The FCC has avoided addressing this issue

That’s D.C. tech-policy speak for: After the FCC strong-armed Apple into allowing iPhone users to connect to their Slingboxes, the public benefited with increased infrastructure investment by mobile providers and ISPs got more business.

Unfortunately for Google Fiber’s current stance, a Slingbox is a server. A home server.

So in Google’s version of net neutrality, the FCC was the right to force Apple to let iPhone users connect to their home servers, but the FCC has no right to force Google to let its broadband subscribers run a home server.

In November, Google said it was important for innovation that “the main broadband gatekeepers will not act unilaterally to constrain artificially the availability of new ‘edge-based’ content and services.”

Nothing is more edge-based than a citizen running a server on their own connection.

But, it turns out that Google’s real net neutrality policy is that big corporate services like YouTube and Facebook shouldn’t get throttled or banned by evil ISPs like Verizon, but it’s perfectly fine for Google to control what devices citizens can use in their homes.

We, it seems, are supposed to be good consumers of cloud services, not hosting our own Freedom Boxes,linux dedicated server, media servers, small-scale commercial services or e-mail servers.

That’s not what the net neutrality fight was about.

The fight was intended to make broadband services act like utilities that don’t care what a packet contains or what router, computer, phone or device you use, so long as you aren’t hurting the network.

In the net neutrality vision of the world, broadband providers simply deliver packets as they are paid to do.

When it was just a set of online services, Google happened to fall on the side of citizens and used to advocate against broadband companies controlling the pipes. Now that it’s an ISP itself, Google is becoming a net neutrality hypocrite.

The FCC has avoided addressing this issue, and in this case, simply forwarded to Google an “informal complaint.”

But now that Google’s shown what it really thinks of net neutrality, the door is open for the FCC to show that it’s serious enough about the principle to take on its former corporate ally.

The problem is that a server, by definition, doesn’t have to be a dedicated expensive computer. Any PC or Mac can be a server, as can all sorts of computing devices.

Moreover, the net neutrality rules regarding devices are plain and simple: ”Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.”

But Google’s legally binding Terms of Service outlaw Google Fiber customers from running their own mail server, using a remotely accessible media server, SSHing into a home computer from work to retrieve files, running a Minecraft server for friends to share, using a Nest thermometer, using a nanny camera to watch over a childcare provider or using a Raspberry Pi to host a WordPress blog.

None of those devices would do any harm to any broadband network, let alone a Google Fiber connection with a 1Gbps capacity equally split between uploading and downloading.

The server ban also prohibits you from attaching your personal computer to Google Fiber if you are using peer-to-peer software, because that works by having your computer be both a client and a server.
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