright notifications should be handled promptly, in accordance with the DMCA, and any abuse or copyright issue notification forwarded by our abuse staff will require a prompt response, when the issue has been resolved. You will need to notify us immediately of any changes to these notification addresses.
Depending on the scope and seriousness of the situation, and the rapidness of a response, Giganews reserves the right to take any and all appropriate measures to address incidents of abuse, which may include suspension of posting capabilities or termination of service.
Copyright Infringement
Giganews strongly urges you to register your copyright infringement notification information with the U.S. Copyright office. This action, along with proper handling under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, will afford protections against legal liability. Our abuse staff will be happy to provide additional information.
Proper actions upon notification of copyright infringement include acknowledgement of receipt to the copyright holder, removal of the material from the Giganews news servers, and steps necessary to ensure the offending poster does not continue posting copyrighted material.
Spam
Giganews does not tolerate spam in any form, and we take aggressive measures to ensure a minimum of spam on our servers. We exercise a zero-tolerance policy towards those who would attempt to post spam through our servers. Although many types of material can be defined as spam, Giganews tolerates no commercial promotion of products or services. Our Acceptable Usage Policy offers further information on material we consider inappropriate.
By using the Giganews service, you agree to deal in an effective manner, with those who post spam through our news servers, from your network. Once an abuse issue has been identified, we expect you to ensure that individuals responsible will not repeat this behavior in the future, and to notify the Giganews abuse staff when an issue has been resolved.
Flooding
When a high volume of articles is posted, with no useful purpose to others, or with a clear intent to disrupt a newgroup or interfere with the ability of others to use a newsgroup, Giganews considers that behaviour to be “flooding”. We categorize this as a Denial of Service attack, and consider this to be a serious abuse of service.
If Giganews detects flooding from your network, or from an IP address listed in netblock access for your account, we will notify you immediately, and may find it necessary to suspend all posting on the account until we receive assurances that the abusive flood has been stopped and will not be resumed.
Other Abusive Posting
Giganews strongly defends the First Amendment free speech rights of those who post their viewpoints through our servers. However, these rights must be exercised with respect for others on Usenet. Giganews will not tolerate posts that are clearly abusive, particularly if they are unprovoked or obviously meant to inflame others or to disrupt a newsgroup.
By using the Giganews service you agree to our Acceptable Usage Policy and agree to take measures to deal appropriately with those who disregard these provisions.
Billing and Settlement
First Invoice, and Deposit On Account
At the start of your service, you will be billed for your first and last month of service. Both invoices are payable within 10 days. Your payment for your last month of service will be kept as a deposit, and can be applied towards your final invoice, or refunded if you pay your final invoice separately. Your deposit will be increased or decreased as you add or remove services, via additional invoices and credit memos, respectively. Your deposit on account will always be equal to a single month’s service invoice.
Continuing Service Invoice
Continuing services will be billed in advance. Each month’s invoice will be generated on or near your monthly billing anniversary date. Your recurring invoice will be due within 30 days. Should a monthly invoice be generated while the previous month’s invoice is still outstanding, then the new invoice will be due within 10 days. Service will be suspended if the first invoice goes 10 days past due or the second invoice goes past due at all.
Rated Accounts
If your service supports increasing available connections as needed, this change can be made using our online control panel. You may increase the total available connections as needed, and you reduce them at any time, but not to a number less than the base connections specified in your service agreement.
As you increase connections, Giganews will invoice you only for those connections actually used during the billing period. The number of connections you are invoiced for is determined by dividing the total download for the period by the number of gigabytes of download per connection, as specified in your service agreement.
Invoice Notification
Whenever we generate an invoice, we will e-mail your billing point of contact to notify them that you have a new invoice. You will not receive a copy of your invoice via postal mail or fax. Your only method for reviewing your invoices will be online, through a secure web connection. Giganews operates an account Control Panel which allows you to review your invoices and payments online. The URL for the Control Panel is https://www.giganews.com/.
Payment
Giganews will accept payment via credit card or check. If you choose to pay via credit card, we will attempt to charge your credit card for any balance on your account. We will e-mail your billing point of contact any time a credit card charge fails. We will not attempt your credit card more than once in any 3 day period, except by your request.
If you choose to pay via check, we must receive your payment before the invoice due date. It is not sufficient for it to be postmarked before the invoice due date. Mail your check payments to the address given on the ‘Review Invoices’ Control Panel, at https://www.giganews.com/.
Please do not send post-dated checks. Post-dated checks may be returned to you at your expense or, if it is processed and the bank returns it, a $25 returned check fee will be added to your account.
Past due notices
We will e-mail your billing point of contact reminders about your invoices before and after any of them become past due. Your service will be suspended if any invoice goes 10 days past due.
Cancellation
If you are under a contract for services, cancellation provisions will be included in the contract, and take precedence over anything included here. If you are not under an active contract, the following provisions will apply.
Cancellations must be entered in 10 day prior to the next service period for them to take effect before that billing period. Cancellations submitted less than 10 days prior to the next billing period will take effect after the following billing period. Giganews does not prorate service. Your service, and thus your billing, is in whole month increments.
Service can be cancelled by submitting a request, in writing, to the Giganews Billing Department. The cancellation may be mailed by postal service to the remittance address on your invoice. Unless cancellation is received 10 days prior to the next service period, all accounts are renewed automatically.
Indemnify and Hold Harmless
You are responsible for all actions that occur in regards to your account. As a condition of service, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless Giganews, its officers, employees, agents, and shareholders, for any cause of action out of your account with use or your use of the service.
Termination of Service
Giganews, reserves the right to terminate or refuse service to anyone, at any time, for any reason.
Giganews reserves the right to revise, supplement, or rescind any of our policies or terms of service, at any time, without prior notice.
It is the member’s responsibility to stay informed of our current “Terms and Conditions”, and our “Acceptable Use Policy” found at https://www.giganews.com/legal/aup.
By logging on to your account you agree to the terms and condition of use.