K-Com's goal is to make the Internet work for our clients. We want to provide as unrestricted, productive, safe and satisfying an Internet experience as possible. We think of ourselves as professionals in relation to you, our clients, providing high quality on-going services  and advice within an open relationship of honesty and mutual concern. You are not just a customer who has purchased a product and gone out the door. You are a valued client to whom we feel an on-going personal responsibility.

The terms and conditions outlined below are designed to satisfy what the law demands, to protect K-Com, and to protect our clients. They are similar to what you would find at any quality ISP, and are the general guidelines the Internet community understands as good 'netiquette'. These statements represent "an agreement" between K-Com and its clients. Nearly all clients will have no reason to be concerned with these terms and conditions. But should conflicts or misunderstandings occur, this document tries to clearly state the conditions of the agreement.

Use of your account constitutes your approval and acceptance of this agreement. Acceptance of this agreement is a condition to use the K-Com Network System(s). If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, you are not permitted to use K-Com Internet Services. Please call 1-503-788-0784 or send email to admin@k-com.net if you do not agree to these terms so that we can initiate closure of your account.

1. Modifications

K-Com reserves the right to modify these terms and conditions without prior notice at any time. We suggest you check our website monthly so you can view our current Terms and Conditions. We will attempt to notify all our clients by email when our Terms and Conditions change.

2. Enforcement of Terms and Conditions

Depending upon the circumstances of any violation of our Terms and Conditions (including any actions that causes damage, downtime, excessive load, or harm to people or systems) we may issue a warning, suspend your service, or terminate your account without notice or refund. (And if appropriate, we bill/collect our fee of $300 per-hour during office hours and $600 per-hour during non-office hours and holidays (plus any expenses to collect) to repair malicious damage caused by mail-bombing, hacking or attempting to damage our system, or other networks via our system.)

3. Illegal activities

We are required by law to report any criminal activity that we become aware of. Be aware that if it comes to our attention that you are using our system to commit illegal acts (e.g., storing or transporting commercial software via our system illegally) we must immediately suspend/terminate your service. We support your right to free speech, but can't support your use of our service to harm, abuse, harass, or libel others. By use of our service, you indemnify K-Com from any damages resulting from your actions or the content you store on our systems. However, if we believe K-Com will likely be held liable for your content (e.g., libel/harassment) hosted on our system, and you refuse to fix the problem, K-Com may terminate your account and may even pursue legal action.

4. Harassment and privacy

Your account and business is private with us. We do not sell mailing lists and generally do not share your private information. We ask you to do the same : Do not snoop or disturb other users' files or directories. You may not harass or threaten any of our staff or other clients. You may not make public any private email, or provide any of our system files to other persons on the Internet. You may not harass or make threats against another person via email or news, web, or any other electronic media/service we make available. Nor may you impersonate another person.

5. Spamming

Spamming is not tolerated at K-Com. Spamming is sending unsolicited email using mass mailing lists or software programs to people who have not asked for such email. Spam is also posting to Usenet news a single cross-post to many newsgroups, or many individual posts to multiple newsgroups that are not related to the topic of your article, or where doing so is in violation of a group's charter or common use. Posting identical or nearly identical Usenet posts on a regular (daily, weekly) basis, with exception of FAQ's and other informational content posts, is similarly prohibited. Spam sent via other networks, but referencing email addresses or websites at K-Com is similarly prohibited. You may not use K-Com as a "drop off" address for replies to spam mail or spam posts sent from other networks. We encourage the appropriate use of email and Usenet news, and we do not censor for content. We will censor those users who annoy vast numbers of innocent people on the net who do not wish to be bothered by unsolicited materials. Hookup clients: Regardless of your connectivity to K-Com you are bound to these same restrictions. If you or your customers spam, you risk loss of connectivity until the problem is mitigated.

6. Denial of service attacks

You may not mount or launch an attack against our system or any other. This includes mail bombing, "hacking" or attempting to gain root access, tsunami or flood bots or annoyance utilities like "nuke" or "flash," employing packet sniffers, flood pings, etc.

7. Technical Support

We at K-Com are proud of our technical support staff. To maintain the highest quality of technical support our clients expect, we must limit the availability of telephone tech support to one free hour with the primary account holder. We cannot provide tech support for other persons whom you may authorize to use your account, such as your wife, brother, business partners, etc.. Similarly, we must limit tech support to issues related to connectivity only. We cannot teach you how to design your web pages, how to write asp, php, perl scripts, how to compile code, etc.. We can only offer such help on a consultancy basis, or we may refer you to other specialists. However, we may (and frequently do), at our discretion and time permitting, assist clients with non-connectivity issues. Providing such additional service shall not be construed to mean that K-Com is obligated to provide such service.

8. Payment and Billing

Charges accrue from the time you sign up until the end of the period for which you paid referred to here as the "Renewal Date".  Payments are due before the renewal date as to avoid late fee's. K-Com provides a courtesy invoice approximately 2 weeks before your renewal date as a reminder.  K-Com clients must give 30 days written notice and at least 30 days before your next renewal date, that they intend to discontinue K-Com Internet services upon their next renewal date to avoid any late fee's (other fee's may still apply). There is no refund should you choose to discontinue service prior to the end of the time for which you have paid. Dialup Clients who have paid annually and move outside the K-Com service areas should let us know; in unusual circumstances a refund may be possible for some period of the time for which you have paid.

Much like having to pay for a rented movie even if you don't watch it or a magazine subscription even if you don't read it, you must pay for your Internet access ability even if you don't log in and use it. All K-Com prices can change without notice at any time. All startup fees and equipment sales must be paid for in advance, before equipment is shipped or circuits are activated.

Payment amounts are for the periods specified, for example: monthly, quarterly,  or annually. The fact that a client pays a certain amount for annual service does not imply that the same amount is guaranteed for the following year, for example. K-Com reserves the right to change the costs of services at any time; account renewals would be at the rate in effect at the time of the renewal..

Most clients make their payments in a timely manner and by the renewal date. These clients are able to take advantage of a less expensive rate for access. If payments are made late or after the renewal date, then a high price would apply. This isn't a late fee, rather the regular rate of access at the time of billing.

9. Extra Charges and Fees

K-Com reserves the right to charge (and collect) for additional expenses incurred. Some services are optional and provided at a nominal charge. Listed below are rates for some of these services: (Add travel time of $1 per mile to all hourly rates where appropriate. All hourly rates 1 hour minimum.)

• Changes to existing Domain Name information: $20 per domain name
• Changing K-Com login name: $20 per login name
• Changing K-Com Email Accounts: $10 per email account
• Changing Email Password: $5 per change
• Per-hour fee for technician-level support (e.g., billing research, website assistance, training, debugging scripts/code/configurations, etc.): $100 per hour
• Per-hour fee for engineering-level support (e.g., router configuration, Telco problem resolution, Sr. SysAdmin issues, research on collection issues, harassment, banking, investment, marketing, design, or legal matters): $165 per hour
• Credit card dispute fee: $25
• Returned check fee: $30
• Declined credit card fee: $25
• Re-connection fee: $25(if applicable)
• Per-hour fee to research/prepare/collect/process defaulted debts: $100 per hour
• Excessive and unnecessary billing changes: $15 per occurrence
• Restoration of FrontPage Server Extensions: $15 per restoration
• Cold Fusion Support: One time $25 fee to setup
• Dreamweaver Support: One time $25 fee to setup
• PHP Support: One time $25 fee to setup
• Perl Support: One time $25 fee to setup

10. Domain name billing issues

K-Com charges $50 for moving, registering, or deleting a domain name. All Domain Name registration must be done by K-Com staff. We insist on processing any and all DNS requests that reside on our servers. K-Com does not charge fees on behalf of Domain Registrars such as Verisign, Register.com, OpenSRS, or DomainDiscover. Domain Registrar charges (and domain ownership issues) are always the responsibility of the client. We may at the customers request, handle the billing aspect of the registration and mail/email and invoice at least 30 days before the renewal date.

All domains hosted by K-Com or using our DNS servers, are kept at K-Com until the client has paid all past debts to K-Com. We will not process any request to move any domain for any client having a past-due amount owed to K-Com; and we reserve the right to wait for the check/payment to clear the bank before releasing the domain. Similarly, we cannot move domains to K-Com from other ISPs in cases where unpaid debts to the former ISP are a issue.

11. Dialup usage

K-Com's dialup accounts are flat-rate for normal and reasonable active usage. What this means is that the time online is "unlimited", but it must be one person actively using the system from one computer. ISP's can remain profitable only by making the same line available to many users. Users will be disconnected after ten minutes of inactivity.

It is important that all of our clients have equal access to the connection they are paying for. The vast majority of our clients will never have any problem; they don't want to sit hour after hour on the Internet. The general definition of "unlimited" means not more than two hours connection time per day. If a client constantly tries to stay connected full time or more than two hours a day, a warning will be issued. If a client continues abuse of the system after one warning, the account will be closed without a refund.

The accountholder is ultimately responsible for the account. If someone is using your account, and you are not aware of it, you are still responsible for charges, etc.

12. Local number

Make sure that K-Com's dialup number is local to you! K-Com can not, and will not be held responsible for phone charges, whether due to error, a telco error, or yours. If you are uncertain, always check with your telephone company to insure K-Com's number is local to you. K-Com will not reimburse for telephone company expenses under any circumstance.

13. Concurrent dialups

Only one simultaneous dial-in per account. This means that you may not use more than one of K-Com's lines at the same time. If you are found logged in more than once over a modem connection, we will assume that your password has been compromised and will immediately suspend your account. There are some circumstances when we may permit multiple dial-ins for business accounts.

14. Disk allotments and special services

Personal dialup clients are allocated ten megabytes of disk space for a web site. Allocated web space and other extra value services are available upon request.

15. BOTS, RSS, MOOs, IRCs, MUDs, and other servers

IRCbots or servers may not be run on K-Com. Bots found running will be terminated, files associated with them may be deleted. MUDs and MOOs other than SerenityMOO may not be hosted on our system.

15.1  Custom Web Content and Free Scripts Obtained from the Internet

Due to increasing threats from the internet from botnets, form injections, hackers, spammers and other malicious activities, K-Com reserves the right to ban the use of a custom made or free script obtained from the internet (asp, php, perl etc) from being used on our web servers. Many "free" scripts now contain malicious embedded code that the creator can then use to gain access to our server(s).  K-Com must review the script first, be allowed to do it's research as to whether it is a safely written script and modify the script(s) as it deems necessary to assure that it cannot be abused. We will work directly with the Webmaster or Designer to achieve a mutually acceptable design. In some cases, we reserve the right to remove the script completely from our server(s)(if we are unable to contact anyone in regards to the issue) without notice. The System Admin will ultimately have the final decision as to the overall structure and types of scripts used. Scripts that need exclusive access to the  IUSR or Guest account for access will not allow on our server(s) and will be removed or reworked as K-Com deems necessary. In some cases, we may allow such scripts, however this decision would be made on a case by case, script by script basis.

15.2  Website Image Sizes

K-Com reserves the right modify images (jpep, gif, etc.) that exceed the standard size for websites. Large image file sizes take a long time to load and put an unnecessary load on our data line and server resources. In most cases we will contact you to inform you that you need to reduce the size of the files, but in other cases we may make the modifications ourselves without notice.

15.3 FrontPage Server Extensions

Due to the delicate nature of FrontPage Server Extensions, it is recommend that if your site utilizes these extensions, that you refrain from using FTP (file transfer protocol) to upload and download data from your website. Doing so in essence breaks the extension and the site will fail to function as designed. Make sure that you have a thorough working knowledge of Microsoft FrontPage or Microsoft Expressions Web. K-Com will restore the extensions only once. Each Subsequent restore will be met with a fee (see section 9 extra charges)

15.4 Form Validation Requirement

It is now required that any contact, signup, or any other form use form validation. This validation can be as simple as a FrontPage Form Validation Component or the more preferred method is an image validation (CAPTCHA) script that forces the user to enter a code to proceed or submit the form. 

16. Bandwidth/CPU/Memory Usage

You may make whatever material you like available for FTP or WWW as long as it is legal and it does not generate in excess of 150 Megs per day (Personal) or 300 Megs per day (Business). For this reason, we strongly recommend that our clients avoid storing any adult-oriented materials or large images here. If your Internet site suddenly sucks giant amounts of bandwidth, we retain the right to restrict access to it for such interval as we deem necessary to maintain availability of bandwidth for all users. Similarly, your actions/processes may not consume an unreasonable amount of system resources/CPU cycles.

17. Network availability

K-Com's uptime record is second to none, and when a part of our system (or yours) is down, it is usually because of a Telco's error or failed equipment. We can not refund for temporary service outages, no matter what the cause.

18. Backup of data

Another topic involving common sense: Backups. K-Com performs regular, scheduled backups, but nothing in this world is failsafe. We do not accept legal responsibility to backup client files, whether website files, email files left on the server, or other files.

If you have something critical to your career or hobby, it makes sense to keep a copy of it locally on your own computer. Our backups are designed for recovery from serious system failures, not for recovery of files accidentally or intentionally deleted by users. We may be able to restore files a user has deleted, but there are substantial charges associated with doing so.

19. Agreements with Minors

K-Com requires that its agreement be made with a person who is qualified to contract. As such, clients must be over the age of eighteen years. Otherwise, a parent or guardian must accept this agreement and assume responsibility for payment of K-Com services and for client's compliance with this agreement.

20. Disclaimers

K-Com disclaims any and all responsibility for the loss of, or damage to, any client data stored on our system, or for any consequential damages related to such loss, damage, or unavailability. K-Com's services are provided with no warranty or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall K-Com be liable for incidental, consequential or special damages including, without limitation, loss of data or profits, regardless of whether K-Com has been advised of the risk of such damages in advance. By using our services at any time, you unconditionally agree to indemnify and hold harmless K-Com from and against loss, suit, damage or claim including reasonable attorney's fees.

21. Limitation of Service

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone at any time for any reason. In some cases, we may not be able to give advance notice.

In short, respect K-Com and all its clients as well employees, as well as the Internet community in general. In that way we can help make the Internet a safer place and work for everyone.