We offer private electronic mail on our system as a service to our callers. We will endeavor to keep all of your e-mail private, viewable only by you and the person to whom you address it, except:

• We, as system administrators, may need to look at your electronic mail if we believe it is necessary to protect ourselves or other callers from injury or damage. For example, if we have reason to believe a caller is involved in illegal activities, which could lead the authorities to seize or search our system, we may review his or her electronic mail for our own protection. We will not, however, monitor electronic mail unless we believe it is being misused.
• We will not deliberately disclose electronic mail to other callers. If we believe certain electronic mail is connected with illegal activities, we may disclose it to the authorities to protect our system, ourselves, and other callers.
• Remember that the person to whom you send electronic mail is not legally required to keep it secret. The sender or receiver of electronic mail has the right to make it public.
• If the authorities ever search or seize our system, they may gain access to your private electronic mail. In that case, we cannot assure they will not review it. Remember that you have personal rights of privacy that even the government cannot legally violate, though you may have to go to court to enforce those rights.

You shall retain all rights to all original messages you post and all original files you upload. Likewise, you must respect the ownership rights of others in their own messages and files. You may not post or upload any messages or files unless you own them, or you have the full authority to transmit them to this system.

We own certain things you will find on this system, including the name of our system, and the collective work copyright in sequences of public messages on our system. You cannot reproduce any message thread from our system, either electronically or in print, without our permission and the permission of all participants in the thread. This is not a complete list. Other things on the system are also our property. Before you copy anything from our system with plans of reproducing it or distributing it, contact us about it.

The great danger for us, and for all operators of online services is that we might be held accountable for the wrongful actions of other people. If one person libels another person, the injured person might blame us, even though the first person was really at fault. If a person uploads a program with a computer virus, and other persons' computers are damaged, we might be blamed. If a person transfers illegal credit card information to another person through private electronic mail, we might be blamed even though we did nothing more than unknowingly carry the message from one person to another.

We did not start this service to take the blame for others' actions, and we cannot afford to operate it if we must take that blame. Accordingly, we need all callers to accept responsibility for their own acts, and to accept that an act by another person that damages them must not be blamed on us, but on the other party. These needs are accomplished by the following paragraph:

You agree that we will not be responsible to you for any indirect, consequential, special or punitive damages or losses you may incur in connection with our system or any of the data or other materials transmitted through or residing on our system, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damage or loss. In addition, you agree to defend and indemnify us and hold us harmless from and against any and all claims, proceedings, damages, injuries, liabilities, losses, costs and expenses (including reasonable attorneys fees) relating to any acts by you or materials or information transmitted by you in connection with our system leading wholly or partially to claims against us our our system by other callers or third parties.

This agreement is the entire understanding between you and us regarding your relationship to NileNet. If either you or we fail to notify the other of any violations of this agreement, this will not mean that you or we cannot notify the other of future violations of any part of this agreement.

We will make every effort to make sure that the system, and all services are available 100% of the time. We will make every effort to notify users in advance if the system and/or services, will be unavailable. However, from time to time the system, or some services, may be unavailable due to events beyond our control.

We reserve the right to discontinue, or revise any or all services at our sole discretion. We will provide 15 days notice to such changes via the nilenet.announce newsgroup, and the NileNet Announce mailing list. Your continued use of our service indicates your acceptance of these terms and conditions.