The agreement#
These Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy (“Agreement”) are a legal agreement between you, the customer (“you”, “your”, “Customer”), and Comcities.com, operated by Platinum Online (Private) Limited (“we”, “us”, “our”, “Supplier”), which provides the hosting services described on comcities.com. This Agreement sets out our obligations to you, and yours to us, when you use our services.
You must accept this Agreement to sign up for an account or to use our services. Please read all of it.
In shortThe points customers ask about most. This summary does not replace the full terms below.
- Services renew automatically. To cancel, use the client area at least 30 days before the end date. Cancellation
- Unpaid services are suspended after 7 days and terminated once 30 days overdue. Payment
- A chargeback ends your account and carries an administrative fee of $50 to $500. Disputes
- We guarantee 99.9% network uptime, and credit your account if we miss it. SLA
- Keep your own backups: ours are a courtesy, not a guarantee. Backups
- No spam, adult content, piracy or the other uses listed in Article 4. Acceptable use
- Radio accounts that regularly use over 2 TB a month are capped at 2 TB. Fair use
Article 1Agreement to be bound#
By applying for any Comcities.com service, whether through our online order process, in person, by telephone or by email, you confirm that you have read this Agreement and agree to be bound by all of its terms and conditions.
This Agreement, together with our Privacy Policy, Refund Policy, Support Policy and Resource Usage Policy, is the complete and exclusive agreement between you and us about our services. We may change any of these policies, guidelines and disclaimers without prior notice.
Limitation of liability#
We are not responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, that may arise from our servers going offline or being unavailable for any reason. Nor are we responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental or consequential damages, that result from the corruption or deletion of any data on our servers.
Disclaimer#
We cannot be held liable for system downtime, crashes or data loss, or for any profits a client estimates they would have made had their service been working. Some of our services are resold, so some of the equipment, routing, software and programming we use is not owned or written by us. We are not responsible for how our clients use their accounts.
If any of these terms are not followed, the account concerned will be deactivated automatically. We may remove any account, for any reason we see fit, without notice and without refund.
Article 2Service and billing#
Setting up your service#
We will email you when your account is ready, and invoice you from the date it went online. We make the account available once we have confirmed your payment, and no later than 3 days after we receive it. If we have not given you access to the service within 7 days of receiving your payment, you may ask us to cancel the order and refund what you have paid.
Renewal and cancellation#
We provide the service you chose for the period covered by the payment plan you chose. Your services renew automatically at the end of each term unless you cancel them before the due date.
To cancel, submit the cancellation form in the client area at least 30 days before the date the service should end. We cannot accept cancellations by phone, fax or email.
Fees and payment#
You agree to pay the service fees shown on our website for the billing period you have chosen. All payments are due immediately.
If you do not pay, we will suspend your service after 7 days, and end this Agreement once a payment is 30 days overdue. Suspension or termination does not cancel what you owe: you remain responsible for all charges due, plus reasonable interest and collection fees.
Inactive and closed accounts#
We may terminate unpaid accounts that have been inactive for more than 60 days.
Inactive, dormant and closed accounts are more likely to be hacked, because they often use old or reused passwords that may already have been leaked. To reduce that risk, we may delete any user account that has not been signed into for at least three months. An inactive or closed account with no active services is deleted within 30 days of becoming inactive. If you want a new service after your account has been deleted, you will need to create a new account.
Billing disputes and refunds#
Please report any billing dispute or overcharge within 7 days of the charge.
Opening a dispute (chargeback) with your card issuer ends this Agreement automatically. If you do, all your accounts and data will be removed from our network, you will be temporarily banned from our services, and you agree to pay us an administrative fee of no less than $50 and no more than $500.
Refunds, when you ask for one or we offer it, can take up to 30 days to process. See our Refund Policy for details.
Changes to services and prices#
We may change or discontinue any service, or any part of it, at any time, temporarily or permanently, with or without notice.
Prices for all services, including monthly subscription fees, may change with 30 days’ notice. We may give that notice at any time by publishing the change on comcities.com or within the service itself.
We are not liable to you or to any third party for any change, price change, suspension or discontinuation of a service.
Article 3Our obligations#
We provide our services with all reasonable care and diligence, following accepted professional practice, and make reasonable efforts to keep them in good working order. If the hardware or service you rent fails, and you have opened a support ticket about it, we will repair or replace the faulty part as soon as reasonably practical. If we do not expect to fix the fault within the usual repair time, we will tell you straight away.
Uptime guarantee and service level agreement (SLA)#
“Uptime” is the time the services are available, and “downtime” the time the servers are unavailable, both measured only by our own monitoring systems. We guarantee that our network, connectivity and power will be available 99.9% of the time.
If we fall short, we will credit your account with a percentage of the monthly fee you paid for the affected service:
| Monthly uptime | Credit |
|---|---|
| 99.0% to below 99.9% | 25% |
| Above 98.0% to below 99.0% | 50% |
| 98.0% or below | 100% |
Credits do not apply to payments for domain registrations, software licences, setup fees, SSL certificates, labour charges or other services unrelated to uptime.
Radio hosting: uptime is measured on the streaming server (node), not on your individual Shoutcast or Icecast instance. An instance can stop for many reasons while the server is working normally.
To claim a credit, open a ticket within 7 business days of the downtime. Downtime caused by emergency maintenance, scheduled maintenance or system upgrades does not qualify. Problems on your side, such as with your web browser, DNS or other caching, can make a service look unavailable while others can still reach our servers; these do not count as downtime.
Notices and announcements#
We publish scheduled maintenance, emergency work and upgrades on our announcements page. By signing up, you agree that we may email you about these and about changes, upgrades, new products and services, internet security, and related matters.
Sales and support#
Sales and support are available 365 days a year by email and through our help desk. Our Support Policy explains how support works and how quickly we respond.
Article 4Your obligations and acceptable use#
You act as an independent party and accept full responsibility for all the risks and liabilities of your activities.
No unlawful or prohibited use#
You may not use our services for any unlawful purpose, or in any way that could damage, disable, overload or impair our services or any third party’s, or interfere with anyone else’s use of them. You may not (and may not let your end users) obtain, or try to obtain, any material or information by any means we have not intentionally made available through the services.
Use of services#
Our services let you and your end users communicate with others over the internet. You agree to use them, and to make your users use them, only to stream, post, send and receive material that is lawful and, where relevant, suited to the service.
You may not use any service, or let your end users use it, for:
You also agree that you and your end users will not:
- defame, abuse, harass, stalk or threaten anyone, or otherwise violate their legal rights, such as their rights of privacy and publicity;
- stream, publish, post, upload, distribute or share any defamatory, obscene or otherwise unlawful content, including pornography and child sexual abuse material;
- stream, publish, post, upload, distribute or share news, political news, or content about the government or public affairs, without proper authorisation from the relevant government authorities;
- stream, publish, post, upload, distribute or share any topic, name, material or information that incites discrimination, hatred or violence against a person or group because of their race, religion or nationality;
- stream, upload or otherwise make available images, photographs, software or other material protected by intellectual property laws, such as copyright or trademark law, or by rights of privacy or publicity, unless you own or control those rights or have every necessary consent;
- use any material or information made available through the services, including images and photographs, in a way that infringes any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret or other proprietary right;
- upload files containing viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, corrupted files, or any similar software that may damage the operation of another person’s property;
- download any file posted by another user that you know, or reasonably should know, cannot legally be distributed that way;
- falsify or delete any author attribution, legal or other notice, or proprietary label showing the origin or source of software or other material in an uploaded file;
- restrict or prevent any other user from using and enjoying the services;
- break any code of conduct or other guidelines that apply to a particular service;
- harvest or otherwise collect information about others, including email addresses, except as needed to run your site and as allowed by your site’s privacy policy;
- break any applicable law or regulation;
- create a false identity to mislead others;
- use, download or copy any directory of our users, or any other user or usage information, or give it to anyone, whether or not for a fee;
- offer free services from your account, including free web hosting, email, blogs, home pages, image hosting, trial accounts, forum hosting or FTP accounts;
- broadcast or stream live sporting events, including but not limited to UFC, NASCAR, FIFA, NFL, NHL, MLB and WWE, or television.
You may use our services and products only in ways that, in our sole judgement, match their purpose. The uses listed above are examples of what is prohibited, not a complete list. If you are not sure whether something is allowed, please ask us first.
We may, at any time, disclose any information we consider necessary to comply with any law, regulation, legal process or government request, and we may edit, refuse to post or remove any information or material, in whole or in part, at our sole discretion.
Account eligibility#
By registering for or using our services, you confirm that you are 18 years of age or older. You agree to give us current, complete and accurate information about yourself when you sign up, and to keep it up to date, because we rely on it to send you important information and notices about your account and our services. Our Privacy Policy sets out your rights and ours over your personal information.
Your content#
You alone are responsible for the services and websites hosted on your account or server, and for their content and use, including keeping up to date any information and files you transmit, distribute or collect, especially address lists. You undertake to respect the rights of third parties, in particular intellectual property rights such as copyright, patents and trademarks.
We are not liable in any way for that content or information, nor for how you use the data you make available to internet users. If we detect a problem, we may suspend, terminate or refuse to provide the service concerned. In that case you may not claim back any amounts already paid.
Login details and passwords#
You are fully responsible for all use of your account and everything done through it, including by your staff or anyone you have given your passwords to, and for the consequences of losing those passwords. Keep your passwords and other security details confidential, and take every necessary step to make sure that no one but you uses your username and password.
Compromised accounts#
Most hosting accounts are compromised through software vulnerabilities, especially in popular content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, Magento and Drupal. Outdated software can have security flaws that attackers are quick to exploit, so keep everything up to date, including every add-on, plugin, theme and module.
If we find a compromised account, we will block access to it and remove it without prior notice. We are not liable for any data breach that results from applications you have not kept up to date.
Our servers will never send you an unsolicited email asking you to change your password or update your account; you will only get one if you asked for a password reset yourself. Phishing emails are common, so learn to recognise them and stay alert.
As a webmaster, check your web applications and scripts regularly to make sure they are secure and up to date. Forums and any application with comments should use some form of spam protection or moderation; a CAPTCHA is a common way to stop spambots from flooding your site.
Backups and data loss#
You use our services at your own risk, and we cannot be held liable for any loss of data. You are fully responsible for backing up your content. We do make backups as a courtesy, but they are not guaranteed and we take no responsibility for the files and data stored in your account, so we strongly recommend keeping backups of your own. You take full responsibility for all the files and data you upload to our servers.
Backups are not available for accounts that have been suspended or terminated for any reason.
Abusive behaviour#
We have zero tolerance for abusive language or behaviour towards our company, our services or our staff. Any customer we judge, at our sole discretion, to be abusive will have their account terminated immediately and permanently, without refund. Threats to sue, slander, libel and similar actions are also treated as abuse, with the same result. We reserve every right and remedy available to us in law and in equity.
Spam and mass mailing#
Sending unsolicited commercial email (spam) is strictly prohibited. This covers spam email, advertising, messaging and blogging, and any related activity such as bulk email and chat services. You may not host, send, display or broadcast spam of any kind on our servers, including forum and blog spam and the abuse of spam links.
We do not support mass email. If you need to send a large volume of email to your customers, do not use your account’s SMTP server for it.
Adult content#
Adult-oriented sites, pornography and sex-related merchandise are prohibited. Explicit adult content, or links to it, will lead to immediate suspension of your account. We alone decide what breaks this rule.
We take child sexual abuse material extremely seriously, and any potential harm to minors through our services is strictly prohibited. Any content that may be child sexual abuse material is removed from public access as soon as we are told about it or detect it, and we may terminate any account whose website hosts or links to such material immediately and without notice. We cooperate with law enforcement and will report to the authorities if we suspect that you, or any of your customers or end users, are involved in such illegal activity.
Article 5Radio hosting policy#
Radio hosting is the service and infrastructure that lets a radio station stream its audio over the internet reliably and without interruption. These terms apply to it in addition to the rest of this Agreement.
Backups#
You are responsible for backing up your data and content, and we recommend keeping backups of your own. Our radio servers use RAID 1 storage, but we cannot be held responsible for the files and data in your account. You take full responsibility for all the files and data you upload to our servers.
Server migrations and upgrades#
Circumstances we cannot foresee may require us to move your account to a new or different server: a hardware problem, a data centre issue, downsizing, retiring an old server, or too few clients on a server. A migration or upgrade changes both your stream’s IP address and its port. We will do our best to give you at least 30 days’ notice, and if a server has a problem, we will tell you what you need to do.
Respect for others#
Treat other hosts, guests and listeners with respect. Discriminatory remarks and personal attacks are not tolerated.
Copyright#
You may upload and share your own content on our radio platform, including audio recordings and other creative works. By doing so, you guarantee that you own the copyright in it, or have the right to redistribute it and create derivative works from it. Make sure you hold the proper rights to all music, audio clips and other content you broadcast.
Unmetered bandwidth: fair use#
Every new radio account starts with unmetered bandwidth, with no caps or limits. An account that regularly uses more than 2 TB of bandwidth a month is not suited to a shared server, so to keep bandwidth fair for everyone and stop one account’s heavy use from affecting others on the same server, we will permanently cap that account at 2 TB a month. See the Resource Usage Policy.
Legal requirements#
You are responsible for making sure your radio station meets all legal requirements.
Enforcement and changes#
Failure to comply#
Failing to comply fully with these terms is grounds for suspending or terminating your account. We may remove any account without prior notice.
Amendments#
We may revise, amend or change this Agreement, our Acceptable Use Policy, our Resource Usage Policy and any other related policies and agreements at any time and in any way. You are responsible for reviewing these policies regularly for changes.