Acceptable Use Policy
 



To use beeb.net products and services, you must comply with the provisions of this Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") at all times.

Please note that in this AUP, "we"/"us"/"our" denotes BBC Worldwide Limited, registered office Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane, London W12 0TT, Company No. 01420028 ("beeb.net") and "you"/"your" denotes you the customer.

 
GENERAL INFORMATION


This AUP applies to every beeb.net product and service and your use of them. For some products and services there are particular points to which you must conform when you are using that product or service. Appendices A through D of this document give further guidance as to how this AUP is applied to specific products and services.

It is your responsibility to ensure your compliance with all applicable provisions of this AUP. If you have any comments or queries, or there is any provision that you do not understand, please feel free to email any enquiry to us at abuse@beeb.net.

  • Various Acts of Parliament make it illegal to possess or transmit certain material on a public telecommunications network, such as the telephone system. You must not use your beeb.net product/service for any illegal purpose.

  • You must not use your beeb.net product/service to transmit or publish any material which is obscene, defamatory, offensive, menacing, or otherwise objectionable or which may, in the opinion of beeb.net, be perceived as such by a reasonable third party.

  • Your traffic over the Internet may traverse other networks, or use other services which are not owned or operated by beeb.net. You must abide by the acceptable use policies and other terms and conditions imposed by the operators of those networks and services.

  • Beeb.net may, at its sole discretion, run manual or automatic systems to determine compliance with this AUP. By accessing the Internet via beeb.net services you are deemed to have granted permission for this limited intrusion onto your networks or machines.

  • You are required to accept email addressed to you from both postmaster@beeb.net and abuse@beeb.net. You will be deemed to have read any and all such email and beeb.net may take action on the basis of this assumption.

  • Your usage of the Internet must conform to community standards.

    It is not possible to codify exactly what constitutes "acceptable use" and "unacceptable use" or abuse of the Internet. These terms depend upon the many informal understandings which have arisen between the administrators, owners and operators of the computers and networks that together constitute the Internet, and of which beeb.net is only one participant among many.

    However, beeb.net's relationship with other networks, and ultimately its connectivity to the rest of the Internet, depends largely upon proper behaviour by its customers. Beeb.net cannot tolerate any behaviour by customers which negatively impacts upon its own equipment or network, or upon the use by other customers of the Internet, or which damages beeb.net's standing in the wider Internet community.

    Therefore, it is important that when activity that might constitute abuse occurs, that beeb.net takes appropriate action. If it did not, and such abuse was permitted to continue, beeb.net would lose the confidence of the wider Internet community, which in turn would significantly impair beeb.net's customers freedom to use the Internet.

    This AUP and its day-to-day application by beeb.net are a result of beeb.net's consideration of both the formal and informal practices of the Internet community.

    The Appendices to this AUP are intended to assist customers in understanding the types of issues that can arise and what beeb.net will consider to be unacceptable behaviour that does not conform to community standards.

    We will investigate suspected or alleged breaches of this AUP and in doing so we will endeavour to act reasonably and fairly at all times. If you are found to have breached this AUP or the Conditions of Use that apply to your service, we reserve the right in our sole discretion to take whatever measures we deem appropriate and proportionate to the breach. These measures may include a formal warning, suspending or terminating one or more of your beeb.net accounts, making an additional charge for our reasonable costs of investigating and dealing with the misuse, and/or blocking access to any relevant component(s) of our service to you. If we suspend your access then this suspension may be lifted, at beeb.net's sole discretion, when the reason for suspension has been rectified and upon receipt of a formal written undertaking from you not to commit any future "abuse". All cases are, however, considered individually upon their merits.

    Without limitation, you expressly authorise us to use your personal data and other account information in connection with any such investigation, including by disclosing it to any third party whom we consider has a legitimate interest in any such investigation or its outcome.

    We have in place a procedure for handling your complaints about material stored and/or accessed via our service. If you wish to make such a complaint, please ensure that you make your complaint by email to abuse@beeb.net. If you do not use this facility we cannot guarantee that your complaint will be dealt with promptly.

    The appendices refer in some cases to external web sites. Beeb.net is not responsible for the content of these web sites.

    		•   
    APPENDIX A: GENERAL INTERNET ACCESS
      Some material is illegal to possess or transmit. You should also be aware that unauthorised access to computer systems could be an offence. Although many machines are connected to the Internet for general access, it does not follow that you may access any computer system you come across.
    		  
      Whilst connected to the Internet your system must conform to all relevant IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) standards. The IETF standards are a subset of the RFC (Request for Comments) collection and can be found at: ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/mirrors/internic/rfc/std/
    		 
      You must not send information packets onto the Internet that have forged addresses or which are deliberately constructed so as to adversely affect remote machines.
    		 
      You may not run "scanning" software which accesses remote machines or networks, except with the explicit permission of the operators of those remote machines or networks.
    		 
      You must ensure that you do not further the sending of unsolicited bulk email or any other form of email or Usenet "abuse". This applies to both material that originates on your system and also third party material that may pass through it.
    		 
      Your machine or network must not be configured in such a way that others can exploit it to disrupt the Internet.
    		  
      You must not run an "open mail relay", that is, a machine which accepts mail from unauthorised or unknown senders and forwards it onward to a destination outside of your machine or network. If your machine performs relay mail on an authorised basis, then it must record this mail passing through your system by means of an appropriate "Received:" line.
    		 
    APPENDIX B: EMAIL
      There are many forms of email abuse. This appendix discusses the more common forms in an informal manner, but is by no means an exhaustive list.
    		  
      It is usual to describe "abuse" as being abuse of Internet facilities, rather than vulgar abuse sent via the Internet. To qualify as "abuse", an act must significantly interfere with the use of the network by an individual or group of individuals in some specific way, for example by consuming resources or wasting others time. The term "abuse" also includes activities that are illegal or dishonest.
    		  
      Generalities aside, due to the practical problems caused by "spamming" beeb.net wishes to make it clear that it considers the sending of bulk unsolicited email, of any kind, to be unacceptable behaviour. Beeb.net will always act when such behaviour is brought to its notice. Education, in the form of an email warning, can be the most appropriate response to a first offence, since customers can be unaware of contemporary standards. However, it is beeb.net's policy to terminate the accounts of any customer who continues to send bulk unsolicited email.
    		  
      Chain letters, "make money fast" and other ponzi pyramid-selling schemes
    		 
      These articles are similar to paper versions, where you add your name at the end of a list and send the message to lots of your friends. The person at the head of the list is typically sent some small amount of money and hopes to become rich. Simple mathematics shows why they do not work in theory, and a little thought about human nature will show you why they do not work in practice either.
    		  
      These schemes, even where they offer no financial or material reward are unacceptable abuse. They waste resources for Internet service providers and for the users who download them. If they do involve money they are also illegal in many countries - despite common claims to the contrary within their text.
    		  
      Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE)
    		 
      Unsolicited Commercial Email is advertising material sent and received by email without the recipient either requesting such information or otherwise explicitly expressing an interest in the material advertised.
    		 
      Since many Internet users use a dial-up connection and pay for their online time, it costs them money to receive email. Receipt of unsolicited commercial advertising therefore costs them money and is often therefore particularly unwelcome.
    		  
      It should be noted that a user has not expressed an interest by the mere act of posting a news article in any particular newsgroup, or by visiting a web site, unless of course they have made a specific request for information to be emailed to them.
    		  
      Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE)
    		 
      UBE is similar to the above UCE but is not attempting to sell anything.
    		  
      Forged Headers and / or Addresses
    		 
      Forging headers or messages means sending email such that its origin appears to be another user or machine, or a non-existent machine.
    		  
      It is also forgery to arrange for any replies to the email to be sent to some other user or machine.
    		  
      However, in either case, if prior permission has been granted to you by the other user or the administrators of the other machine, then there is no problem, and of course "null" reverse paths can be used as defined in the relevant standards, such as section 4.5.5 of RFC2821: ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/mirrors/internic/rfc/rfc2821.txt
    		 
      Mail Bombing
    		  
      Mail bombing is the sending of multiple emails, or one large email, with the sole intent of annoying and/or seeking revenge on a fellow Internet user. It is wasteful of shared Internet resource as well as serving no value to the recipient.
    		  
      Due to the time taken to download it, sending a long email to sites without prior agreement can amount to denial of service, or denial of access to email at the receiving site. Note that adding binary attachments to email may increase its size considerably. If prior arrangement has not been made, the email may be extremely unwelcome.
    		  
      Denial of Service Attacks
    		 
      Denial of Service is any activity designed to prevent a specific host on the Internet making full and effective use of its facilities. This includes, but is not limited to:

  • Mail bombing an address in such a way to make their Internet access impossible, difficult, or costly.

  • Opening an excessive number of email connections to the same host.

  • Intentionally sending email designed to damage the receiver's systems when interpreted; for example, sending malicious programs or viruses attached to an email.

  • Using a smarthost or email relay without authorisation to do so.
    		•  
      Mailing List Subscriptions
    		  
      Mailing lists are schemes for distributing copies of the same email to many different people. It is not acceptable to subscribe anyone, other than a user on your own host, to any mailing list or similar service, unless their explicit permission has been given.
    		  
      List owners are encouraged to confirm all subscription requests by requesting confirmation from the apparent subscriber before starting to send any list email. They must ensure that unsubscribe requests are handled efficiently. Good emailing list software is available that will automate both these processes.
    		  
      Many reports of unsolicited bulk email turn out to be from people who were unaware that they had joined a mailing list. It is not acceptable to subscribe people to a list merely because they have visited your web site or used one of your products; the person must make an explicit request to be listed.
    		  
      However, some reports occur because people have genuinely forgotten that they had made such a request. If you run a mailing list you are strongly advised to keep copies of administrative requests (web logs, or emails including headers) so that you may demonstrate that subscription requests were genuine.
    		  
      Further information on operating opt-in mailing lists can be found in the Best Current Practice document, available at:

    www.linx.net/noncore/bcp/mailinglist-bcp.html
    		 
      Breach of Copyright or Intellectual Property
    		 
      If you send copyright material or other intellectual property via email you must have permission to do so from the owner of that intellectual property.
    		  
    APPENDIX C: USENET (sometimes called "news")
      There are many forms of Usenet abuse. This appendix discusses the more common forms in an informal manner, but is by no means an exhaustive list.
    		  
      Chain Letters, "Make Money Fast" and other Ponzi Pyramid-Selling Schemes
    		 
      These articles are similar to paper versions, where you add your name at the end of a list and send the message to lots of your friends. The person at the head of the list is typically sent some small amount of money and hopes to become rich. Simple mathematics shows why they do not work in theory, and a little thought about human nature will show you why they do not work in practice either.
    		  
      These schemes, even where they offer no financial or material reward are unacceptable abuse. They waste resources for Internet service providers and for the users who download them. If they do involve money they are also illegal in many countries despite common claims to the contrary within their text.
    		  
      Commercial articles in Non-commercial Newsgroups
    		  
      You must check with the FAQs of the newsgroup in question before posting articles of a commercial nature.
    		  
      Excessive posting
    		 
      Excessive posting, commonly referred to as "spamming", means the posting of lots of substantively similar news articles, usually to a large number of newsgroups.
    		  
      It is irrelevant whether the articles can be considered "on-topic" within the newsgroups or not. The problem caused by spamming is that Usenet resources are needed to store the articles and the cost to readers of the newsgroups to download duplicates of the same message.
    		  
      The Usenet community determines whether an article has been duplicated too often using the Breidbart Index (BI). This index measures the breadth of any multi-posting, cross-posting, or combinations of the two by calculating the sum of the square roots of the number of newsgroups each article was posted to. If that number reaches 20, then the postings are extremely likely to be cancelled by automatic systems that detect this type of abuse.
    		  
      Binary articles in Non-Binary Newsgroups
    		 
      Binary articles contain information that is in a form not directly readable by humans, usually in "base64" or "UUENCODE" sections. These are usually "attachments" of images; executable files, sounds, or proprietary format documents such as Microsoft Word or Excel. Even if the attachment within the article was originally simple text or a web page (HTML), if it has been encoded before posting it is still considered to be a "binary".
    		  
      Articles posted to "non-binary" newsgroups should contain only simple text that is immediately readable without special tools. The size of any encoded section is irrelevant, the fact it is encoded is what makes it unacceptable. The only exception allowed to this blanket ban is the use of cryptographic authentication signatures, such as PGP.
    		  
      Binaries are only allowed in special binary newsgroups because this allows them to be specially handled by the "newsmasters" who run Usenet's servers. The size of binaries, in particular, means that many systems will not wish to use their bandwidth to receive them, or will expire articles more quickly to prevent them from using excessive space.
    		  
      In particular you should note that binaries are not acceptable in any alt.fan.*, or uk.* newsgroup and that beeb.net does not carry any binary newsgroups.
    		  
      Ensuring that binary articles only appear in binary newsgroups is not just a matter of convenience for the newsmasters but is also important for individual Usenet readers. The appearance of a binary in a text-only newsgroup is usually extremely unwelcome. Besides the size of the article, which will take extra time to download, special tools will be needed to decode and handle the contents.
    		  
      Forged Headers
    		 
      There are several types of unacceptable behaviour involving the forgery of article headers or article addresses.
    		  
      It is abuse to post articles with headers that would mislead recipients into believing that some other system or user had created the articles. Beeb.net's systems will add header lines to try and foil such forgery, but articles will still be treated as abuse even if beeb.net actions make the attempted forgery apparent.
    		  
      It is abuse to post articles with headers which would cause responses to these articles, solicited or otherwise, to be delivered to unwilling third parties, or to inappropriate or unreasonable newsgroups. In particular, it is abuse to arrange for email replies to be delivered to an email address that you do not have permission to use.
    		  
      It is abuse to post illegal material to Usenet.
    		 
      If you post copyright material or other intellectual property to Usenet you must have permission to do so. In particular it can be illegal to publish 'hacks' or 'cracks' of software products.
    		  
      You must not use your beeb.net account publish material that is prohibited under local obscenity or indecency laws. For example, it is a criminal offence to even possess child pornography in the U.K. and other content may give rise to civil actions. Beeb.net does not condone the presence of this type of content anywhere on the Internet.
    		  
    APPENDIX D: WEBSPACE
      You are responsible in all respects for the content of your web site and must ensure that no applicable law is violated.
    		  
      You must obtain any necessary legal permission for any works that your web site may include.
    		  
      You will be held responsible for and accept responsibility for any defamatory, confidential, secret or other proprietary material available via your web site.
    		  
      Beeb.net reserves the right to remove any material from a web site at its sole discretion, without prior notice and without explanation.
    		  
      A web site may not be used to offer, advertise or distribute any of the following types of material:

  • software for sending 'spam' (bulk emails, excessive news postings, etc.)

  • illegal material

  • lists of email addresses, except where all the owners of the addresses have given you explicit permission;

  • any collection of personal data other than in accordance with the Data Protection Acts 1984 and 1998.
    		•  
      You must comply with the Data Protection Acts 1984 and 1998 (and any amendments or re-enactments of them) regarding all information received, stored or communicated through the use of your web site.
    		  
      Web sites may not be advertised by you, or by another person, using techniques that would be classified as "abuse" if they were carried out from a beeb.net account including, but not limited to, bulk emailing and excessive news posting. Such action will be treated under the beeb.net AUP as if it had been done from the beeb.net account.
    		  
      You are required to accept email addressed to you from webmaster@beeb.net. You will be deemed to have read any and all such email and beeb.net may take action on the basis of this assumption.
    		 
      You must maintain an index page called "index.htm" or "index.html" in the root directory of your Homepages space.
    		 
      You must not cause your pages to be accessed by any means other than in the form "user.members.beeb.net" (for the username "user") nor register your web pages anywhere using any form of URL except in the form beginning:
    		 
      http://user.members.beeb.net
    		  
      The limit on space is imposed by the process that accepts uploads. If you attempt to upload a file that exceeds your available free space the upload will normally fail. Should this check not operate for any reason, beeb.net reserves the right to request that you immediately remove enough files to bring you below the limit.
    		 
      Beeb.net requires sites that it considers to show excessive use to be modified or removed from its webspace server. Beeb.net reserves the right to vary the definition of 'excessive use' at their sole discretion at any time without prior notice.
    		 
      Support from the helpdesk is only available for uploading, downloading and viewing pages. No support will be given for HTML authoring or page design.
    		  
      No logs or any detail of who visited your site will be made available.
    		  
      You will be responsible for retaining copies of your own data. Beeb.net will not keep backups of your pages.
    		 
      Beeb.net accepts no responsibility for loss of data, information in any form or other matters whatsoever that result from the use of this service.
    		 
      Beeb.net shall not be held liable for any loss however occasioned as a result of the suspension, removal or unavailability of a Homepages site or material stored within it.
    		  
      Beeb.net accepts no responsibility for hit counts being reset or incorrect
    		 
      If your account is suspended or terminated for any reason access to your webspace may be suspended.
    		  
      When you close your account, your webspace will be deleted.
    		  
      Beeb.net reserves the right to suspend any or all of your webspace at any time, without prior notice and without explanation.