Browns Digital

Acceptable Use Policy

Last updated: 23 July 2026

1. Scope

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") sets the rules for using Browns Digital services and any site, content, or traffic you publish or transmit through Studio hosting or related infrastructure.

It applies to brownsdigital.org, Studio, My Account, Help, Status, Roadmap, community channels we operate or moderate, and all hosted sites. If you invite collaborators, you are responsible for their compliance. This AUP forms part of the Terms of Service.

3. Data privacy on hosted sites

  • If your site collects personal information, you are typically the responsible party under POPIA and must provide a clear privacy notice and a lawful basis for processing.
  • Do not collect sensitive personal information, children's information, or special personal information without a lawful basis and appropriate safeguards.
  • Do not use Studio hosting to harvest personal information for sale, spam lists, or unauthorised profiling.
  • Operator hosting obligations are described in the Data Processing Addendum and Privacy Policy.

4. Conduct

You must treat other users, our staff, and the public with respect. Harassment, threats, doxxing, stalking, impersonation, or coordinated abuse of individuals or groups is prohibited on the platform and in community spaces linked from Browns Digital (including Discord).

5. Prohibited content

You must not publish, host, store, or distribute content that:

  • is illegal under South African law or applicable foreign law;
  • involves child sexual abuse material or the sexualisation of minors in any form (zero tolerance — reported to authorities);
  • promotes terrorism, violent extremism, or clear incitement to imminent violence;
  • is defamatory, or that harasses or threatens individuals;
  • incites hatred against a group based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or similar protected characteristics;
  • infringes copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights;
  • discloses another person's private information without lawful basis (doxxing);
  • facilitates fraud, phishing, scams, or the sale of illegal goods or services;
  • contains malware, spyware, or code designed to damage or gain unauthorised access to systems or data.

6. Prohibited platform abuse

  • Creating accounts by automated means, bulk registration, or credential stuffing.
  • Reselling platform access, shared logins, or "white-label" access without our written permission.
  • Scraping the services at scale, bypassing rate limits, or circumventing authentication.
  • Sending spam or bulk unsolicited messages from or via anything we host.
  • Using the services to mine cryptocurrency, run open proxies or VPN exits, or operate file-dump / warez repositories.
  • Interfering with other customers' use of the platform.

7. Security

You must not probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of our systems, other customers' sites, or related infrastructure without prior written authorisation, except for good-faith security research reported responsibly to security@brownsdigital.org.

You must not attempt to access accounts, data, or environments that are not yours, or to disrupt availability (including denial-of-service attacks).

8. Shared resources and fair use

Studio hosting runs on shared infrastructure. Fair use means your usage must be proportionate to your plan and must not degrade service for others. We may monitor aggregate resource consumption for stability and security.

9. Bandwidth and traffic

  • Bandwidth is intended for normal website serving: pages, assets, and ordinary visitor traffic.
  • Sustained high-volume downloads, media streaming as a primary product, or traffic patterns resembling a CDN or file-hosting service may exceed fair use.
  • If traffic threatens shared infrastructure, we may throttle, temporarily suspend, or ask you to upgrade or optimise.

10. Storage

  • Storage is for website content and assets needed to run your published sites.
  • Using hosting as a general-purpose backup drive, large media archive, or software distribution mirror is not permitted unless your plan expressly allows it.
  • Plan limits, where stated at checkout or in Studio, apply. Soft limits may be enforced when usage harms neighbours on shared hosts.

11. Concurrency, compute, and request rates

Automated bots, aggressive crawlers you control, or scripts that generate excessive concurrent requests, CPU usage, or database load may be rate-limited or blocked. You must design sites and integrations to behave reasonably on shared hosting.

12. Interpretation of "unlimited"

Where marketing or plan copy uses words such as "unlimited" sites, collaborators, or similar, those terms mean unlimited within fair use and technical constraints of shared infrastructure, not a licence to consume disproportionate resources, resell capacity, or operate workloads that threaten platform stability. We may apply reasonable limits, throttling, or plan adjustments when usage is abusive or anomalous.

13. Intellectual property

You must have the rights to publish Your Content. Do not upload or embed material you do not own or lack a licence to use. Copyright complaints and ECTA take-down notices are handled as described in the Terms of Service.

14. Enforcement

  • We may remove content, suspend features, throttle resources, or suspend or terminate accounts that violate this AUP.
  • For most violations we notify you and, where reasonable, give a chance to fix the issue.
  • Severe violations (illegal content, security attacks, child sexual abuse material, active fraud) may result in immediate action without prior notice.
  • Appeals are reviewed by a human — reply to the notice or use Help.
  • If there is a conflict on a specific contractual point, the Terms control for contract formation; this AUP controls day-to-day use standards.

15. Reporting

Report abusive or unlawful content or behaviour to abuse@brownsdigital.org with the URL, a description of the material, and the grounds. Copyright claims should follow ECTA section 77 take-down requirements (proof of rights and a good-faith statement).

Valid reports typically lead to removal or disabling within five business days — faster for serious harm. Knowingly false reports may themselves breach this AUP and ECTA section 77(2).

16. Contact