Acceptable Use Policy
Important Note: Gaelic Telecom may revise this Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") from time to time without notice by posting a new version of this document on the Gaelic Telecom web site at www.gaelictelecom.ie. Accordingly, subscribers should consult this document regularly to ensure that their activities conform to the most recent version. Questions regarding this AUP and complaints of violations of this AUP by subscribers can be directed to abuse@gaelic.ie.

1. Prohibited Activities – General
   One important aspect of the Internet is that no one party owns or controls it. This fact accounts for much of the Internet's openness and value, but it also places a high premium on the judgment and responsibility of those who use the Internet, both in the information they acquire and in the information they disseminate to others.
   
   When subscribers obtain information through the Internet, they must keep in mind that Gaelic Telecom cannot monitor, verify, warrant, or vouch for the accuracy and quality of the information that subscribers acquire. For this reason, the subscriber must exercise his or her best judgment in relying on information obtained from the Internet, and also should be aware that some material posted to the Internet can be sexually explicit or otherwise offensive.
   
   Because Gaelic Telecom cannot monitor or censor the Internet, and will not attempt to do so, Gaelic Telecom cannot accept any responsibility for injury to its subscribers that results from inaccurate, unsuitable, offensive, or illegal Internet communications.
   
   When subscribers disseminate information through the Internet, they also must keep in mind that Gaelic Telecom does not review, edit, censor, or take responsibility for any information its subscribers create. When users place information on the Internet, they have the same liability as other authors for copyright infringement, defamation, and other harmful speech. Also, because the information they create is carried over Gaelic Telecom's network and may reach a large number of people, including both subscribers and non-subscribers of Gaelic Telecom, subscribers' postings to the Internet may affect other subscribers and may harm Gaelic Telecom's goodwill, business reputation, and operations. For these reasons, subscribers violate Gaelic Telecom policy and the service agreement when they, their customers, affiliates, or subsidiaries engage in the following prohibited activities:
   
   Spamming - Sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial messages over the Internet (known as "spamming"). It is not only harmful because of its negative impact on subscribers attitudes toward Gaelic Telecom, but also Gaelic Telecom specifically requires that:
   * subscribers will not use the Service to send the same or substantially similar unsolicited message to 10 or more recipients or 10 or more usenet news groups in a single week;
   * subscribers will not use any Internet services not provided by Gaelic Telecom to send more than 10 unsolicited messages to individuals or newsgroups in one week to advertise a web site, email address or other service provided to you by Gaelic Telecom;
   * subscribers will not maintain an open SMTP relay.
   
   Gaelic Telecom subscribe to industry 'blacklists' to help reduce the volume of spam being delivered to subscribers, however determined spammers are experts at thwarting the blacklists, hence we also offer an E-Mail Spam Protection service.
   
   Intellectual Property Violations - Engaging in any activity that infringes or misappropriates the intellectual property rights of others, including copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets, software piracy, and patents held by individuals, corporations, or other entities. Also, engaging in activity that violates privacy, publicity, or other personal rights of others. Gaelic Telecom subscribers responsible for acts prohibited in this Policy may have their services terminated at Gaelic Telecom's discretion. If this Policy is violated, the subscriber agrees to pay Gaelic Telecom all costs arising from the violation, including (but not limited to) transmission of said messages, the receiving, processing, and storing of replies, whether to the subscriber or to Gaelic Telecom, and any other costs incurred. These costs will be billed hourly at €127.00 per hour, with a minimum charge of €252.00 per incident. Payment of such charges by the subscriber will not prevent Gaelic Telecom from seeking other damages against the subscriber.
   
   Obscene Speech or Materials - Using Gaelic Telecom's network to transmit, store, or otherwise make available child pornography or obscene speech or material is prohibited. Gaelic Telecom is required by law to notify law enforcement agencies when it becomes aware of the presence of child pornography on or being transmitted through Gaelic Telecom's network.
   
   Defamatory or Abusive Language - Using Gaelic Telecom's network as a means to transmit or post defamatory, harassing, abusive, or threatening language.
   
   Forging of Headers - You may not forge any part of the header of any electronic transmission originating within or passing through the Gaelic Telecom network.
   
   Illegal or Unauthorised Access to Other Computers, Accounts or Networks - Accessing illegally or without authorisation computers, accounts, or networks belonging to another party, or attempting to penetrate security measures of another individual's system (often known as "hacking" and/or "cracking"). Also, any activity that might be used as a precursor to an attempted system penetration (i.e. port scan, stealth scan, or other information gathering activity).
   
   Distribution of Internet Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses, or Other Destructive Activities - Distributing information regarding the creation of and sending Internet viruses, worms, Trojan horses, pinging, flooding, mail bombing, or denial of service attacks. Also, activities that disrupt the use of or interfere with the ability of others to effectively use the network or any connected network, system, service, or equipment.
   
   Facilitating a Violation of this AUP - Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP, which includes the facilitation of the means to Spam, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail bombing, denial of service attacks, and piracy of software.
   
   Other Illegal Activities - Engaging in activities that are determined to be illegal, including advertising or making available ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, fraudulently charging credit cards, and pirating software.
   
   Other Activities - Engaging in activities, whether lawful or unlawful, that Gaelic Telecom determines to be harmful to its subscribers, operations, reputation, goodwill, or customer relations.
   
   
2. Access Services
   This section applies to any Internet Access Service, whether Dialup, Private Leased Line or DSL Broadband circuit based.
   
   Who may use the Service - You (and members of your household in the case of a Domestic Access account) are the only Authorised Users of the Service. You must not permit anyone else to use your Account. and you may not disclose any security information such as a password to anyone. You are solely responsible for ensuring the confidentiality of all such security information. You are liable for all charges incurred for use of your account. However, you will not be held liable if you advise Gaelic Telecom within 24 hours of discovering unauthorised use of your account, provided said use is not due to the failure of an authorised user to exercise reasonable care over the confidentiality of security information.
   
   Transfer or assignment of Accounts - Gaelic Telecom access accounts cannot be transferred or used by anyone other than the Gaelic Telecom Customers or authorised System Users. Customers and System Users may not sell, lease, rent or assign an Internet connection or parts of the connection to any party without the express, prior written approval of Gaelic Telecom.
   
   Multiple Use - At no time may you use the same account to access the service multiple times.
   
   Excessive Use - No system has unlimited resources, and we expect you to act responsibly when consuming resources on our system(s). If you consume excessive resources on our system we may suspend your access at any time without prior notice.
   
   Some access services are bound by a monthly allocation, typically a download allowance or line speed in the case of Private Lines. You must comply with all current bandwidth, download, and other allocations on the service established by Gaelic Telecom.
   
   Use of Network bandwidth is expected to be reasonable and moderate. You must ensure that your activity does not improperly degrade any other user's use of the Gaelic Telecom service, nor represent an unusually large burden on the network. In addition, you must ensure that your activities do not improperly restrict Gaelic Telecom's ability to deliver the service and monitor the service and/or network.
   
   Broadband Traffic Policy: It is our intention to provide a fast, reliable service for all broadband users. However, it is important to note that ADSL broadband is a 'shared' access service and operates on a contention ratio depending on the broadband service you have chosen. As such we require that users do not make unreasonable demands on the network - ADSL broadband services are not designed to provide sustained, high-volume access as this may compromise the service for other users. If users are found to be making excessive use of their broadband service they may find their service restricted and if it continues may have their service suspended or cancelled.
   
   In the event that Customer usage exceeds the download/upload limits attaching to their chosen broadband product, Gaelic Telecom may, without prejudice to its right to charge the customer for the excess usage, request the customer to select a product more appropriate to its usage. In the event of the customer refusing or neglecting to select an alternative product, Gaelic Telecom may, upon due notice, terminate the provision of the broadband product to the customer.
   
   For products that have no download/upload limits attaching to them then, measured in gigabytes (GB), we would consider acceptable traffic usage to be no more than approximately 25 times your download speed (as measured in Mbps) per calendar month.
   
   
3. Email
   Mailbox size - Any mailbox over 20 Mbytes may, at the absolute discretion of Gaelic Telecom, be compressed and moved to temporary storage, or deleted.
   
   Message Size - You may not send unsolicited email where the recipient objects to the email, or send mass emails, or emails of excessive size. Some services include the use of a mail account at an Gaelic Telecom domain - for example @gaelic.ie. The following usage limits also apply:
   
   Mailbox Age - Any mailbox which is emptied as a result of all messages being deleted for the above reasons ( Message Age or Size ), or which has not been logged into for 60 days or more or where the customer has canceled their Gaelic Telecom ISP subscription will be deleted.
   
   Mail Name - Users should not expect that retaining dormant mail accounts at Gaelic Telecom domains will permit them to maintain a hold on the mail account name. The mail account name used by the user is the property of Gaelic Telecom and is normally released by the user for potential use by other subscribers when the account is no longer required. Gaelic Telecom will reassign the mail account name when the related service is cancelled or suspended, or when the Mailbox is taken out of service for reasons described above. Gaelic Telecom will also reassign the name where a mail account is judged to be 'inactive' - e.g.. not normally used to send and receive communications with others. The classification of a mail account as 'inactive' is at the sole discretion of Gaelic Telecom.
   
   The above do not apply to our Virtual Mail Server service, which provides replacement of an on-site E-Mail Server. In this case the limitations are related to the overall size of a users Mail disk space, and the size on an individual message. The actual limits should be checked against the service specification.
   
   
4. Spam & Virus Trap
   Additional Domains - The service provides the ability to assign a number of additional domains into one Spam & Virus checking service. All such domains must provide E-mail to the same organisation. It is not permitted that users of these services act as an 'intermediary' to allow more than one organisation share the service.
   
   Who may use the service - The service is intended to be used for E-Mail message destined to one organisation. It is not permitted to utilise these services for public or commercial mailing services.
   
   Message Age - The SPAM & Virus Trap retains suspect and other E-Mails in Queues. Messages will be retained in these queues for a maximum of 10 days. It is expected that the SPAM Control Officer will process these queues regularly, in order to ensure they are not consuming excessive resources on our systems.
   
   
5. Loan hardware
   Some services include the Loan Hardware and Documentation, which is provided as part of the service to be used for as long as the customers remain as subscribers to the services. Such hardware remains the property of Gaelic Telecom.
   
   Mis-treatment - users should treat the hardware as befits anything which is borrowed, and not mistreat or deface it in any way. Gaelic Telecom will charge for hardware returned which is no longer suited to further loan issue. Typically the loan consists of the unit, cabling, installation media, documentation and power supply.
   
   
6. Web Sites
   This section applies to any Web Site, files or data hosted on your behalf by Gaelic Telecom. This includes any files, programmes and scripts stored on Gaelic Telecom' servers and / or Customer Co-Located Servers, whether publicly accessible or not.
   
   Who may use the Service - You may not place data on our servers on behalf of people other than the Authorised Users, except with explicit written permission from Gaelic Telecom, nor may you allow others to place data on our servers using any means of identification provided to you by Gaelic Telecom.
   
   Content Type - Some services include the availability of commercial web space at an Gaelic Telecom domain - for example users.gaelic.ie. The content must be of a commercial nature and be fully available for public use and viewing. The space may not be used for private or personal use and may not be resold lent or used by any third party other than the customer. The classification of a Web site content and/or use is at the sole discretion of Gaelic Telecom. The name used to identify the space remains the property of Gaelic Telecom, and will be released for use by other subscribers in conjunction with the underlying service.
   
   Excessive use or size - Your site may not consume excessive bandwidth, disk space or other system resources. If, at the absolute discretion of Gaelic Telecom, your site is using excessive resources, or in any way affecting any service provided by Gaelic Telecom, you will be required to remove all or some of the files stored on the Gaelic Telecom servers within 7 days of being advised of this.
   
   Lawful use - Your web site may only be used for lawful purposes. The uploading of any material which is in contravention of any law of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and The Six Counties, or is contrary to the public morality or decency, is a prohibited activity ( see above ).
   
   Backups - You are solely responsible for keeping backup copies of any material that you upload. Gaelic Telecom takes absolutely no responsibility for files and data stored on the Gaelic Telecom servers.
   
   Gaelic Telecom reserves the right, at Gaelic Telecom' absolute discretion, to remove any Web site or portion thereof that does not comply with this Policy.
   
   Personal Web Space
   The above Web Sites acceptable use also applies to Personal Web Space where supplied with a service, usually at an Gaelic Telecom domain, for example users.gaelic.ie. The exception is the Content Type heading, where the space is clearly intended for personal use.
   
   Content Type - No commercial site may be hosted using free web space provided as part of any account. The classification of a Web site as commercial is at the sole discretion of Gaelic Telecom.
   
   Gaelic Telecom reserves the right, at Gaelic Telecom's absolute discretion, to remove any personal web space or portion thereof that does not comply with this Policy.
   
   
7. Customer Privacy
   Privacy is a major concern at Gaelic Telecom. We do not sell our subscribers list, or any of our subscribers information, to outside parties. We are dedicated to preserving the privacy of our customers.
   
   Disclosure of customer information and communications
   
   Gaelic Telecom will not otherwise disclose its customers' personal and account information unless we have reason to believe that disclosing such information is necessary to identify, make contact with, or bring legal action against someone who may be causing harm or interfering with the rights or property of Gaelic Telecom, our customers, or others, or where we have a good faith belief that the law requires such disclosure.
   
   Gaelic Telecom routinely collects transactional information such as traffic patterns, aggregate data regarding general surfing patterns, and other site access information. This information may be shared with vendors and other reputable third parties. The information shared never contains any identifiable personal information of Gaelic Telecom customers. For example, we might share statistics on how many customers accessed a specific web site, how that traffic was routed within our network, and what level of traffic was involved, but we will not specifically disclose who accessed the site. In general we gather this aggregate data in order to monitor the traffic patterns and efficiencies of our network.
   
   Gaelic Telecom do not routinely monitor the content of customer traffic and also will not, except for reasons stated below, disclose to third parties the contents of any electronic mail or other electronic communications that we store or transmit for our customers. The circumstances under which Gaelic Telecom will disclose such electronic customer communications are when:
   
   * it is necessary in order to provide service to the customer;
   * it is necessary to protect our legitimate interests and those of our customers;
   * it is required to cooperate with interception orders, warrants, or other legal process that we determine to be valid and enforceable;
   * it is necessary to provide to a law enforcement agency when the contents are inadvertently obtained by us and appear to pertain to the commission of a crime;
   
   Gaelic Telecom disclaims any intention to censor, edit or engage in ongoing review or surveillance of communications stored on or transmitted through our facilities by customers or others. Gaelic Telecom will, however, review, delete or block access to communications that may harm Gaelic Telecom, our customers or third parties. The grounds on which we may take such action include, but are not limited to, actual or potential violations of Gaelic Telecom's Acceptable Use Policy.
   
   Customers occasionally wonder how Spammers can get their E-Mail addresses, and often suggest that Gaelic Telecom is the source. If you are receiving unsolicited email and aren't sure of how the sending party obtained your email address, we have listed below some of the more common methods emailers use to get or guess this information:
   
   * The email address was used as a contact in the registry of a domain name. This is a public record file, and a common place for bulk emailers to find the email addresses of the people in charge of domains.
   * The email address was used on a web page as the "webmaster" or "support" email address, or either of these accounts forward to your email account. This is also an often used way to solicit the administrators of a web page.
   * You signed up for a newsletter or entered in your email address on a web page that requested it. This is a common way for companies to not only send out their own mass emailings, but to gather email addresses to sell to other companies as well.
   * Your email address was used in "chain letters" or emails exchanged with friends where your message has the potential to be forwarded on to unknown individuals.
   * The E-Mail address is a generic one, such as sales@yourdomain.ie, and the Spammer simply sent out the spam to all known variations of generic mailboxes.
   * The spammer does not have your E-Mail address, buy your address is set up as a ‘catch-all’ – which means no matter what name was used as the receiver address, the mail will arrive in your account.