Newsgroups Policy

This document outlines Road Runner acceptable use guidelines as they apply to newsgroups. It outlines the conduct that should be employed when using the newsgroups as well as procedures that Road Runner members can use to avoid newsgroup abuses. It also gives pointers to other resources available to learn more about newsgroup culture.

Guidelines:

It is important for members to make themselves aware of the various conventions, guidelines and local culture in newsgroups before becoming an active participant.

Newsgroup Terms of Service Violations:

The following actions would violate the acceptable use policy when utilizing news services through the Road Runner network, backbone and/or infrastructure.

Road Runner provides an uncensored newsfeed. As such, Road Runner does not control the content of the newsgroups available to you. Road Runner believes that decisions about which newsgroups and messages to read are best left to its customers. Screening software is available from third parties, and it is your responsibility to use such tools if desired. Road Runner is not responsible for the content of any newsgroup message, whether or not a Road Runner customer posted the message.

If newsgroup postings are in violation of the acceptable use policy, Road Runner at times may restrict or cancel subsequent postings if they affect the service.

The sending of multiple similar articles to newsgroups constitutes a violation.

Harassing others by 'news-bombing'. 'News bombing' constitutes sending more than 10MB of data to a newsgroup.

The cross posting of advertisements for products, items, or services which exceeds the commonly held thresholds and guidelines of the USENET community, will not be tolerated. Article posts should be on-topic to the particular newsgroup charter. Articles should not disrupt any newsgroup with frivolous, excessively vulgar or repetitious postings is not allowed.

Terms of Service Actions:

Upon receiving a complaint from another customer, newsgroup facilitator or another third party, Road Runner will promptly investigate the issue in question and determine the appropriate action, if any. All involved parties will be notified of the decision, action, and rationale. Examples of potential actions follow:

• Most valid complaints will generally result in the offending article(s) being cancelled and the Road Runner member receiving a Terms of Service warning. Additionally, your access to newsgroups may be restricted depending on the nature and severity of the violation.
• Second instances of abuse will generally result in your account being restricted from newsgroups access. Second instances of commercial abuse of newsgroups or of spamming/chain letters will result in your termination from Road Runner.
• Third instances, any combination of abuse, or particularly serious offenses will generally result in your termination from Road Runner.

Submitting Complaints:

To report a violation of Road Runner's Newsgroup Terms of Service by a Road Runner customer, send a complete copy of the article or e-mail message to abuse@rr.com.

If you are reporting a spamming incident (Usenet), it is important that you forward the suspected spam with FULL headers. Without it, we will be unable to discern where the Usenet post originated, and will not be able to assist you.

How to obtain full headers in:

• Outlook / Outlook Express 4.x: Open the Usenet post and select Options from the View menu. You will see a box labeled Internet Headers. Highlight and copy (right click and copy) these into the e-mail you send to us.
• Outlook / Outlook Express 5.x: Open the Usenet post and select Properties from the File menu. A box will appear with General and Details tabs. Click on the Details tab and copy the headers of the message from there.
• Netscape: Open the Usenet post and go to the View menu. Pull the Headers menu over and click on All. Highlight the headers displayed in the post and copy them into the e-mail you send to us.
• Gravity: Open the Usenet post. Go to the Article menu and click on Show Full Header. Highlight the headers displayed in the post and copy them into the e-mail you send us.

Facilitation and Time Warner Cable Employee Participation:

Road Runner newsgroups may have a facilitator, which could be either a Time Warner Cable employee or a customer. In general, the facilitator is responsible for:

• Maintaining the FAQs for the newsgroup.
• The FAQ is one of the central pieces of value of the newsgroup, as it is the mechanism by which we capture the learnings from the group over time. It will include answers to the most common questions discussed in the group as well as capturing any valuable threads. The FAQ will be reposted on a regular basis in the newsgroup.
• Ensuring that postings are closely related to the main newsgroup topics.
• Deleting posts which he/she deems are inappropriate. This will be done only in extreme circumstances as outlined in the NEWSGROUP TERMS OF SERVICE VIOLATIONS above.
• In addition to the facilitators, other Time Warner Cable employees may participate in various forums at their own discretion. Unless specifically noted, comments and postings made by Time Warner Cable employees who are not designated facilitators are those of the employee and not necessarily those of Time Warner Cable.

Expire Intervals:

We will attempt to maintain a 45 day expire interval for local Road Runner newsgroups. We will attempt to maintain a 3 day expire interval for binary newsgroups and a 7 day expire interval for non-binary newsgroups. This may vary depending upon the size of the USENET feed received on any particular day.

We reserve the right to reduce the expire intervals on any of the groups if volume becomes excessive.

Contact us today to find out more about our Newsgroups Policy.
 
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