this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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FCC explicitly prohibits fast lanes, closing possible net neutrality loophole (arstechnica.com)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I just checked my agreement, and it says something like this:

Stated Speeds not guaranteed and are affected by many factors. In all cases, actual speed will likely be lower than speed indicated during peak hours.

But the marketing says nothing about "up to" like it does with typical cable and DSL services (we use a small, local ISP), and I've honestly never seen my speed go below the advertised limit. Every time I test it (and I've tested during peak hours as well), I get pretty much exactly what's advertised.

That said, the agreement I'm reading is kind of funny:

Random stupid stuff in my agreement

Pinging or other network probing is prohibited.

Yet when I call support, they ask me to do a ping test. I know what they're intending to say (it's talking about hacking, such as nmap-ing some remote service), but the wording is awkward.

And this:

You may not use {service} to advertise, solicit, transmit, store, post, display, or otherwise make available obscene or indecent images or other materials.

So I guess they don't like porn. It goes on to talk about stuff involving minors, but this wording seemed broad.

You may not use the Service to transmit, post... language that encourages bodily harm, destruction of property or harasses another.

I guess I can't troll.

You may not advertise, transmit, ... any software product, product, or service that is designed to... spam, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail bombing, denial of service attacks, and piracy of software.

So I can't recommend lemmy I guess, since people here like piracy. Oh, and I also can't tell people how to check their network connection by using ping...

Blah, blah, blah, I've probably violated a half-dozen of those provisions. I'm guessing most of them won't stand up in court, and they'd have a hard time proving anything since everything should be TLS encrypted.

Fortunately, my ISP is pretty decent in practice and doesn't seem to care what I do with it.

[–] Lost_My_Mind 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Random stupid stuff in my agreement Fortunately, my ISP is pretty decent in practice and doesn’t seem to care what I do with it.

Found the guy that either does illegal things, or embarrassingly stupid things with his ISP connection.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I do neither.

I'm a developer that likes to mess around with hobby projects, and that tends to look a lot like illegal/stupid stuff. For example, I'll port scan my cloud services I maintain (explicitly against the rules) to verify it's configured properly. I'll create persistent connections to enable automatic deploys from home (again, explicitly against the TOS). I'll use torrents to download legitimate Linux ISOs (again, against TOS), and I'll use Tor to mess around with onion sites (again, against TOS). I'm building a P2P app, so there's a lot of unfamiliar packets flying about.

I'm an enthusiast, but I'm a respectful enthusiast, so I do my shenanigans off peak hours. If I did illegal stuff, I would hide it so the ISP doesn't find out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Most consumer internet providers have clauses in their agreements which prohibit things like hosting a website, or serving content. Both of which are things done pretty regularly by hobby level selfhosters.

Now, I’ve never actually heard of an ISP actioning on such clauses, but they are there none the less.