The objective of stating the terms and condition, relevant extracts from Indian IT Act 2000, posting rules and guidelines, is to ensure that the mailing list member subscribers have as much flexibility as possible, while at the sametime shielding them from spammers, abusers and cyber criminals.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

1. The mailing lists and their archives are provided at this website (WWW.TWINCLING.ORG) and third party service providers Yahoo (GROUPS.YAHOO.COM) , Google (GROUPS.GOOGLE.COM).
2. Your subscription to the lists or accessing the archives implies you agree to follow these rules.
3. If you send e-mail (encrypted or not) over the internet, you are accepting the associated risks of lack of confidentiality, and e-mail spoofing.
4. In order to post to the mailing lists, you must first subscribe.
5. Assurance checks are run on each new joinee of the list.
6. All public mailing lists are moderated. Your post is reviewed and the contents therein verified within the context of the focus of the list.
7. By posting an article, you grant permission to make that article available in an archive with all other postings for later retrieval.
8. If you are using one of the lists and notice something inappropriate, please report it to 'twinclingcop'. Please donot try to deal the problem yourself. Only the list administrator has the authority to set policy on mailing lists.
9. Should the list administrator or moderator ask you to stop doing some activity on/with the list, please do so. Your non-cooperation in this matter may constitute grounds for your removal from the list.
10. You may use the archives only for research or study into topics previously discussed on the list. You may not collect e-mail addresses from those archives, or create any public archive of these messages, or publish them in any way on any media in any form, without explicit permission of the list administrators and TWINCLING SOCIETY (INDIA).
11. Should your computer become infected with a virus and attempts to send the virus to the mailing list, your posting privileges will be suspended. If you do it twice, you will be banned from that mailing list.

CYBER (COMPUTER) CRIME
The definition of computer crime is as follows:

• Any illegal action in which a computer is a tool or object of the crime; in other words, any crime, the means or purpose of which is to influence the function of computer;
• Any incident associated with computer technology in which a victim suffered or could have suffered loss and a perpetrator, by intention, made or could have made a gain;
• Computer abuse is considered as any illegal or unauthorized behaviour relating to the automatic processing and transmission of data.

Any attempt to do the following activities is illegal and constitutes a Cyber Crime within the relevant sections of the Indian IT Act 2000 and its amendments.

1. Attempts to hack this website (WWW.TWINCLING.ORG) or the list accounts at third party sites (GROUPS.YAHOO.COM) or circumvent the site and mailing list security.
2. abuse of the site, the administrators, or the users of this site.
3. posting chain letters or e-mail hoaxes.
4. using excessive profanity or abusive language while posting to the list.
5. causing sexual harassment by using language, sending URLs, or posting attachments that cause the same.
6. any attempt to collect e-mail addresses, or to use e-mail addresses or any user information on this site for any purpose not directly related to this site.
7. spamming (includes all advertising not directly related to the content of the list) the list or e-mail addresses of the users, administrators or moderators.
8. sending email to the lists or e-mail addresses of the users, administrators or moderators, with forged SMTP/ESMTP headers purporting to come from officers of TWINCLING SOCIETY (INDIA) or some other person.

In each of the above case, first time violations will be recorded. Subsequently, the Society will take up the matter with Cyber police and law enforcement authorities in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India and/or with Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.

Please refer to the PENALTIES section of the Indian IT Act 2000 for details.

POSTING RULES
Some of the rules are outlined here to help the members reflect, apply judgement before sending an e-mail message.

• Think before you send
  There are real people out there on the list. Any message you send could be saved or forwarded by its recipient. You have no control over where it goes!
  


• Be Courteous
  To be courteus means, to be polite, kind or considerate in manner. Consider, Would you say it to the person's face ? If the answer is no, rewrite and reread. Please iterate through the process, till you feel sure that you'd feel as comfortable saying these words to the live person as you do sending them using email.
  


• Your words are written
  There are good chances that your mail is stored somewhere where you have no control over them. In other words, they can come back to haunt you.
  


• Your image is important
  The signature line that you use is as important as the words you choose in your email. People don't see you in person, but your persona (an aspect of the personality as shown to or perceived by others) is built up as your postings, replies accumulate on the list.
  


• People can see you
  Your approach to replying others in matters of assisting them solve a problem says a lot about you. Just because you are unseen, doesn't mean people can't see you! Your guards are lowered in cyberspace unlike person to person meets. Just by an analysis of 2 - 3 of your posts/replies, people can figure you out.
  


• Emotional people forward a lot
  Do you feel like blood rushing to your hands to forward this fantastic article, point of view to everybody on the list ? Throw in the link and shoot the email ? Was it that the author had people like you as part of h(er)is viral marketing plan ? Think, what value do I generate by forwarding this link.
  


• Human attention span is short
  Can you ask your question precisely (exact in statement) and concisely (brief but comprehensive in expression) ? People scan pages online and search, but don't read all of it.
  


• Whats your opening line ?
  What you write in the subject line is the opening line. To get the attention of the members who can help you out, you need to have a good opening line. (e.g. PREFER: installation of RHL9 on x86/Mercury board fails, AVOID: help, help me in installing)
  


• Conclude before Starting off
  State the summary of the situation, idea, concept, problem in the beginning of the e-mail message. The next few paragraphs may contain the details of the experiments, logs etc. If the reader is interested (s)he will read the rest and not do it the first!
  


• Cut but don't Paste
  Review your message and identify the sentences, facts, ascii art etc. that you can do without, to stay on topic.
  


• First listen and then reply
  Listen to what the poster had to say, reread if its not clear. Hit the reply button and begin your reply after the message. This is also known as 'bottom posting'.
  


• conTEXT
  use the power of context (the parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning). to write selective replies to a posting.
  


• Flame
  When the flame burns out, it leaves black carbon on your image.
  


• Privacy
  Your privacy (freedom from intrusion or public attention) is very important and so is others'. Please keep your personal opinions to yourself.
  


• Quality matters
  You will be judged by the quality of your writing.
  


• Share your knowledge
  Share your knowledge and you will improve your understanding. Remember today's newbie is tomorrow's guru.
  


• Structure
  Structure your thoughts and then project them on the layout of your e-mail message to help others get the idea. Poorly structured messages imply the structure of our thoughts.
  


• reTAKE
  Everyone was a newbie once. So, if your posting is rejected because it was inappropriately formulated, missing subject line, flame-bait, off-topic etc., please re-write your mail correctly and re-send it.
  


• Think before you send
  There are real people out there on the list. Your mail goes to all the people and finally it comes back to you! Did you want this to happen ?
  

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DISAGREEMENT WITH TERMS AND CONDITIONS, RULES AND GUIDELINES.
If you disagree with any of the guidelines or rules, you may contact 'info@twincling.org'.
Alternatively, you're free to simply not subscribe to the mailing list.

CHANGES TO THIS DOCUMENT
TWINCLING SOCIETY reserves the right to change the posting terms and conditions, rules and guidelines from time to time, subject to review and amendments commensurate with the prevailing law of the land. The revised document will be posted on this website (WWW.TWINCLING.ORG)

This document was last updated on March 16, 2005.