Acceptable Use Policy.

Effective date: September 4, 2026

1. Purpose and Scope

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") defines prohibited activities and usage standards for anyone accessing or using the Hop managed relay fleet, cloud backbone, developer console, or hosted APIs (the "Hosted Services"). This AUP supplements our Terms of Service.

2. Prohibited Activities

You may not use the Hosted Services to engage in, foster, or promote illegal, harmful, abusive, or irresponsible behavior, including:

• Malware and Exploitation: Distributing viruses, worms, Trojan horses, rootkits, spyware, ransomware, or other malicious payloads.
• Botnets and C2: Operating or facilitating botnet command-and-control infrastructure or automated credential stuffing.
• Denial of Service & Flooding: Generating distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) traffic, volumetric flood attacks, or deliberate resource exhaustion on relays.
• Relay Amplification & Abuse: Exploiting store-and-forward mechanisms to flood recipient inboxes, exhaust mailbox storage caches, or amplify packet distribution maliciously.
• Unlawful Content: Transmitting child sexual abuse material (CSAM), promoting violent extremism, or engaging in human trafficking or unlawful surveillance.
• Credential & Meter Bypassing: Circumventing authentication, rate limits, spending limits, or cryptographic identity validation.

3. End-to-End Encryption & Perimeter Enforcement

Hop is an end-to-end encrypted protocol. Relays carry sealed bundles (ciphertext) and do not have access to plaintext message contents. Consequently, our enforcement of this AUP relies on perimeter controls rather than content inspection:

• Cryptographic Authentication: Transport sessions authenticate peer keys via the Noise Protocol Framework.
• Admission & Rate Limiting: Inbound connections and frame rates are metered and capped per tenant routing token and per authenticated peer.
• Tenant Suspension: Accounts violating this policy face revocation of routing tokens and access credentials at the relay edge.

4. Enforcement and Termination

Hop reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to investigate suspected violations of this AUP and take immediate corrective action, including issuing warnings, rate-limiting traffic, suspending routing tokens, or terminating accounts. Because Hop is fail-open by design, suspension of Hosted Services stops managed backbone carriage while leaving independent local peer-to-peer mesh connectivity intact.

5. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Notice & Takedown Procedure

Hop Mesh, LLC respects the intellectual property rights of others and complies with the notice procedures of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA, 17 U.S.C. § 512). If you believe that content or media transmitted or stored through the Hop Hosted Services infringes your copyright, DMCA notices should be sent to our copyright team.

A compliant DMCA notification must be in writing and include the following:

• A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed;
• Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works;
• Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit Hop to locate the material (such as routing identifiers, bundle hashes, or specific network headers);
• Information reasonably sufficient to permit Hop to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and email address;
• A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
• A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

DMCA Notices:

Hop Mesh, LLC
Attn: Copyright Notices
Email: dmca@hopme.sh
[Counsel placeholder: physical address to be inserted upon confirmation of registered office filings.]

Counter-Notice Procedure: If you believe that material you submitted was removed or access was disabled by mistake or misidentification, you may send a written counter-notification to dmca@hopme.sh satisfying the requirements of 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3). Upon receipt of a valid counter-notice, Hop may restore the material or access unless the complaining party files a court action seeking an injunction within fourteen (14) business days.

Please note that because Hop relays operate as store-and-forward routers carrying end-to-end encrypted ciphertext that is purged upon delivery or TTL expiration, Hop relays do not maintain permanent public content hosting or web directories.

6. Reporting General Abuse & Violations

To report non-copyright violations of this Acceptable Use Policy (such as DoS attacks or unauthorized relay flood abuse), please email abuse@hopme.sh with relevant network headers, timestamps, and routing identifiers.