"What if your job is pen testing will they ban you for hacking/cracking then?"

If you hack/crack any system you don't have permission to, I'd presume yes, else I'd presume no. I think when you hack a shell to a server you own, there is no substantive difference as far as being banned from a network than if you had logged in with ssh normally. Of course, if your method results in some side-effect traffic going to any system other than one you own or have rights to 'crack', then yeah, I hope you get banned from the network immediately. $0.02...

"I don't see them invoking this unless you're running something that brings down the whole area of town."

I'd like to believe that basic automatic network management features of the relevant hardware, or at worst, more intelligent custom software written by google, can trivially enforce sharing of network resources in an application and service agnostic way. The only way you should be able to bring down any segment of the network would be through some serious blatantly criminal level hacking. Or accidentally helping Google to discover a bug they fix the next day.

That is why I'm fighting the language of the terms of service here, rather than just caring about what happens at the network level.

This was posted by an Anonymous Coward. Sounds plausible enough that I'll post it again to help its visibility-

Posting anonymously for reasons that will be obvious.

Larry Page is really annoyed by the "no servers" clause. In an internal weekly all-hands meeting he repeatedly needled Patrick Pichette about the limitation, and pointedly reminded him that the only reason Google was able to get off the ground was because Page and Brin could use Stanford's high-speed Internet connection for free. Page wants to see great garage startups being enabled by cheap access to truly high-speed Internet. Pichette defended it saying they had no intention of trying to enforce it in general, but that it had to be there in case of serious abuse, like someone setting up a large-scale data center.

I don't think anyone really has to worry about running servers on their residential Google Fiber, as long as they're not doing anything crazy. Then again it's always possible that Page will change his mind or that the lawyers will take over the company, and the ToS is what it is. If I had Google Fiber I'd run my home server just as I do on my Comcast connection, but I'd also be prepared to look for other options if my provider complained.

MOD PARENT UP (until determined to be a made-up story instead of factually accurate)

FCC-10-201, paragraph 13, last sentence. It sure sounds to me as though _all end users_ are allowed to create content, applications, services, and devices with their 'neutral' fixed broadband internet service links.

"Because Internet openness enables widespread innovation and allows all end users
and edge providers (rather than just the significantly smaller number of broadband providers) to
create and determine the success or failure of content, applications, services, and devices, it
maximizes commercial and non-commercial innovations that address key national challenges—
including improvements in health care, education, and energy efficiency that benefit our economy
and civic life.19"

I understand the whole 'business class' thing. I'm trying however to make a legal point that the last sentence of paragraph 13 of FCC-10-201(aka net neutrality), can logicly be seen as criminilizing such differentiation of service through network level (or I would argue, evil-tos level) blocking. The whole 'neutral' aspect of 'network neutrality'.

(my support email to google fiber-)

Hello,

I've recently filed an FCC form 2000F complaint regarding how your
current terms of service for google fiber prohibit hosting any server of
any kind. I feel this is in violation of paragraph 13 of FCC-10-201
which I believe cements my right as an end-user to provide novel
services to the internet at large via a server hosted at my residence
connected to my fixed broadband internet service. While I have
communicated secondhand with Milo Medin about this, perhaps this is a
more official channel. Please tell me if I've misunderstood the concept
of "Net Neutrality" or your Terms of Service. All I want is to host a
linux lamp server. I.e. web pages and files served with apache via IPv6
to other IPv6 clients on the internet. And probably I'd want to host a
quake3 server as well as other entrepreneurial servers I conceive of and
deploy due to the abundance of helpful free and open source server
software available to me.

A length debate on the subject (57 posts, 15 authors) was recently held
on the discussion forum for the Kansas Unix and Linux User's Association
(ironicly hosted on google groups rather than someone's server at home
running linux+mailman). I encourage an official response clarifying the
situation from Google.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/kulua-l/LxsOtdglNM0

Thanks for any feedback, Regards,

-dmc
Douglas McClendon
da...@cloudsession.com

(note, this online/form tract was reached after selecting that the
target of the complaint was a fixed broadband internet service provider,
believed to be in violation of the 2nd(blocking) of the 3 primary open
internet rules layed out in the FCC's 10-201 report and order preserving
the free and open internet.

--- REF# 12-C00422224 ---
Google's current Terms Of Service[1] for their fixed broadband internet
service being deployed initially here in Kansas City, Kansas, contain
this text-

"You agree not to misuse the Services. This includes but is not limited
to using the Services for purposes that are illegal, are improper,
infringe the rights of others, or adversely impact others enjoyment of
the Services. A list of examples of prohibited activities appears here. "

where 'here' is a hyperlink[2] to a page including this text-
"Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you do
so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber
connection"

In my professional opinion as a graduate in Computer Engineering from
the University of Kansas (and incidentally brother of a google VP) I
believe these terms of service are in violation of FCC-10-201.

[1] http://fiber.google.com/legal/terms.html
[2]
http://support.google.com/fiber/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2659981&topic=2440874&ctx=topic

--- (end of form 2000F complaint text)

Forgive my pedanticism (really), but no, eating organic food instead of 'non-organic' food is nothing at all like a 'leap of faith'. That phrase implies that if your faith was misplaced, you will be leaping/falling to your doom. In this case, the consequence if your unproven theory turns out to be innaccurate, is that maybe you spent a 25% premium, and maybe helped out the environment, perhaps infinitesimally so. Not a 'leap of fatih' by any means. Please return to your regularly scheduled non-pedantic arguments....

The part you lost me at was here-

"
"There's no particular reason why any one of those functions could only be carried out on a centralized system. I can envision a distributed protocol with many different servers, or 'nodes,' run by different hosting companies, and each 'node' can be used to store many accounts
"

*I* can envision a distributed protocol with many different servers, or 'nodes', run by *the users themselves*, and each 'node' can be used to store many accounts...

Note that I've recently filed an FCC Form 2000F complaint about Google's anti-network-neutrality bahavior as they are entering the fixed broadband ISP market here in Kansas City, Kansas. It's something of a quixotic war about the right for all end users of fixed broadband connections protecting their FCC-10-201(p13) rights to create successful content, applications, services, and devices on the general purpose technology of the (IPv6) internet. You can read the 57 post, 14 author (out of 23 members) thread in the discussion forum of the Kansas Unix and Linux Users Association here-

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/kulua-l/LxsOtdglNM0

"No one really "needs" to learn how to read anything more advanced than a children's book, especially if they're a carpenter or plumber."

I stopped reading your long comment there. You should try furthering your own carpentry or plumbing skills by just a recreational bit, then rethink that thought.

And that is why I fully expect at least some level of backpedalling on that language, as long as people like me are able to publicly shame google into doing so by shining a light on EVIL-TOS

"Sucks, but makes sense."

Now do me a favor and excercise your sense of irony by rereading your own comment, but while task switching your brain to the concept of "network neutrality" at the same time.

"
"should not" is not "can not"
"

I might be able to go with your creative reading of the sentence were it not for the use of the very clear word "permitting" in the prior sentence-

"
Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you do so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber connection
"
http://support.google.com/fiber/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2659981&topic=2440874&ctx=topic [google.com] [google.com]

Sorry, but the quoted clause was from the terms of service, which left itself so vague as to use the wording "improper use" (by whose metric of 'proper'?). The TOS next to that clause, gives a link to the aforementioned section which lays out what defines 'bad use'. So that _is a rule written into the Google-Fiber contracts_ _already_ (as if there were any customers already bound by the TOS).

"Isn't this pretty much a universal condition for residential internet?"

sadly yes, the only way I can envision that landscape changing quickly would be if google would step up and aspire to be something better than the current 'universal residential internet' service. If those other 'universal' providers were asked about that clause, I'd guess they might plausibly lie through their teeth explaining that shared bandwidth concerns are their reason for not TOS allowing things like a quake3 or alienarena or old-school unix talk server. Tell me google, what excuse do you have? (forgive me for being invested in this issue, but I live in Kansas City, and my older brother is a VP of Engineering at google (not in charge of fiber-to-kc though).