Musicbox Internet - Terms and Conditions

0. Definitions

Unless otherwise stated, the following words and terms shall have the meaning shown when they are used in this document or any other communication with us:

Musicbox Internet, we, us, our: Musicbox Internet Limited and/or Richard Birkett, trading as Musicbox Internet.
Musicbox Internet Limited is a company registered in England number 4900692. Registered office: 37 Linden Close, Cambridge, CB4 3JU.
You, your, customer: the individual, company, organisation or similar entity or group of entities entering or maintaining an agreement with us for the provision of any services described in this document.
Days: unless otherwise specified, periods of time expressed in days are strictly calendar days, with no distinction between working days, weekends and public holidays.
Working days means Monday to Friday, excluding English Bank and Public Holidays.

1. General

1.1. Governing Law. Musicbox Internet operates exclusively in the United Kingdom, and these Terms and Conditions are to be interpreted according to the laws of England. If any of these Terms and Conditions should be held to be incompatible with English Law, then they shall be deemed to have been modified to the minimum extent necessary to comply with it.

Third-party terms and conditions, to which you may become subject as a result of your business with us, may be governed by other jurisdictions, but that is a matter solely between you and those third parties. In the event of any dispute with us, you agree that the courts of England and Wales shall have exclusive and binding authority.

1.2. Musicbox Internet may charge for any or all of the following offered services. Charges are individually negotiated with each customer.

Domain name registration
Domain name contact privacy services
Hosting a domain on our nameservers (primary or secondary)
Email forwarding
Email hosting (POP or IMAP)
Web site hosting
Technical advice and support

1.3. Acceptable Use. Customers shall not use any services provided by Musicbox Internet, or any domain name for which any services are provided by us (whether or not the particular services provided by us are misused), in such a way that:

we receive reliable evidence of unlawful activity from a competent authority.
we receive any confirmed and substantiated report of usage which is normally and reasonably considered by the Internet community to be abusive.
Abusive activity includes, but is not limited to, the sending of unsolicited email, or the scanning of or attempted access to any computer system without the prior agreement of the owners of that system and any other systems (such as intermediate networks) which may be adversely affected by your activity.
in our sole reasonable opinion, your usage may bring disrepute or adverse legal liability to Musicbox Internet, any associated organisation, member of staff, or any other customer.

This section applies in full whether or not the unacceptable activity targets or makes direct use of any services provided by us, if the activity might reasonably be held to be associated with or facilitated by your use of our services.

1.4. Certain third-party terms and conditions may apply to your use of services (in particular, domain name registration), which bind all parties. Your initial or continued use of any services provided by us constitutes your agreement with any and all terms and conditions which may apply to those services, as soon as they have been brought to your attention.

1.5. This document may be revised at any time. Your continued use of any services provided by us constitutes your agreement with the revised terms and conditions, once seven days have elapsed from the date they were brought to your attention.

1.6. For the purposes of sections 1.4 and 1.5, adequate notice shall be one or more of the following: verbal notification in person or by telephone; or email sent to your last known email address and not returned as undeliverable within 24 hours; or by letter sent to your last known postal address. In the case of third-party terms and conditions, you will also be deemed to be aware of them if they are generally publicised in such a way that you would be expected to know about them in the normal course of your business, whether or not you have received explicit notification from Musicbox Internet.

1.7. Customers agree that we may modify or suspend any domain name registration (where permitted by the registry), or remove or modify any data which we hold, process or make available to others on your behalf (including but not limited to data held for web hosting or email transmission purposes), or suspend the provision of any other service (including DNS nameservice) at any time, should you be in breach of any of these terms and conditions (in particular, but without limitation, condition 1.3. Acceptable Use); or if this contract is terminated; or if we need to do so for reasonable operational reasons; or on the instruction of a competent authority; or if you are in breach of any third-party terms and conditions to which your attention has been brought.
We will normally give you reasonable notice of any action we propose to take under this condition, but we do not guarantee to do so, if the circumstances demand that we act without notice, or if we are instructed by a competent legal authority not to inform you.

1.8. If we lose contact with you (eg. if your last known email contact address consistently bounces), and reasonable efforts to trace you fail, then at our sole discretion we may suspend any or all services provided by us, and/or notify the relevant domain name registry that your domain is no longer required and may be deleted.
If we need to contact you in relation to actual or alleged breaches of condition 1.3, then you must respond to us and where appropriate to the original complainant within five days.

1.9. If you need to contact us regarding any services we provide to you, please use the email address support@musicbox.net. We may also agree other email, postal or telephone contact methods with you. We will acknowledge your contact within 3 working days, and respond within 21 days of receipt. If we need longer to deal with the issue, we will, within those 21 days, tell you when we expect to be able to respond in full, and will keep you regularly informed about the progress of the issue.
For legal matters, you may write to us at our Registered Office: we will acknowledge receipt within 28 days.

1.10. Complaints procedure:

If you have cause for complaint about our service to you, you must first contact us as described in section 1.9, to allow us to attempt to resolve the matter.
If you are unsatisfied with our initial handling of your complaint, you may escalate it by writing by email to complaints@musicbox.net, or by post to the Complaints Department at our Registered Office address. We will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days.
If, after escalating the matter, you are still unsatisfied, you may wish to contact the appropriate external regulatory body. For example, matters regarding Domain Name Registration may be referred to the dispute or arbitration procedure operated by the relevant Registry.
As a final resort, you always have the option of filing a case with the courts of England and Wales. Please note that, as all our business is conducted solely within the UK (regardless of where you may be based), we will not entertain any legal claim brought under the laws of any other country. Please also note that some third-party dispute procedures state that you give up the right to take legal action, although in general the laws of England and many other countries do not permit such disclaimers, or greatly limit their validity.

1.11. Service reliability and liability. We will always make every effort to provide a reliable service. If things go wrong, we will try to put them right in the shortest reasonable time.
We do not attempt to exclude or limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraudulent misrepresentation. However, we shall not otherwise be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential or incidental damages or losses, including but without limitation loss of revenue, loss of profits, loss of goodwill, or loss of data, howsoever caused. Our financial liability shall be strictly limited to the pro-rata refund of any amounts you have paid to us in advance for services provided directly by us.
You are strongly advised to avoid making matters of personal safety dependent on any Internet service, whether provided by us or others. If failure of the services we provide is likely to cause you or others financial hardship or liability, you should take out your own suitable insurance.

1.12. Cancellation and Termination. A contract covered by these terms may be terminated by either party on one month’s written notice delivered by email or post to the last known contact address of the receiving party. We will pay you a pro-rata refund of any amounts you have paid to us in advance for services provided directly by us. Charges relating to third-party provision of services (including, but not limited to, Domain Name Registration) are only refundable if the corresponding third-party service itself offers refunds: most domain name registries do not.
The contract will also terminate immediately, without any refunds payable, if:

you are in breach of any of these terms and fail to remedy the situation when asked to do so; or
you transfer any domain name registered through us to another service provider, unless you have previously discussed the matter with us

(together, “termination for cause”).
If you use our services in relation to multiple domain names, then we will normally treat each domain name separately for the purposes of this section, but we reserve the right to terminate all services we are providing to you in cases of termination for cause.

1.13. Business Continuity. We take great care to ensure continuity of all our systems, with appropriate multi-site resiliency and backup regimes. In the event that we cease trading, or suffer a serious technical failure that affects our services for a significant time, you have a number of possible remedies, depending on the circumstances:

Your right to use (colloquially, though not normally legally, your “ownership” of) any Domain Name is normally governed by an agreement directly between you and the relevant Registry, and you can move it to another service provider at any time.
Other services, such as web hosting and email hosting or forwarding, are generally dependent upon a Domain Name Registration, and migrating your Domain Name to another provider will also transfer the hosting arrangements. Please note that other providers may not provide exactly the same facilities as we do, or in exactly the same manner, and therefore you should expect to undertake some degree of technical reintegration.

Where the loss of service to you is due to our failure, and we do not expect to be able to restore service in a reasonable timeframe, we will do everything we can to assist you in migrating your business to an alternative service provider, with as little delay and expense as reasonably possible. However, please note that the relevant provisions of sections 1.11 and 1.12 apply and limit our financial liability.

1.14. Links to third-party web sites within this document were correct at the time of the last revision, but may be subject to change due to reorganisations of those external web sites which are beyond our control. We would be grateful to hear about any problems you have with following our links, and to receive updates to them, but we cannot accept any responsibility for the actions of these third parties. Therefore, where we incorporate third-party terms and conditions into this document by reference, this inclusion is still fully valid, and you are deemed to have seen and accepted those terms, even if the clickable link does not work.

2. Domain Name Registration

2.1. We can arrange for the registration of your domain name. In this case, the following conditions apply:

2.1.1. We will pass on any costs we incur for registration or renewal as part of our service charge to you. These charges are not normally refundable.

2.1.2. Data Quality. On behalf of the registries, we collect certain information about you, and (where relevant) about your business, such as name, company registration number and postal address. This information is normally made public in the “WHOIS” database operated by the registry, as a condition of registration. You must provide accurate and complete information, and inform us immediately if it changes.
We will make any enquiries we deem necessary in order to validate the information you supply, both at the time of first registering a domain name and at other times, including but not limited to renewal, or if you make changes yourself using facilities provided by us or the registry, or if we receive notification from the registry that they believe the information provided to them is incomplete or inaccurate. Our enquiries may include searches on publicly available databases, which may record the fact that a search has been made. We may also ask you to provide authoritative documentary evidence, of which we may retain copies.
Registries may also independently perform similar searches or ask for additional evidence.
If we are unable to validate the details you supply, or if you do not supply adequate supporting information when we reasonably request it, we may suspend your domain name registration and/or any service we provide, until we are able to validate your details. Some registries prescribe a timescale, within which your details must be successfully validated to their satisfaction, failing which they may suspend your domain name registration, or require us to do so. Nominet does currently prescribe such a period, being 30 days from registration.
If you intend to use a WHOIS privacy service (provided either by us or by a third party), you must still provide us with full, truthful and accurate details.

2.1.3. Privacy. You have a number of options for limiting the information which is displayed about you in WHOIS. Some domain name registries offer contact hiding or “opt-out” facilities as a core part of domain name registration, which may be suitable for your needs. Third-party commercial privacy services exist, and may provide more complete information hiding, although beware that they may require you to reliniquish some or all of your rights in the domain name. We also offer our own WHOIS privacy service.
If we agree that you may use the privacy service provided by us, the following additional terms apply:

You remain at all times the legal registrant of the domain name, and are solely responsible for its registration and usage. We accept no liability whatsoever to any party in relation to your registration or use of the domain name, even if our name appears in WHOIS.
Many registries have policies which are incompatible with this condition (for example, by requiring a privacy service to become the legal registrant). You may not use our privacy service with such registries.
We will arrange for some or all of your name and contact details to be hidden altogether or replaced by those of our privacy service, where your details would otherwise be displayed in WHOIS. The precise items of information which are eligible for hiding or replacement may vary between domain name registries, and may vary from time to time according to the policies of the registry.
We will forward any messages and documents which we receive on your behalf, using the contact information we hold for you. This may include legal documents and abuse complaints, and you agree that we are authorised to accept service of legal documents on your behalf. Email messages will be forwarded free of charge. If we incur any costs for the forwarding of other items, these will be included in our service charge to you.
You acknowledge that any response you make to a third party is likely to reveal some aspects of your identity or contact details. We do not provide an “anonymising” service for two-way correspondence.
We will treat any non-public information about you in strict confidence. We will disclose to the domain name registry the minimum details required by them, but will not otherwise disclose your details to any third party unless we are obliged to do so by the laws or courts of England. Similarly, we will not ourselves remove the protection of our privacy service (causing your details to appear in WHOIS) unless you ask us to, or we are required to do so by the English courts, or your contract with us is terminated.
The terms of some domain name registries, to which you are deemed to have agreed by registering or renewing a domain name, may allow them to disclose your information more widely, for example in cases of trademark dispute. They may also have the right or discretion to revoke or restrict the privacy option and display some or all of your details in WHOIS, even when we have told them that you wish your details to be kept private. If you transfer your domain name to another registration provider, the registry may automatically remove the protection of our privacy service, even if we have agreed that you may continue to use it.
We accept no liability to you in relation to these or similar actions by the registry.

2.1.4. Unless otherwise agreed, we will execute your instruction to register or renew a domain name registration within 7 days of receiving your instruction, provided you have given us all the information required under section 2.1.2.

2.1.5. Renewals. You must give us explicit instructions to renew any domain name registration. We will send you at least one reminder no more than 30 days prior to expiry, and many registration authorities will also independently send you reminders, but we will not, unless previously agreed, automatically renew any domain registration.
We do not ourselves make additional charges for late renewal of domain registrations. However, missing the expiry date by even one day may incur additional “redemption” charges from the registry, for which you are liable and which we will pass on in full to you. Therefore, you should give us your instruction to renew, including any updated information, at least 7 days prior to the expiry date. If you meet this requirement in good time but we nevertheless fail to renew the domain name registration on your behalf by the expiry date, we will indemnify you against additional registry charges.

2.2. You can arrange the registration of your domain name independently, and then ask us to host your DNS and/or provide other services. In this case, the following conditions apply:

2.2.1. We assume no liability in respect of the domain name registration itself, and we must not be quoted as the “administrative” or “billing” contact for the domain name. We may be, and would usually expect to be, quoted as the “technical” contact.

2.2.2. If we are hosting your DNS nameservice (primary or secondary), we require the ability to make changes to the delegation of your domain (ie. the list of authoritative nameservers) for operational reasons: although we would normally expect to arrange any such changes through you, we must be able to make them in your absence if necessary in an emergency.
This can be facilitated either by you providing us with authentication details and instructions for managing the domain, or by you lodging with us some other form of authority acceptable to the registering organisation or registry. The precise details will vary: for example, modifying .uk domain names always requires the involvement of the relevant Nominet member, and so we will need a written authority from you acceptable to that member; OpenSRS domain names can be configured with a ‘sub-user’ which has the ability to change the nameservers but not other aspects of the registration.
If we are unable to change the delegation when we need to, your domain name may stop resolving and all services related to it may cease to function. We will not accept any liability whatsover in these circumstances.

2.2.3. If we provide any services which depend upon working and correct DNS records (including any email or web hosting or forwarding), we require the ability to make changes at any time to the resource records relating to those services. If we are not hosting the DNS zone data ourselves, you must make suitable arrangements with the hosting provider which are acceptable to us.
If we are unable to make changes when we need to, or if DNS records are changed without our agreement, then we accept no responsiblity whatsoever for the continued operation of any affected services.

2.3. International “gTLD” domain names (.com, .org, .net, .info, .tv, etc)

2.3.1. We are a reseller of Tucows Inc as part of their OpenSRS scheme, and can arrange for the registration of a number of internationally recognised domain names through this registrar. If we do this, the cost of registration and renewal will be included in our charge for services to you.

2.3.2. Your attention is drawn to the Tucows Terms and Conditions, which you will be deemed to have accepted if you register, renew or transfer a domain in one of these TLDs through us. Please especially note the following:

Some TLDs have their own specific conditions, which are detailed in the Tucows document.
Tucows’ conditions include a provision for the terms to be changed by Tucows without explicit notice to the registrant.
Tucows offers to act as a “Designated Agent” for the purposes of the ICANN Transfer Policy (meaning that transfers are automatically authorised without any confirmation). Their standard terms imply that this is the normal situation, and that there is no opt-out. However, we will attempt not to enable this option unless you explicitly ask us to.

Other registrars may have different conditions, but they are likely to be very similar.

2.3.3. Most of the domains in this section (in particular, com, .org, .net and .tv) are also covered by the ICANN Uniform Domain Name Dispute Policy, which you can view here. Your registration of a domain covered by this policy is deemed to signify your agreement with its terms.

2.3.4. For managing domains registered through us you may use the OpenSRS management web site, or our own web site, at your choice: the facilities provided are similar on each, although there may be additional options on our site not offered elsewhere.

2.3.5. Customers are free to use any other registrar from the list of ICANN accredited registrars, subject to the additional conditions outlined in section 2.2 above.

2.4. UK domain names (.co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .uk, etc)

2.4.1. We are an Accredited Channel Partner Registrar and full Member of Nominet UK, and can arrange for the registration of .uk domain names. If we do this, the cost of registration and renewal will be included in our charge for services to you.

2.4.2. Your attention is drawn to the Nominet UK Terms and Conditions, which bind all registrants of .uk domain names, regardless of how you arrange the registration. Nominet have strict data quality rules, and your attention is especially drawn to section 2.1.2 above.

2.4.3. Customers are free to use any other Nominet Registrar to handle the registration, subject to the additional conditions outlined in section 2.2 above.

2.4.4. If customers wish their .uk domain to be signed using DNSSEC, this can be arranged at no extra charge, subject to your acceptance of the following additional terms:

You understand and accept the way in which DNSSEC works and the affect that its use can have on the stability of domain name records;
You understand that neither Nominet nor we accept any liability in relation to the operation or use of DNSSEC records and that registrants accept all risk in relation to the use of DNSSEC in relation to their domain names;
You understand that Nominet and we will take reasonable steps to correct any error in the DNSSEC records, where such an error is as a result of a mistake on Nominet’s or our part, but will otherwise accept no liability for the error; and
You agree to indemnify Nominet and us in relation to all liabilities, costs, expenses, damages and losses (including any direct or indirect consequential losses, loss of profit, loss of reputation and all interest, penalties and legal and other professional costs and expenses) suffered or incurred by Nominet or us arising out of the use of DNSSEC, howsoever caused.