Terms of Service

1. Service content

1.1 "Service" refers to the Tablestore service that is displayed on www.alibabacloud.com, and relevant technical and network support services provided by Alibaba Cloud.

1.2 The service provided by Alibaba Cloud must comply with the terms of service.

2. Service fees

2.1 Alibaba Cloud shall post an announcement about the billing method and pricing of the Tablestore service on the Alibaba Cloud official website (www.alibabacloud.com).

2.2 Payment time

2.2.1 Subscription

You can subscribe to Tablestore resource plans that are billed on a monthly basis or a yearly basis. Alibaba Cloud provides the Tablestore service for your business only if you complete the payment for the resource plans during the validity period of the order. The validity period of the order starts from the point in time when you confirm the order on the Alibaba Cloud official website and ends after seven days or ends at the point in time when the service inventory becomes insufficient. Alibaba Cloud determines the shorter time period as the validity period of the order. If you fail to complete the payment during the validity period of the order, the order and all terms for the service that are based on the order become invalid.

2.2.2 Pay-as-you-go

You can use the Tablestore service before you are billed for the resources that you use. After you activate the Tablestore service, Alibaba Cloud provides the service for your business. Alibaba Cloud charges you for the resource usage in the previous hour and generates bills on an hourly basis. The specific resource fees are deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account.

2.3 Alibaba Cloud reserves the right to refuse to provide services and/or technical support or to terminate services and/or technical support until you settle the payments based on the terms of service or if Alibaba Cloud has valid reasons to assume that you will not settle the payments based on the terms of service.

2.4 You understand and agree that Alibaba Cloud has the right to modify the Tablestore service, including but not limited to modifications of the service system, service name, pricing system, and billing method, from time to time. Alibaba Cloud shall notify you of the preceding modifications and changes in advance by posting announcements on the official website, sending internal messages, sending text messages to your mobile number, or by using other communication channels.

2.5 You fully understand that all complimentary service items or promotional activities in the Alibaba Cloud pricing system are a one-time special offer provided by Alibaba Cloud and these items or activities are not related to the standard service price. The special offer does not include the modification, update, and maintenance costs of the complimentary service items, and you cannot use the complimentary service items to offset the service price.

3. Rights and obligations

3.1 Your rights and obligations

3.1.1 You agree to follow the terms of service, and relevant management specifications and procedures on the service display page. You understand that the terms of service and preceding specifications may be modified from time to time. If Alibaba Cloud modifies the terms of service, Alibaba Cloud shall notify you of the modification 30 days in advance by posting an announcement on the relevant page of www.alibabacloud.com. If you do not agree to a modification made by Alibaba Cloud to the relevant terms of service, you have the right to stop using the service provided by Alibaba Cloud. If you stop using the service provided by Alibaba Cloud, you shall export the relevant business data and settle the payments for the service fees within your Alibaba Cloud account. If you continue to use the service, this action indicates that you accepted the modification that is made by Alibaba Cloud to the relevant service terms.

3.1.2 You shall pay the corresponding service fees based on the information that is displayed on the relevant page of the Alibaba Cloud website and the terms of service.

3.1.3 You agree that:

3.1.3.1 If your usage of the service provided by Alibaba Cloud for commercial activities or non-commercial activities requires licenses or approvals from relevant national departments, you shall obtain the required licenses or approvals in advance, including but not limited to the following usage scenarios:

If you use Tablestore for multiple websites, make sure that all websites are licensed or approved by relevant national departments.

If your website provides non-commercial Internet information services, you shall complete ICP filing for the website and make sure that all submitted filing information is true and valid. If your filing information changes, submit the updated information in the filing system at the earliest opportunity.

If your website provides commercial Internet information services, you shall obtain an ICP license from the local communications administration.

If your website provides electronic bulletin services such as Bulletin Board System, you shall have your website filed or approved in compliance with relevant laws and regulations.

If you run an online game website, you shall obtain a network culture business license in compliance with the law.

If you run a video website, you shall obtain a license for broadcasting audio or video programs over information networks in compliance with the law. If your business provides information related to news, publication, education, healthcare, medicine, or medical instruments, you shall complete the examination and approval process of the relevant authorities based on the applicable laws, administrative rules and regulations, and the relevant government regulations. Before you apply for a business license or complete the relevant filing applications, you shall complete the examination and approval process of the relevant authorities in compliance with the law.

You understand and acknowledge that the items that are listed in the preceding sections do not cover all types of licenses or approvals that you shall obtain from the relevant national authorities for commercial activities or non-commercial activities. Before you perform the preceding activities, you shall obtain the related licenses or approvals, and comply with the related local and national laws and regulations.

3.1.3.2 Unless otherwise specified by Alibaba Cloud, you cannot modify, translate, adapt, lease, sublicense, transmit, or transfer the software provided by Alibaba Cloud on information networks. You also cannot reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to obtain the source code of the software provided by Alibaba Cloud.

3.1.3.3 If the service provided by Alibaba Cloud requires licenses from a third-party software, you shall accept the terms of the relevant licensing agreement.

3.1.3.4 You cannot distribute email advertisements or spams, and cannot use the service provided by Alibaba Cloud to distribute undesirable or unsolicited emails, online advertisements, or emails that contain illicit information such as reactionary information or pornographic information.

3.1.3.5 You cannot lease the Tablestore service provided by Alibaba Cloud as disk space.

3.1.3.6 You cannot use the resources and services provided by Alibaba Cloud to upload, download, store, or publish the following information or content, or provide services to publish the information for other individuals, including but not limited to setting URLs and banner links for other individuals:

3.1.3.6.1 Political propaganda and/or news information that does not comply with national regulations

3.1.3.6.2 Information that contains national secrets and/or content related to national security

3.1.3.6.3 Content that promotes feudalism or superstition, or contains pornographic, indecent, or obscene content, or content that promotes criminal activities

3.1.3.6.4 Information related to illegal Internet publishing activities, such as lottery prizes, gambling, private servers, and plug-ins

3.1.3.6.5 Information that does not comply with national ethnic and religious policies

3.1.3.6.6 Information that hinders Internet security

3.1.3.6.7 Information or content that infringes upon the legitimate interests of others and/or impairs social order, social security, and public morality

3.1.3.6.8 Other content that does not comply with laws, regulations, departmental rules, or national policies

3.1.3.7 You cannot use a program or process or configure settings for a program or process to occupy a large amount of server memory, CPU, or network bandwidth resources on platforms that use cloud computing resources of Alibaba Cloud, such as servers, network bandwidth, and storage space. You cannot process an excessive number of workloads in Alibaba Cloud, networks or servers of other Alibaba Cloud users, including but not limited to local, remote, and global networks and servers, or cloud services and applications. If you process an excessive number of workloads in Alibaba Cloud, the connection between the Alibaba Cloud service and the Internet, the connection between the Alibaba Cloud service and a specific network or server, and the connection to an Alibaba Cloud service may be affected. This action can also cause the cloud platform products and services of Alibaba Cloud or servers of other Alibaba Cloud users to shut down or crash, or prevent users from accessing the cloud services and applications on the cloud platform.

3.1.3.8 You cannot perform actions that undermine or attempt to undermine network security, including but not limited to phishing, hacker attacks, network frauds, injection of viruses or suspected involvement in virus attacks, Trojan horse injections, executing malicious code on websites or in the cyberspace, and suspected involvement in attacks that require virtual servers, such as scanning, sniffers, ARP spoofing, and DDoS attacks, against other websites and servers.

3.1.3.9 You cannot modify or attempt to modify the system configurations provided by Alibaba Cloud or undermine system security.

3.1.3.10 You cannot use the service provided by Alibaba Cloud to perform actions that impair the legitimate interests of Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Cloud affiliates, or any company or website in Alibaba Group, including but not limited to Alibaba, Taobao, Alipay, Alimama, and Ant Financial. In this document, the preceding companies or websites are collectively referred to as "Alibaba Group". The actions that impair the legitimate interests of Alibaba Group and its websites include, but are not limited to violations of any agreement or terms, management specifications, or trading rules published by Alibaba Group, and actions that damage or attempt to damage the fair-trade environment or normal trade order of Alibaba Group.

3.1.3.11 You cannot perform other actions that do not comply with laws, regulations, or the terms of service.

3.1.3.12 If you perform an action that does not comply with the preceding terms, Alibaba Cloud has the right to take appropriate measures based on the actual scenario, including but not limited to immediate termination or suspension of the service, or deletion of the corresponding information. If a third-party organization or an individual provides inquiries or complaints against you, Alibaba Cloud will notify you to provide an explanation and supporting evidence in the specified time period. If you fail to provide evidence for the inquiries or complaints against you, or you fail to provide a response in the specified time period, Alibaba Cloud reserves the right to take appropriate measures, including but not limited to immediate termination, or suspension of the service or deletion of the corresponding information. If Alibaba Cloud is unable to contact you due to your failure to update the contact information in a timely manner or due to invalid contact information, Alibaba Cloud determines that you failed to provide a response in the specified time period.

3.1.4 You understand and agree that the state secrets of the People's Republic of China are protected by law and you are obliged to keep the secrets. Your usage of the Tablestore service must comply with the relevant confidentiality laws and regulations, and cannot risk the security of the state secrets of the People's Republic of China. If your usage of the service risks the security of the state secrets of the People’s Republic of China,you shall bear all legal consequences that arise from this.

3.1.5 You cannot install or use pirated software together with the service or on the cloud platform provided by Alibaba Cloud. You are fully responsible for the consequences of your own actions, such as using self-installed software and performing unauthorized operations.

3.1.6 You are responsible for the integrity and confidentiality of the data that you store on the cloud platform provided by Alibaba Cloud, and the security tokens and passwords that you use to access and manage various products and services on the cloud platform. You are fully responsible for the losses and consequences that arise from the loss or leakage of the preceding data, security tokens, and passwords due to your improper maintenance or improper confidentiality.

3.1.7 You shall provide the contact who is responsible for following the terms of the service and a list of contacts who manage products and services in user networks and cloud platform. You shall also provide necessary assistance. If the specified contact information changes, you shall update the changed information online and notify Alibaba Cloud at the earliest opportunity. You are fully responsible for handling the consequences of providing false, inaccurate, or incomplete contact information, and the consequences that arise from the relevant actions or omissions of these contacts.

3.1.8 You reserve the right to retain your website access logs, including posted information, post time, IP addresses, and domain names, in compliance with relevant laws and regulations such as the Measures for the Administration of Internet Information Services and Management Provisions on Electronic Bulletin Services in Internet, and provide these logs to relevant national authorities during legal investigations. You are responsible for all legal liabilities that arise due to your failure to retain relevant records based on the terms of service.

3.1.9 You understand that Alibaba Cloud cannot guarantee that the provided service is flawless. For example, Alibaba Cloud security products cannot guarantee that your hardware or software is completely secure. Alibaba Cloud promises to keep improving the service quality and service level. You agree that even if the service provided by Alibaba Cloud contains flaws that are unavoidable due to the current technology level in the industry, these flaws shall not be considered as breaches of agreement on the part of Alibaba Cloud. You agree to cooperate with Alibaba Cloud to resolve these flaws.

3.1.10 You are responsible for the data that is stored on Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba Cloud prompts you to determine the legality of the data, and supervise the data. If the uploaded content or stored content does not comply with laws, regulations, departmental rules, or national policies, you are responsible for all consequences and liabilities that arise from these violations. The records in the Alibaba Cloud system may be used as evidence of your violation of laws and regulations.

3.1.11 You shall take on the obligation and responsibility to back up your data. Alibaba Cloud servers provide tools to help you use the daily data backup feature. However, data backup is not the responsibility of Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba Cloud does not guarantee the full backup of user data, or take any responsibility for the backup of user data or the consequences of the data that you back up.

3.2 Rights and obligations of Alibaba Cloud

3.2.1 Alibaba Cloud shall provide the service in compliance with the terms of service.

3.2.2 During the validity period of the terms of service, Alibaba Cloud shall provide the following customer services for your business:

3.2.2.1 Alibaba Cloud provides 24/7 after-sales troubleshooting for paying users, and provides valid contact information to paying users to ensure that they can contact the troubleshooting team. The technical support shall provide feedback after the issue is identified.

3.2.2.2 Alibaba Cloud provides a 24/7 online ticket service system to answer questions that are asked by customers when they use an Alibaba Cloud service.

3.2.3 Alibaba Cloud is responsible for maintaining the underlying layer of the operating system, and for performing the operations and maintenance of software that is provided, including the relevant technical architecture and operating system of the Tablestore service. You are responsible for maintaining the components in the operating system, such as applications that you install in the system. If you update the operating system without assistance from Alibaba Cloud technical support, the update may have adverse impacts such as downtime. In these cases, you are responsible for the risks and for taking note of the required precautions.

3.2.4 Alibaba Cloud shall handle failures that occur due to non-artificial operations, except for failures that occur due to your actions and/or force majeure, and events that occur beyond the scope of control of Alibaba Cloud.

3.2.5 Alibaba Cloud shall comply with its confidentiality obligations.

3.2.6 You understand and acknowledge that Alibaba Cloud may migrate data centers in the relevant scenarios if necessary. Alibaba Cloud shall send a notification to you seven calendar days before Alibaba Cloud performs the preceding operations. The operations may require you to modify the DNS settings for relevant domain names. You must modify the DNS address to the IP address that is specified by Alibaba Cloud within the specified time. If you do not modify the DNS address, you are fully responsible if your website is inaccessible.

4. Retention, deletion, and download of user data

4.1 Alibaba Cloud may use the information that you submit during account registration to send you promotional and marketing information about products and services.

4.2 Your user data will be partially disclosed or fully disclosed to the following parties:

4.2.1 Disclosed to a third party with your consent.

4.2.2 Disclosed to a third party, administrative authorities, or judicial authorities in compliance with the relevant legal provisions, or to meet the requirements of these administrative authorities or judicial authorities.

4.2.3 Disclosed to a third party if you violate relevant Chinese laws and regulations.

4.2.4 Disclosed to a third party to provide the third-party software or services that you require.

Unless otherwise specified by law, or based on an agreement between Alibaba Cloud and you, Alibaba Cloud reserves the right to store your data for a 15-day period after the service provided by Alibaba Cloud is suspended due to overdue payments in your account, charge you relevant fees, and disable all operations that you can perform by using your Alibaba Cloud account. Alibaba Cloud no longer retains the data after the retention period elapses. You are responsible for all consequences that occur after your data is deleted.

5. Intellectual property rights

5.1 You shall make sure that the information that you submit to Alibaba Cloud, the usage of the service provided by Alibaba Cloud, and the results that you obtain by using the service do not infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of a third party. If a third party files a claim or lawsuit, or may file a lawsuit against Alibaba Cloud for copyright infringement, infringement upon the rights and interests of a third party, or violation of Chinese laws and regulations or other applicable laws, you shall compensate Alibaba Cloud for the relevant costs, losses, or liabilities, and hold Alibaba Cloud unaccountable for the relevant costs, losses, or liabilities.

5.2 If a third-party organization or an individual challenges or files a complaint related to the ownership of intellectual property rights for the products, services, or content that you use together with the service provided by Alibaba Cloud, you shall provide the relevant documents or information as evidence in your defense and cooperate with Alibaba Cloud to handle these complaints.

5.3 You acknowledge that the intellectual property rights to the information, technology or technical support, software, and services provided by Alibaba Cloud belong to Alibaba Cloud or a third party. You cannot copy, disseminate, transfer, permit other individuals to use, or provide the preceding resources to other individuals, except in scenarios in which Alibaba Cloud or a third party provides explicit consent. If you provide the preceding resources to other individuals for usage, except in scenarios in which Alibaba Cloud or a third party provides explicit consent, you are responsible for the corresponding liabilities.

6. Confidentiality

6.1 "Confidential information" refers to all technical information and non-technical information that is disclosed by one party to the other party, including but not limited to product information, product plans, prices, financial planning and marketing planning, business strategies, customer information, customer data, research and development information, software and hardware, APIs, technical descriptions, designs, special formulas, and special algorithms.

6.2 The involved parties agree to hold the aforementioned confidential information of the other party in confidence, and to ensure that the employees who can access the confidential information comply with the confidentiality obligations. Unless otherwise specified by a state authority in compliance with the law or a scenario in which the confidential information is exposed in the public domain, the party that receives the confidential information cannot disclose the information to the public.

6.3 The involved parties acknowledge that the confidential information consists of their respective confidential information and important assets, and agree to ensure that the confidential information is not disclosed to the public. If the preceding confidential information is disclosed to the public, both parties shall cooperate and take appropriate measures to avoid or minimize any negative impacts.

6.4. The scope of this clause extends beyond the termination of the terms of service.

7. Activation, usage, and termination of the service

7.1 After you complete the payment for Tablestore resource plans, Alibaba Cloud provides the resources that you purchased from the point in time when you completed the payment to the point in time when the resources are exhausted or when the resource plans expire. Alibaba Cloud determines the shorter period of time as the validity period of the resource plans.

7.2 You shall use the resources in the resource plans that you purchased during the validity period of the resource plans. When the resource plans expire, the resources that you have not used become invalid and Alibaba Cloud shall provide no alternatives or supplements.

7.3 If you use the pay-as-you go billing method for the Tablestore service, you can use the service after you activate the Tablestore service.

7.4 If you purchase a Tablestore resource plan, the resource plan is used to offset your resource fees. Unless otherwise specified by law, or based on an agreement between Alibaba Cloud and you, the pay-as-you go billing method is used for the Tablestore service if the resources in your resource plans are exhausted or the resource plans expire, and you did not purchase new resource plans. In this case, Alibaba Cloud continues to provide the service and charge relevant fees.

7.5 You shall make sure that your account balance is sufficient to prevent the service from being suspended. If you have overdue payments, Alibaba Cloud reserves the right to stop providing the service until all your data is deleted.

7.6 The service shall be terminated if any of the following circumstances occurs:

7.6.1 Both parties agree to terminate the service ahead of schedule.

7.6.2 You are in serious violation of the terms of service, including but not limited to: a. your failure to fulfill the payment obligations in accordance with the terms of service, and/or. b. your violation of laws and regulations. If you have unpaid orders, you shall complete the payments. If you fail to fulfill the payment obligations in accordance with the terms of service, Alibaba Cloud will suspend or terminate the service in accordance with the following terms:

7.6.2.1 You can continue to use the Alibaba Cloud Tablestore service for 24 hours from the time of the first overdue payment. If you do not add funds to your account to settle the service fees within the 24 hours, Alibaba Cloud suspends the service and restricts you to perform operations in Tablestore. Alibaba Cloud continues to store your data and charges you the relevant fees.

7.6.2.2 If you do not add funds to your account to settle the service fees 15 days from the time when the service is suspended, Alibaba Cloud terminates the terms of service and stops providing you with the service. Your data stored on Alibaba Cloud will be deleted and cleared. You cannot restore the data.

7.6.3 You understand and fully acknowledge that Alibaba Cloud has taken necessary technical measures and will continue to improve technologies to respond to behaviors or events that endanger network security. Such behaviors or events (hereinafter referred to as the "Actions") include computer viruses, network intrusions, and attacks such as DDoS. However, due to the limits of network security technologies and the unpredictability of such Actions, if these Actions on your website cause damage to Alibaba Cloud or other Alibaba Cloud networks or servers (including but not limited to those in or outside China), or affect the communication between Alibaba Cloud and the Internet, between Alibaba Cloud and specific networks or servers, or within Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Cloud may decide to suspend or terminate the service. If the service is terminated, the service fees are calculated based on the actual use of the service, and you shall settle any outstanding balance.

7.6.4 Alibaba Cloud can terminate the terms of service by posting an announcement on www.alibabacloud.com or by sending you an internal message or written notice 30 days in advance. In this case, Alibaba Cloud shall refund the amount that you have paid minus the cost of the consumed resources to your Alibaba Cloud account.

8. Liability for breach

8.1 Either party hereto who violates the terms of service must assume the liability for breach in accordance with the law.

8.2 You understand that, in view of the particularity of computer and Internet services, Alibaba Cloud shall not be deemed to commit a breach of the terms of service under the following circumstances:

8.2.1 Alibaba Cloud needs to suspend the service for a short period of time during server configurations or maintenance.

8.2.2 Access to your website is slowed as a result of a blocked path on the Internet.

8.3 You may terminate the service if the service is unavailable for 72 consecutive hours for reasons attributable to Alibaba Cloud, except that the service becomes unavailable for any reason beyond the control of Alibaba Cloud.

8.4 Alibaba Cloud shall not, under any circumstances, take responsibility for any indirect, consequential, punitive, contingent, or special damages, including the loss of profits that arise from your use of the service provided by Alibaba Cloud, even if you have been notified of the possibility of such loss.

8.5 In no case shall the liability of Alibaba Cloud for liquidated damages due to the breach of the terms of service exceeds the total service fees corresponding to the defaulting service.

9. Force majeure

9.1 If a force majeure event or any other unexpected event renders the terms of service impossible, unnecessary, or meaningless, the party that suffers the force majeure event or unexpected event shall not be held liable.

9.2 A force majeure or unexpected event refers to an event that is unpredictable, insurmountable, and unavoidable, and has a significant impact on one or both parties, including but not limited to natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and plagues, and social events such as war, turmoil, governmental acts, interruption of trunk lines of communication, hacker attacks, network congestion, technological adjustments by telecom departments, as well as government regulations.

10. Governing laws and dispute resolution

10.1 These terms of service shall be governed by the laws of the People's Republic of China.

10.2 Any dispute that arises during the fulfillment of the terms of service shall be settled by both parties in a timely manner based on negotiation. If no settlement is reached after negotiation, either party may file a lawsuit with the Xihu District People's Court of Hangzhou.

11. Supplementary provisions

11.1 The service description and price description of Alibaba Cloud on www.alibabacloud.com and the order page that you have confirmed are an integral part of the terms of service. If the service description and prices of services provided by Alibaba Cloud on www.alibabacloud.com, and the order page that you have confirmed are inconsistent with the terms of service, the terms of service shall prevail.

11.2 Alibaba Cloud has the right to transfer all or part of its rights and obligations under the terms of service to its affiliates by posting an announcement on www.alibabacloud.com or by sending you an internal message or written notice 30 days in advance.

11.3 If any clauses, by nature or otherwise, should continue to exist upon the termination of the terms of service, these clauses shall be deemed to continue to exist. Such clauses include but are not limited to Warranty, Confidentiality, Intellectual Property Rights, Governing Law, and Dispute Resolution.