
A Slashdot comment on Google Fiber "no servers" clause (2012) - yuhong
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357
======
pash
Google Fiber changed its terms of service in October. The terms now only
forbid running a server "for commercial purposes". [0]

I have Google Fiber, and I'm fine with the new terms. I do wonder, though,
what would happen if I set up a Tor exit node or something. ...

0\. [http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/10/google...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/10/google-fiber-now-explicitly-permits-home-servers/)

~~~
X4
It makes their monopoly only stronger. So to say, for any innovator who wants
to use his OWN Internet connection to host whatever s/he deems good, it is
prohibited by Google. Ok, that's unfair!

~~~
ddunkin
You sure don't OWN it. You can lease IP addresses from the registry, but you
still don't own them, you can get an Internet connection from a company, but
you don't own it, you are leasing the line and bandwidth from the provider.

~~~
X4
Why is it illegal, that's the question! It does not harm anyone!

Ok, but one doesn't need to fully own the cable, to run a startup's server on
it. They can forbid SMTP servers, ok, but HTTP etc. should be allowed.

You mean I need my own hacker satellite to own it? Even then, how would you
connect your satellite to the network?

------
belorn
This is mostly an issue of the limitations of law, or to put it more
precisely, having to deal with the letter of the law versus the spirit of the
law.

If the intention is only to prevent large-scale data center, forbidding all
commercial form of servers is clearly overkill by a large margin. However, if
they limit the scope, they might miss use cases which are by everyone's
definition abusive, but not technically a "large-scale data center".

I find the same problem in license texts. The GPL should really only have to
be a single line saying "Do what ever you want with the program, so long you
do not restrict anyone else in doing the same". Following the spirit, it would
cover any form of restrictions now and in the future, regardless if people
tried to use hardware restrictions, legal restriction, or obfuscation (like
machine language) to restrict users of the program. Applying a different
license with a lower requirement, would simply be a matter of intentionally
trying to circumvent the wishes of the author.

Alas, licenses are not written like if they were enforced by the spirit of the
text, but rather as if they were enforced by the letter of the text. As such,
they try to include all forms of license circumventing into a now rather long
license text, and when new license-circumventing techniques gets invented, the
license text gets an update.

Wouldn't it be nice if licenses and terms of services would just write down
what they want, rather than trying to cover every aspect imaginable just in
case?

~~~
al2o3cr
Much like computers, the modern legal system doesn't work particularly well if
you expect it to "do what I mean, not what I said".

The difference is that compiler errors on the computer don't usually cost six
figures when they happen. ;)

------
jerf
Is there a context to this being posted? (Honest question.)

~~~
lolwutf
Being on a website called Hacker News.

Seriously, this surprises you?

~~~
neumann
yes, it is not news if the link is a year old and deals with a topic that is
no longer relevant.

This is noise, unless there is some related context.

~~~
Goopplesoft
He's got a point though, theres quite a bit of precedence for this. E.g. all
the random wiki articles posted that aren't 'news'.

~~~
dasil003
To be fair though, most of the random wiki articles aren't about corporate
gossip.

------
CamperBob2
Yes, and Obama wishes he could close Guantanamo Bay. Oh, wait. He could, if he
actually wanted to.

Your move, Larry.

~~~
jjoonathan
For reference, here is Obama's executive order to close Guantanamo (date: the
2 days after inauguration).

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/closure-
guantanam...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/closure-guantanamo-
detention-facilities)

Just because he _could_ convince congress to stop blocking him doesn't mean
the concessions he would have to make would be reasonable. They probably
wouldn't be as bad as Clinton/CHIP (Republican congress holding health care
for children hostage to secure a 33% cut in capital gains tax during an
economic boom), but if said history is any indication the concessions he would
have to make to fulfill his mandate might cost thousands of American lives.

~~~
cma
All congress could do is hold back funds; several groups have volunteered to
cover all costs and been ignored.

------
ics
These are the terms from Optimum Online:

    
    
        Users may not run any type of server on the system. This
        includes but is not limited to FTP, IRC, SMTP, POP, HTTP, 
        SOCKS, SQUID, DNS or any multi-user forums;
    
        Users may not register or point a domain, sub-domain,
        or hostname to any Optimum Online IP address. Moreover,
        Users may not have traffic redirected to the Optimum
        Online Service;
    

I can't remember what the terms were last time I was on Comacast, but I
believe they explicitly allowed running a server under some conditions (non-
commercial perhaps?). There are plenty of ways they could cover their asses
while still allowing people to run servers. One of the best things about web
services that have been popping up over the last couple years is that they
offer so much more in terms of monitoring. If Google just says to keep
continuous services within some range, with a distinction between peak and
non-peak hours (or even better, close-to-live network stats), what is the
problem? Well adjusted bots could swamp the network if every client is using
it up I suppose...

Edit: Just saw the ToS update posted below. It's an improvement, but I'm
honestly surprised that a company like Google can't just skip the vague give-
them-what-they-want-without-screwing-ourselves language and clearly lay down
the rules in a way that's irrelevant to the common user but explicit for more
aware users.

~~~
bane
"running servers" reminds me a lot on restrictions on some systems against
"running arbitrary code", then letting you browse the web with javascript
turned on. These days servers take all kinds of form, from an FTP server to
somebody hosting a deathmatch from their xbox. Hell would my browser going to
a page that uses web sockets count as a server? Is an X server a server? I'm
sure I'm running half a dozen chrome extension that count as servers in some
way.

Here's a web server in a browser!
[http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/puramu/a-browser-based-
webserver...](http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/puramu/a-browser-based-
webserver-15604)

It's dumb and pointless, what they should be saying is what they mean, if
they're afraid of too much bandwidth utilization then say "users may not
saturate their connections above 30% bandwidth utilization for longer than 3
hours" or some such. If it's not wanting people to run commercial services
then a couple clauses of either "for noncommercial use only" or "not to be
held liable for commercial servers running on residential lines" or whatever
is the appropriate legalese.

It's just weird old thinking that has nothing to do with how the technology
actually works.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> It's just weird old thinking that has nothing to do with how the technology
> actually works.

It has nothing to do with the technology at all. A cable modem has perfectly
adequate performance for a lot of commercial uses and the telecommunications
companies want those customers to have to pay 50X as much for a leased line.

Which is why it doesn't make any sense for Google to be doing it. Their
purpose isn't to upsell business customers, it's to demonstrate demand for
high bandwidth connections so they can pressure other telecommunications
companies to increase capacity.

The whole "heavy users" thing is bunkum. Yes, 20% of the users transfer 80% of
the data. That's how pretty much everything works. People are diverse and
have non-uniform usage patterns, and if you sort by consumption level then the
high end tautologically uses more per capita than the low end. But bandwidth
is _by far_ not the predominant cost of providing internet service. The
predominant cost is getting the wire to the endpoint whatsoever, once it's
there you can send as many bits as you can fit and upgrades are a matter of
replacing terminating equipment rather than going back into manholes and
bucket trucks. If bandwidth consumption were to quintuple it wouldn't require
any significant rate increase -- it has been increasing exponentially for
years with no real trouble.

The only reason telcos talk about heavy users is that they want to engage in
price discrimination and they know it confuses people who are used to dealing
with commodities whose dominant cost is the unit cost rather than ones whose
dominant cost is the fixed cost of building a distribution system.

~~~
halfasleep
> The only reason telcos talk about heavy users is that they want to engage in
> price discrimination and they know it confuses people who are used to
> dealing with commodities whose dominant cost is the unit cost rather than
> ones whose dominant cost is the fixed cost of building a distribution
> system.

I'd say it's reasonable to charge heavy users more. Firstly, the cost is not
totally fixed for the ISP, higher usage involves investment in their own
infrastructure (routers, transit etc.). Secondly, it's arguable that heavy
users derive greater utility from the service so won't object to higher
prices.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Firstly, the cost is not totally fixed for the ISP, higher usage involves
> investment in their own infrastructure (routers, transit etc.).

You want to find out how small a portion of the total cost that actually is?
Require the ILECs to lease the physical wire from the customer premises to the
central office and space in the central office for the lessee's terminating
equipment, prohibit the last mile provider from sharing ownership with a
backhaul provider and then have the likes of Level 3 and Verizon compete with
each other to sell connectivity from your local central office to the wider
internet.

> Secondly, it's arguable that heavy users derive greater utility from the
> service so won't object to higher prices.

Also known as price discrimination.

------
yeukhon
The first obvious question is how good is the Fiber pool? Almost any ISP I
have encountered in NYC oversold their pools. Time Warner though has improved
pretty well for about a year (but still crappy from time to time).

The second question is how does Fiber do in the future when it opens up in
other towns and cities? Say it comes to NYC, and Google just not able to
handle that crazy botnet running in some residential pool, should they pull
the plug and say NO MORE SERVER?

I like running server straight from my connection if it is stable and fast. I
am just afraid that they might say no in the future when things get worse.

~~~
yuhong
They did not remove the clause completely, they changed the clause.

------
zymhan
The problem is, even if they only have that in their TOS to cover their asses,
there are people that won't run servers because of that clause, regardless of
whether or not they would get punished for doing it.

~~~
yuhong
It reminds me of the anti reverse engineering clause in MS EULAs.

~~~
jlazarow
That sort of clause is pretty common in software these days. Even Google has
them e.g. the Google Earth EULA.

------
27182818284
I'm sorry, hasn't this been the "No Duh that's why the clause is there?" line
of thinking for everyone? I'm actually a little surprised by the comment the
submission links to because it makes it out that Larry _didn 't get that idea_
from the get go. Of course you need to protect yourself from that one jerk
that goes too far and tries to start an ISP out of his personal Google Fiber
connection or something like that.

~~~
nl
I'm sure Larry got that idea. I suspect he refused to accept that _doing what
everyone else did_ was the only solution.

------
wmf
(2012) The ToS has since been updated slightly, although I don't know if Page
is happy with the current version. [http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/10/google...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/10/google-fiber-now-explicitly-permits-home-servers/)

------
ams6110
Almost certainly they were violating Stanford's terms of use when they set up
Google in their dorm room or whatever. The university where I work has all
kinds of prohibitions on what students can do, e.g. no personal routers or
wifi, no hosting servers, certainly nothing commercial, etc.

------
lettergram
Pretty sure if I am hosting a website (even a popular one), Google isn't going
to come bringing the law.

If they did get annoyed with the violation of terms, they would probably first
send me a warning, at which point I was just transfer the hosting to AWS or
something.

------
known
Google is Evil.

