Account setup procedure: you answer a bunch of questions. When you are done answering questions, your account is reserved. Your account is activated when your first payment is received. If you don't want to wait that long, please call and we'll activate it if you give us a credit card or say you've mailed a check. Before you answer the questions, you must click "I Agree" at the bottom of this page to indicate your acceptance of our terms of use.

After your account has been made, you have 15 days to try it out. If you cancel within that period we will send you a full refund promptly. No reason required.

If you need any special services like registering a domain or a virtual www server, then note that below or send mail after your account is made. Special services do not have a trial period.

Currently this signup form fails to ask which kind of account you would like. Please specify what you would like in the notes section on the next page. (This will be fixed someday)

You must acknowledge our account policies and agree to abide by them. Click "I Agree" to indicate your acceptance.

Policies

Fifteen-day trial period

After your account has been made, you have 15 days to try it out. If you cancel within that period we will send you a full refund promptly. No reason required. This does not apply to leased-line accounts.

Referral bonus

Sign up a friend, Idiom will credit $40 to $100 towards your account depending on the type of new account.

Assuming we know who to credit, the credit will be awarded automatically after the new account is fully established and paid for.

Account activation

Normally accounts are activated only after the first payment is received. If you wish to have your account activated more quickly, sign up for it using your computer, and call us with your credit card number.

Invoices

Invoices will be sent monthly, starting a month from the day your account was activated. They will be sent by email to your Idiom account unless otherwise specified.

If you think your invoice is erroneous, please send email with details to accounting@idiom.com. It may take up to 15 days for us to investigate a reported accounting error but we will not suspend your account in the interim.

Paper invoices are only available when invoicing a year in advance.

Payments

Payments can be made by either check, credit card or money order. To pay by credit card, enter your credit card information using the Account Management Wizard.

Payment is due in advance of when service is rendered. While monthly checks are accepted, multi-month payments are preferred.

Payments should be sent to:

Idiom 1563 Solano Ave. PMB #107 Berkeley, CA 94707-2116

Refunds

Refunds will only be given when the amount owed is more than $10. Refunds will only be given on money that was actually paid to Idiom.

Initial Payments

New accounts that have setup fees of $200 or more must have their setup fees paid in advance and/or have a known-to-be-good credit card on file. We can test a credit card with a $5.00 charge. We will not order services or equipment without knowing that we can get or have been paid.

Collections

If we have to send your account to collections because you failed to pay your bill, we will pass on the collections charges.

Background processes, bots and other special needs

Special requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. In general, background processes other than bots must be approved. IRC-related processes including channel protection bots are never allowed.

Pornographic web publishing

Pornographic web publishing from Idiom is allowed. However, we do not recommend running free porn sites from Idiom - it is too easy to run up an unexpectedly large bill with transfers over our fast network. On the other hand, our fast network and reliable servers make Idiom a very good place to run subscription based services.

Non-profit organizations

Non-profit organizations may have a free basic account + virtual hosting if sponsored by two regular ($20/mo or more) Idiom account holders. The non-profit account may only remain free as long as both sponsors remain Idiom customers.

An Idiom account holder may sponsor only one non-profit account.

IP addresses

Idiom does not currently charge for IP address block allocations. We will provide IP addresses upon request providing that the requested IP addresses will be used in a manner compliant with RFC2050 and ARIN's policies.

Anyone receiving eight or more IP addresses must provide us with contact information. We will publish that contact information in ARIN's public whois database.

Bandwidth Peaks

For accounts with web hit bandwidth charges, the two days in the billing period with the highest usage will be charged as if their usage was equal to the third-highest day. This levels out usages and guards against being slashdotted.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Based on an analysis of the DMCA we believe that we must state explicitly the following: Anyone who repeatedly violates copyright law will have their account terminated.

Rules

Use of this service constitutes your agreement to abide by the following rules:

Rule 1: be nice

Try to be nice to the other users of idiom.com. Try to be nice to the system. Try to be nice to the users of other systems. Try to be nice to the people who run idiom.com.

Rule 2: spamming isn't nice

Posting to inappropriate newsgroups is not nice. Sending unsolicited email is not nice. If you or someone on your behalf posts or sends to too many, we will turn off your account and throw away your email. You will not profit from your actions. This is your warning. There is no appeal.

In addition to having your account removed, you will be charged $500 for the time it takes us to answer complaints about your actions.

For leased-line (DSL, T1s, DS3s, etc) accounts rather than closing your account we may restrict your access and/or add filters.

Rule 3: don't do anything illegal using idiom.com

Idiom will cooperate with the law. Placing copyrighted material on your web site without the consent of the copyright holder is illegal.

Rule 4: don't help people break into idiom.com

There are several ways you could cause security problems on idiom.com: you could try to break into other accounts yourself; you could use a password that isn't good enough; you could install programs (CGI most likely) that compromise security; or you could attract cracker attention to idiom.com.

Rule 5: access by minors is your responsibility

There is adult material on the Internet. You can access some of it from here. If you have children and you care about this, it is your responsibility to do something about it. If you are using PPP, there is a product called Cyber Patrol that can limit access. This pointer is the only help we will give.

Rule 6: don't share your password far and wide

Do not allow your account to be used by people you don't know and limit it's use among people you do know. You are responsible for everything that goes on with your account.

Rule 7: don't attack other people's systems

Don't make attempts to penetrate or disable other people's systems. Do not do anything that even looks like an attack. If you wish to attack a system in order to test it and the owner of the system wants this, then you must let us know in advance so that we don't think you're behaving badly and cut off your access.

Rule 8: we're not liable

To the extent allowed by law, Idiom is not liable for its actions. You will indemnify Idiom against claims that arise because of your own actions. While we try to provide a reliable service, we cannot make any guarantees that our service will work. In particular, Idiom uses third parties to provide many services and some of these third parties break things.
policies version: 2005/07/07