Acceptable Use Policy

All Customers must comply with the policies and terms of this Acceptable Use Policy (the “AUP” or “Policy”). This Policy, including its use and behavior restrictions, is in addition to the restrictions contained in the Emmett Internet Terms and Conditions (“Service Agreement”) and has been incorporated by reference into the Service Agreement. Any capitalized terms used herein shall have the same meaning as defined in the Service Agreement.

This AUP applies to the various services offered by Emmett, including Internet Access Services (“Services”). Customer understands, acknowledges, and agrees that Emmett reserves the right to immediately suspend or terminate any Services without prior notice for Customer’s failure to comply with any portion of this Policy or the Service Agreement. Please see the Service Agreement, located here (hyperlink), for details on the suspension and termination policy. Any violation of this Policy or the Service Agreement may also lead to prosecution under local, state, and/or federal law.

(a) “Acceptable use” is hereby defined as the normal activities associated with the Customer’s use of Emmett’s Services, including, without limitation, usage of the Emmett Network and any other facilities for accessing the World Wide Web, Internet Relay Chat, USENET Newsgroups, Email, and other Internet-related features. Customer’s acceptable use of the Services will depend on whether Customer’s Services are designated as residential or commercial.

(i) Residential designation includes all Services designated primarily for personal, family, and household use within a single home. Customer shall not use, or allow others to use, the Services to operate any type of business or commercial enterprise as a primary purpose or for the long term.

(ii) Commercial designation includes all Services designed for use by a business, governmental, or institutional entity, or by an individual to provide goods or services for sale or lease or operating a commercial enterprise.

(iii) Customer shall not advertise that the Services are available for use by third parties or unauthorized users. Customer shall not resell or redistribute, or allow others to resell or redistribute, access to the Services in any manner, including, but not limited to, wireless technology.

(b) “General Prohibited Activities for All Services” include, without limitation, the following, whether any such use or behavior is conducted negligently, recklessly, knowingly, or intentionally:

(i) Misusing the Services, regardless of whether the inappropriate or unlawful use or activity was committed by an invitee, licensee, agent, servant, guest, patron, visitor, employee, or any other person who gains access to the Services. Therefore, Customer is responsible for taking steps to ensure that others do not gain unauthorized access to the Services, for instance, by strictly maintaining the confidentiality of Customer’s passwords or by appropriately protecting the use of Customer’s computer, network, or any wireless devices. Customer is solely responsible for the security of any device Customer chooses to connect to the Services, including any data stored on that device.

(ii) Using Services to distribute or receive content that is illegal, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, tortious, malicious, indecent, obscene, deceptive, fraudulent, invasive of another’s privacy or other rights, or otherwise objectionable in Emmett’s sole discretion.

(iii) Using Services in connection with commercial surveys, pyramid schemes, chain letters, junk email, spamming, or any duplicative or unsolicited messages (commercial or otherwise) not in compliance with the federal CAN-SPAM Act or the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) and applicable state laws.

(iv) Advertising, soliciting, selling, or buying, or attempting to buy and sell any goods for any non-personal or non-household purposes if using residential Services.

(v) Harvesting or otherwise collecting information about others, including email addresses, telephone numbers, or other Personal Information without consent.

(vi) Creating a false identity for the purpose of deceiving others as to the identity of the sender or the origin of a message, call, website, or mobile application (“App”).

(vii) Transmitting or uploading any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancel bots, or any other harmful or deleterious programs or software or other material protected by intellectual property laws, rights of privacy or publicity, or any other Applicable Law unless Customer owns or controls the rights thereto or has received all necessary authorizations.

(viii) Interfering with or disrupting networks connected to the Services or violating the regulations, policies, or procedures of such networks.

(ix) Attempting to gain unauthorized access to the Services, other accounts, computer systems, devices, or networks connected to the Services, through password mining or any other means.

(x) Hosting any type of harmful publicly accessible file sharing, gaming, or email server including, but not limited to, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, and Peer-to-Peer that could interfere with the technical operations of the Emmett Network, or could interfere with another Customer or user’s use and enjoyment of the Services.

(xi) Using the Services or taking any action, directly or indirectly, that will result in excessive consumption or utilization of the Services or Emmett Network resources, or which may weaken network performance, as determined in Emmett’s sole discretion, such as (a) using the Services to host a web server site which attracts excessive traffic at Customer’s location; (b) continuously uploading or downloading streaming video or audio, USENET hosting, or continuous FTP uploading or downloading; and/or (c) continued use of programs or commands which take a large amount of system resources (e.g. processor time, memory, network bandwidth, and/or drive space on the host system). These activities can hamper the delivery of or disrupt the technical performance of the Services to all Customers.

(c) “Prohibited Internet Service Activities” specifically include, without limitation, the following, whether any such use or behavior is conducted negligently, recklessly, knowingly, or intentionally:

(i) Using background and/or server-type applications, including, without limitation, IRC bots, HTTP servers, MUDs, and any other harmful process which were initiated by the Customer that continues execution on the system upon Customer logout. FCC-authorized smart home systems and IoT devices are excluded from this prohibition.

(ii) Storing files on the Emmett Network that are not used regularly for extended periods of time, including, without limitation, Customer Material. FCC-authorized smart home systems and IoT devices are excluded from this prohibition. Customer should use cloud-based storage programs such as OneDrive or iCloud to store any Customer Material.

(iii) Flooding or abusing other Customers or users, including, without limitation, ICMP flooding, mail bombing (sending large amounts of email repeatedly to a person for purposes of harassment), phishing, mass mailings to multiple addresses via bulk email not in compliance with the federal CAN-SPAM Act and TCPA, MSG/CTCP flooding on IRC, as well as other, less common methods. “Bulk Email” is defined as the same or similar email messages sent to more than twenty-five (25) recipients.

(iv) Using programs such as packet sniffers, password crack programs, or similar utilities or applications to access Emmett Network or systems.

(v) Sharing Services with another person to avoid payment of a second or upgraded Service. Customer may connect multiple computers/devices within a single location to Customer’s modem, router, and/or radio to access the Internet Service, but only through a single Emmett-issued IP address.