Terms and Conditions

The following is _NOT_ a software license. It is the rules of using our public server on login.overchat.org:3277
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

OverChat - Terms and Conditions Version 1 - draft only
=========================================

Table of Contents
=================
1 - What is the service is for
2 - Who is entitled to use the service
3 - Who owns the service
4 - Nickname registration rules and conditions
5 - What constitutes abuse of the service
6 - Who has responsibillity with dealing with those who abuse the service
7 - What will happen to you if you abuse the service.
8 - Amount of use of the service
9 - Protocol protection
10 - Authorised clients and D.L.O.B.
11 - Extra clauses

1 - What is the service is for
==============================
Overchat is a service for Instant Messaging. It is similar to other services such as Yahoo!, AIM, MSN Chat and Jabber. One person enters a message to his or her friend and the service relays it to the correct user on the other end. Instant is defined as within about two seconds. OverChat does not gaurentee any speed of communication.

2 - Who is entitled to use the service ====================================== Former users of AOL Instant Messenger who are tired of the spam bots and idiots. Public who may wish to chat to users of the service. Daybo Logic employees or affilliates. If you are an AOL idiot. ie. you do not know the difference between your and you're or you use some other language other than those supported by the service, you are not welcome on the service and those responsible for removing idiots will do so with speed. 3 - Who owns the service ======================== The server software was written by David Duncan Ross Palmer and is copyright 2001 Daybo Logic. It is not available for download or for third parties to run such servers. The server hardware belongs to Total Konfuzion and he rents the bandwidth for the server from BlueYonder (Telewest communications). Be aware that the server shall never directly use or pay for bandwidth from evil British Telecom, which is the worst example of a monopoly in the former Great Britain (no longer Britian). There are no rights to use the service without the owners' consent. 4 - Nickname registration rules and conditions ============================================== Nicknames are the fixed names that a user chats to another user on by. For example 'DDRP' talks to 'tk'. A nickname is limited to 32 characters. Spaces are not counted but the nickname can be reformatted later to add spaces and change case. Nicknames are not case sensitive. For example 'ddrp' and 'D dR p' is the same person. During the pre-registration period, some names which don't quite fit into these rules were registered. These will be automatically corrected and some may be discarded once the service is running after the 24th of December 2001. Nicknames which are not visible or use non-alphanumeric characters are not allowed. Nicknames which are obviously intended to space out chat rooms and cause annoyance to others, especially offensive or suggestive names will be removed by chat gods. You can only register a nickname with a valid email address, you may not choose your original password, it will be mailed to the email address. You may only register 20 nicknames per one email address. If one IP address attempts to register more than 5 nicknames per 24 hours it will be banned for a week. 5 - What constitutes abuse of the service ========================================= Abuse of the service is mainly at the discrimination of the chat gods and elected officers or by the results of abuse reports from members. The rules in this terms and conditions are guidelines and will be extended as new ways are found to abuse the service. a) Spam: Those who attempt to use the service to automatically or manually sell their own services or to try to get people to visit pornographic or illegal web sites will be banned with no warning from the service. b) Flood: Those who attempt to lag the server or annoy others by contantly repeating nonsense messages or by flooding chat rooms with mass content of obscure origin or from the web will be warned by the administrator by complaints or by server behaviour. Those who ignore the warnings will most likely be removed by the administrator. c) Swearing: There is no specifc policy about swearing but if lots of complaints are received from different users about such behaviour then the abuser will be advised by the administrators. Abusing chat gods or officials with insults would not be wise either as it may result in a short cut around this warning. d) Child pornography: OverChat is not a family service and certain offensive things happen, including pornography. However, if something like this offends the administrators (and it takes a lot to offend DDRP) you will be banned! As I cannot say for certain what will get you banned and what will not it is safer to keep this to private rooms to avoid being banned. This offer extends to normal pornography. If I see you exchaging child porn then I shall probally ban you. e) Bots: Automated robots (bots) are not allowed without permission from the Superiour Mystick Controller of the local server or the Supreme Commander. They generally cause irritation amongst memebers and rarely have a useful purpose. f) False email addresses: If it is believed that the email address you have registered with is fraudulant or if you create new email addresses on your domain for the purpose of overriding limits on the number of nicknames an email address may be responsible for you will be banned and possibly your domain will be banned from future registrations or web site access. 6 - Who has responsibillity with dealing with those who abuse the service ========================================================================= Chat gods, officers and respresentitives are elected by the Supreme Commander, the committee and ordinary users. You can find out more about this election progress and the hierarchy of divine order on the OverChat website at http://www.daybologic.co.uk/overchat Depending on one's position in the pecking order one can destroy another user completely. Ordinary users have no power over another user. 7 - What will happen to you if you abuse the service. ===================================================== Depending on the level of abuse one hassles the service with one might go through three levels. This is certainly not a gaurentee against immediate banning: a) You will be warned verbally by an administrator/god or another official. b) You will be written to via your registered email address by the Superiour Mystick Controller or one of the Supreme Commander's assistants. c) You will be banned. 8 - Amount of use of the service ================================= We are not British Telecom, we will not get irritated with you for staying connected to the service constantly. However, in order to stop extreme abuse by one person, we allow only eight connections from one IP address. No one nickname can sign up on twice at one time but they can from multiple nicknames, this is intended mainly for N.A.T. enabled networks, which use multiple computers through one IP address. As the service grows, the service will be shared between multiple servers in different areas of the world. 9 - Protocol protection ======================= The internal communications protocol is the property of Daybo Logic. Reverse engineering the protocol is illegal and may be persued by law if the breaches of security are bad enough. The internal protocol is called Blake and is a closed protocol. Authorised connectors should be aware that as people do, inevitably crack parts of the protocol, those areas will be changed to maintain security and clients may have to be updated. Those who have the official, internal document describing Blake are bound to a non-disclosure agreement that the protocol is the intellectual property of Daybo Logic and disclosure to outside, unauthorised parties may be prosecuted by law. 10 - Authorised clients and D.L.O.B. ==================================== Only authorised Daybo Logic clients may connect to the OverChat server(s). Open Source protocol may only use D.L.O.B. The Daybo Logic Open Blake protocol. This Open Source protocol library is supplied by Daybo Logic, free of charge under the GNU General Public License. These clients are not oblidged to display adverts and they connect to the DLOB<>Blake bridge proxy server which converts and relays commands to the official OverChat server(s). http://www.daybologic.co.uk/overchat/dlob.html 11 - Extra clauses ================== All future versions of this document will overwrite previous versions. Registered users of the service will be notified via their registered email address for changes in the Terms of Service. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.0.4 iQA/AwUBO9VhXiFu/tNNkyL0EQK3UQCbBYe/ymzgeFCLGCCgzTpuhZsXTkUAoMV/ rRO3Ufm8bHuHJeQKQXDDn/ts =lZx/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----