The best advice I can give to somebody looking to get a new dedicated hosting plan is to make sure that they review the terms of service (TOS) and acceptable use policy (AUP). These are often looked legal documents that pretty much will spell out what you can and can not do with your new dedicated hosting environment.
The terms of service is the most often used of the two. You see these with just about anything you sign up for, because somewhere the company in question has to setup a legal agreements with you, just in case you do something they don’t want you to do they are covered for being able to toss you out the door. This is why it is always important to at least review it once a year to see if it has been changed, what is covered there and what is not covered there.
Now to get into more exact details of what type of content is and is not allowed, that is where an acceptable use policy comes into play. An AUP will give you more detail, often in depth and without as much legal jargon what you can and can not do with that hosting setup. Often they will mention the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which in a nutshell is there to keep you from using your server as a pirating gateway.
So please, if you do nothing else, make sure you at least review all the legal documents a web host sends your way. A dedicated server is often a big investment, and if you were purchasing a house, a car or anything else that big you would want to make sure you reviewed as much information about it as you could.
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