Introduction

One way in which the AUP Principles can be compromised is if we believe users are separate, when in fact they are acting together (and, for example, pooling their limits).

Each of the acceptable use policies for individual services includes the terms below which deal with 'connected persons' or 'related persons', so that action can be taken in these cases. This will usually be to record the tags, subscriptions etc as being linked, and therefore subject to a lower overall limit than would have been applied to a similar number of non-connected persons. This linking will usually apply to all services, not just the service that brought the links to our attention, and may be published in the future.

For links to our Acceptable Use Policies, see the contracts index page, which lists the relevant documents.

Connected Persons

A person is 'connected' to another person if:

1. they are the same person, have the same Nominet account, or have connected memberships under the voting rights policy;
2. they make any declaration that they are connected or when challenged by us they fail to make a declaration in the resonably required legal form that they are not connected;
3. they have social, family, ownership or business links (directly or indirectly) which mean that they either:
   3.1 do not appear to operate truly independently of one another, or
   3.2 it could reasonably be assumed that they will not operate truly independently of one another; or
4. the object or effect of their activities is such that we reasonably think that not linking them would compromise one or more of the AUP Principles.

For the purposes of (2) we may decide that that two parties are not connected even if one declares that they are, if the other disputes this and our investigations support the denial (so, for example, you cannot just declare that you are linked to another person and then use all their limit up to disrupt their business).

For the purposes of (3) there is a strong presumption that:

• group companies (or other businesses) are connected to other businesses in the group;
• a company and its employees/officers/partners are connected to one another;
• members of the same family group are connect to each other (including in-laws, co-habitees, civil partners, adopted children and others who may not have a relationship by blood but who are part of the family group); and
• a business owned, run or ultimately controlled by one member of a family is connected to a business owned, run or ultimately controlled by another member of the same family.

The final decision rests with us. When deciding whether to link people under (2) to (4) above, we will take into account the AUP principles.