StarForums Member Rules and Regulations

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  1. The Message Boards on StarForums are FREE. There is no cost to you to create or maintain the message board. You have the right and responsibility to set up and maintain your message board.

    The statement about StarForums being free applies only to the basic forum facilities. For those services provided by the StarForums/Plus project an affordable membership fee is required.

  2. Message boards may not contain, be set up for or provide links to any of the following:
    • profanity or vulgar language;
    • sexually explicit language, pornography or displaying photos that contain nudity, obscene or pedophile material of any kind;
    • photos, captions, posts or descriptions that convey blatant expressions of bigotry, prejudice, racism, hatred or profanity ;
    • pedophilia (including but not limited to photos of children under the age of 18) ;
    • anything illegal (to Taiwan domestic laws);
    • copyright violation;
    • hacking / cracking / phreaking,
    • mail fraud or pyramid schemes.
    StarForums reserves the right to delete boards found to be in violation of any of the above without warning.

  3. Harrassment by Boardkeepers (Board Maintainers) or of Boardkeepers will not be tolerated. Your IP# and ISP account are logged with each post. StarForums will vigorously enforce a no-harrassment policy.

  4. Any attempt to break in the system security, to use unauthorized features, to sabotage the features, or any similar behavior, will be considered abusing / endangering the benefit of StarForums and TISNet Inc. and the abuser will face potential legal action from TISNet Inc.

  5. You may not copy/pull/post any images without prior consent from the originator of the images. All recognized copyright laws will be respected and enforced.

  6. You may not obtain paid advertising on your message board. StarForums Paid advertising is reserved for StarForums. StarForums reserves the right to put commercial banners on any message boards, however, care for taste and artistic integrity is of the utmost importance to StarForums.

    For a better explanation on what StarForums considers as "paid advertising", please refer to this section near the bottom of this page.

    To obtain the right to place commercials on your own board, please consider becoming a StarForums/Plus member.

  7. A message board will be considered abandoned if there is no activity for 60 consecutive days. StarForums reserves the right to delete abandoned message boards without notice.

  8. Your message board, layout, design, etc... is owned and copyrighted by you as the author. Copyright of the design, behavior, "look and feel" of the message board CGI programs and maintenance utilities are copyrighted by TISNet Inc. with all rights reserved.

    If your message board is a copy of one of the Wizard Boards, you should follow the guidelines in this section at the bottom of this page.

  9. You may not send unsolicited e-mails, SPAM to newsgroups or spam to internet search engines which reference your StarForums message board. Additionally, spamming of the StarForums message boards, members, etc... is expressly forbidden. StarForums will vigorously enforce anti-spamming netiquitte.

  10. StarForums reserves the right to move a message board to an appropriate catagory if it is not properly catagorized. (For example; A movie discussion forum listed under /Society_and_Culture/Politics/ would be moved to /Entertainment/Movies/.)

  11. TISNet Inc. and StarForums make no guarantees as to the availability of service.

  12. TISNet Inc. and StarForums reserve the right to change or amend these Rules and Regulations at any time.

You, as the author and maintainer of your message board, take full responsibility for its contents. As the maintainer, you state your message board contains nothing illegal, pornographic, nor promotes slander or libel. As the author, you also state that nothing on your page is copyrighted material that you do not have express permission to use. By submitting a request for a message board, you are agreeing to all of these conditions.

Please also read our Privacy Statement.

Copyright 1998-2001 TISNet Inc.

TISNet Technology Inc., a subsidiary of Tatung Co. Taiwan ROC.

The contents expressed here are advised by and under the consultation of
"Guardian Angels" Vikki Dawson & Wes C. Ritchey

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More about commercial advertising


  1. Your board may not be used for commercial purposes. Commerical is defined as anything that you do to promote monetary rewards for yourself or others including your board visitors. This also means that as a boardkeeper you will be responsible for monitoring your visitors posts as well.

  2. Monetary rewards are defined as any cash or credit for cash.

  3. You are not allowed to place any advertising banners on your board, nor are any of your visitors allowed, with the exception of web services like Link Exchange and World1000 banners since they offer you only the services as the reward. You should refrain from showing commercial banners unless you can prove that you receive no monetary reward either directly or indirectly. For instance, showing a "Download Netscape Browser Now!" banner or other similar banners to show your support for a commercial site is allowed, as long as you don't get click-through reward from it. Banners like Amazon.com or CD-Now are not allowed because they give you commissions.

  4. Classified ads, or advertising of any sort, are not allowed.

  5. Swapping is allowed as long as the swapping is not monetary.

  6. In other words, no monetary reward may pass hands, any hands, in any form, as a result of a message being on your board. Boardkeepers are responsible for monitoring their boards to be sure there are no violations. And, if there are violations, boardkeepers are responsible for removing those messages. There is a utility for removing messages, which is the Maintenance Mode, option #1 in the Member Utilities.

  7. StarForums reserves the right to delete any message board without notice if it feels the boardkeeper is not making an effort to monitor its contents.

  8. StarForums opens this limitation on commercial advertising for the StarForums/Plus members. This means the Plus boardkeepers can do any advertising on their message boards as long as no other rules and regulations are violated, such as the no-porno and no-illegality rules.


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More about copyright issue


  1. By joining the Board Layout Designing Wizard Project, the original board designers already have donated the copyright of their designing of the board as well as the associated files (images, audios, etc) to StarForums and TISNet Inc.

  2. According to the same agreement, StarForums also promises to keep the acknowledgement message "Board designing courtesy of (designer)" on the Wizard Boards as well as the boards copied from these Wizard Boards.

  3. StarForums encourages all boardkeepers to copy the board designs from the Wizard Boards, and the acknowledgement messages should be kept intact to comply with the above agreement. If the boardkeeper intentionally removes such message or hides it, comments it out, changes it, places any words against it, or by any means, would be considered a violation of the Wizard Board service. In this case, StarForums reserves the right to justify it by restoring the original message, recovering the board designing parameters, clearing all the board parameters, or even remove the whole board, without notice.

  4. The above condition holds only when the copied board has no significant change or modification from the original Wizard Board. If the boardkeeper makes changes to the board which can be considered a new design to a noticeable degree, then the acknowledgement message can be removed without any penalty.

  5. Before removing the acknowledgement message, the boardkeeper is strongly recommended to consult the Guardian Angels of StarForums.

TISNet Technology Inc., a subsidiary of Tatung Co. Taiwan ROC.

The contents expressed here are advised by consultation of
"Guardian Angel" Vikki Dawson
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