How to Author Customer Service Agreements

All Web hosting organizations, especially resellers should develop acceptable usage policies to govern the terms of use of their products and services.

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The use of an acceptable usage policy, or AUP is very important to limit a reseller's liability. An AUP sets the ground rules applicable to a reseller's clientele.

By creating and implementing an AUP, resellers ensure that the behaviour of their clients is within acceptable legal perimeters. An AUP acts to layout basic policies or guidelines that customers must adhere to.

Primarily, acceptable usage policies prohibit activities that damage the commercial reputation and goodwill of a higher-tier hosting company or a reseller operation. AUPs ensure that servers are only used for lawful purposes.

Usually, AUPs reinforce the fact that transmission, distribution and storage of any material in violation of any applicable law or regulation is prohibited. This includes copyrighted and trademarked materials, trade secrets and all other intellectual property used without proper authorization.

Resellers also use AUPs to bar the transmission of obscene material such as pornography. Many resellers attempt to bar customers intent on setting up adult sites due to the costs associated with hosting it. Because pornography is extremely popular, it generates a tremendous amount of traffic that will usually tie up user resources and increase bandwidth usage. For this reason, many resellers specifically ban this type this type of material. And indeed, all AUPs should make specific reference to the illegality of child pornography.

Resellers must also use AUPs to reiterate the illegality of using Internet resources to defame persons or corporations, make threats or violate export control laws.

AUPs also instruct customers not to breach the reseller's network security precautions. Most policies will explicitly prohibit violations of system or network security. Policies in this regard should be in-depth, prohibiting unauthorized access and use of network resources. Most AUPs will ban using a reseller's resources to launch an attack on an Internet system or to undertake surveillance of another party's network resources.

Policies should also ban the most annoying of Internet practices: spamming. A well-written AUP will explicitly prohibit the transmission of unsolicited mail messages, including, without limitation, commercial advertising and informational announcements. Spamming is viewed as an unacceptable and annoying practice with most Internet users, which also ties up valuable server resources.

As a subset of an AUP, a Web host reseller must inform their clients that misuse of system resources is a violation of policy. Such misuse can include the deployment of programs that consume excessive CPU resources or storage space.

Any violations of the acceptable user policy must have a consequence clearly delineated within the document itself. Usually resellers can respond to violations by suspending or terminating a customer's account. For the AUP to be fairly enforced, customers must agree to the terms of the policy before their sign-up for your services.