Terms & Conditions

Preface

The following are the Standard Terms and Conditions for the supply of hosting services provided by Obsidian Consulting Group Pty Ltd ("Obsidian", ABN: 40 095 617 664). Please read these terms and conditions carefully. It is a condition of your use of our services that you comply with these terms and conditions and any amendments to these.

For the purposes of this agreement, Obsidian Consulting Group Pty. Ltd. will be referred to as "Obsidian", and the Customer will be referred to as the "Customer".

Obsidian may amend the terms and conditions of this agreement at any time by giving seven days notice of the change. You will then be obliged to comply with these conditions as amended or cease using the Service.

This agreement commences on the date of application and continues until terminated in accordance with the provisions in this agreement.

This agreement constitutes the entire Agreement between the parties and excludes all oral or implied terms unless such terms are agreed between the parties in writing (i.e. extension of the hosting agreement with the purchase of a specific service level agreement).

"Interest" means interest at the Penalty Interest Rate for the time being fixed under the Section 2 of Penalty Interest Rate Act 1983 (Vic).

Unsolicited Email ("Spam"), Viruses, Denial of Service Attacks

The sending of Spam, or Unsolicited Bulk Email (including such email with an "opt-out" clause) using Obsidian's servers and/or network or the use of Unsolicited Bulk Email (using the services of any ISP) to promote a site hosted by Obsidian is strictly prohibited and may result in immediate termination of services without notice or refund.

The use of Obsidian's servers and/or network with any program (virus, worm, etc) or activity (including denial of service attacks) designed to provide or allow any form of unauthorised access or control, or otherwise result in an adverse effect on any computer, network, or data (whether or not the computer, network, or data is Obsidian's) is strictly prohibited and may result in immediate termination of services without notice or refund.

Cases of malicious activity will be reported to the appropriate authorities, and Obsidian may co-operate with authorities by providing any relevant access logs as necessary.

Service Provision

The Customer's hosting service features, including the levels of storage space and permitted traffic, depend upon the Customer's services and terms as defined by their selected Plan and/or extended hosting agreement. Every effort is made to ensure that the hosting provided by Obsidian is of the best possible reliability. The Customer acknowledges that factors including the failure of Obsidian's hardware, software, and telecommunications link or external network congestion/failure may result in interruptions, delays, faults, degradations and disruption to services.

Scheduled maintenance of hardware and software must be performed to the servers from time to time. Obsidian will endeavour to perform all scheduled maintenance without interruption to services or during low access times to minimise their impact. Where possible, email notifications are sent out to notify our hosting Customers of maintenance where an impact on services may be expected. E-mail notifications will be sent out to everyone subscribed to the mailing-list that Obsidian manages for this purpose. It is the Customers responsibility to ensure that their contact e-mail is up to date and subscribed to this mailing list.

Obsidian, in it's sole discretion, may take action, including but not limited to, the complete isolation of any server (or virtual server environment (VSE) or co-located hosting) that Obsidian believes may have been the target of a successful hacking/cracking attempt, or that is causing degredation or disruption to any Customer or service on Obsidian's network (including Obsidian itself).

Indemnification and Liability

While Obsidian endeavours to maximise the reliability and availability of our network and associated services, we accept no responsibility for failures (Obsidian's or third party) or any other events that may degrade, delay, or disrupt our service provision. Neither does Obsidian accept any liability for any loss, or other commercial damage including, but not limited to incidental, consequential and other damages to the maximum extent permissible by law.

Obsidian reserves the right to remove or block access to, and/or propagation of, any content published by the Customer where this agreement has been breached or as required by relevant authorities.

The Customer acknowledges that they must maintain their own backup copies for any content on Obsidian's servers.

Obsidian strongly suggests that the Customer should maintain a recent copy of their site at their own premises. Obsidian does not guarantee that, in the event of any failure or malicious attack on an Obsidian server, that websites, e-mail, databases, etc. will be recoverable.

The Customer understands that, due to the dynamic nature of email, email is not backed up and no guarantee can be made of receipt of email messages.

Obsidian shall not be liable to the Customer for any loss or damage caused by third party software applications used or made available as part of our service. On termination of a service or this agreement, Obsidian has the right to remove any corresponding data (public and private) from Obsidian's servers and systems.

The Customer will advise Obsidian in a timely manner if they have reason to believe that their service is being used contrary to this agreement.

Payment

Obsidian will issue tax invoices by e-mail. It is the Customer's responsibility to ensure that Obsidian has their correct contact details. Paper invoices are available via post or facsimile (either upon request, or annually) at an additional charge.

Every effort will be made to provide the Customer with monthly notifications/invoices for excess traffic, however it is ultimately the Customers responsibility to ensure that they are aware of their chargable excess traffic usage.

All Traffic usage is monitored and billable at the rate specified by the 'Plan' once the monthly quota is exceeded. The term 'Traffic' refers to the total of both inbound and outbound usage, measured in 'mega Bytes', often abreviated to 'MB'. The Customer understands that for all calculations, 1 MB is equal to 1,000,000 bytes.

A hosting account may be suspended if invoices are not paid within 14 days of their due date and prior arrangements for a revised payment schedule have not been made with Obsidian. In the suspended state, all data linked with the account will remain on the system, however the account holders will not be able to access their site and the website may display a notice stating the account suspension.

Where a hosting account has remained in arrears for 60 days after the due date, the account may be cancelled and the data attached to that account deleted from the system.

Customer shall pay Obsidian Interest on all overdue amounts from the due date until payment is made.

Customer shall also pay any expenses, costs or disbursements incurred by Obsidian in recovering any outstanding monies including dishonour fees, debt collection, agency fees, and legal fees.

Disclaimer

The Customer will not hold Obsidian responsible or liable for any interruption, delay, degradation, or outage of service, nor for any damages their business may suffer. Obsidian makes no warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, for services they provide. Obsidian disclaims any warranty or fitness for particular purpose including any data loss from delays, non-deliveries, and any and all service interruptions.

Termination of the Agreement

Either the Customer or Obsidian may end this agreement by giving 14 days notice to the other. For security reasons the Customer must notify Obsidian in writing of cancellation of their hosting account, including authorisation of the account owner. Obsidian reserves the right to immediate suspension of or termination of service to a Customer who attempts to interfere with the running of Obsidian's servers or our service provision. Obsidian may terminate this agreement and its service provision without prior notice if the Customer breaches this Agreement or if the Customer's service is considered by Obsidian's staff to be the source or target of any violation of this agreement.