Broadband & Neutrality Regulation

In Jerry’s post “Is Comcast discriminating against BitTorrent?” he points out the following about Comcast’s acceptable use policy:

In its acceptable use policy,1 Comcast reserves the right to take any measures it deems necessary to deal with subscribers who use too much bandwidth (although how much is too much is not clearly defined). But if the AP is right, this is targeting a specific application, not specific users.

Jerry is right that targeting specific users would be well outside of Comcast’s acceptable use policy when it comes to bandwidth hogging, however, Comcast can target and block individual users who are running servers, whether they be for email, websites, or file-sharing. Their acceptable use policy also includes:

Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, using the Service, Customer Equipment, or the Comcast Equipment to:

followed by:

xiv. run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;

The policy later says in relation to prohibited activities such as this that:

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In the recent Verizon Uprisin’ (successor to the Comcast Kerfuffle – how’m I doin’?), the blogospheric back-and-forth between TLFer Tim Lee (writing at TechDirt) and TLFriend Ed Felten illustrates nicely the difficulty with both parts of the case for ‘net neutrality regulation.

The first question is whether there is a problem that needs solving. The two disagree about whether Verizon’s operation of its DNS servers is a ‘net neutrality violation at all.

The second question is whether the problem is better solved by regulation or by market processes (expert agitation, consumer pressure, etc. that carry with them the threat or reality of lost customers and profits). As a technical matter, Tim points out that people are free to point their computers to another DNS server, such as OpenDNS. Ed says “it might turn out that the regulatory cure is worse than the disease.”

Even among those who disagree on whether there’s a substantive ‘net neutrality violation here, regulation doesn’t seem to be the cure. Even Harold Feld hasn’t written a triumphal post. (Though, in fairness, he seems to be distracted – and oh so giddy – about cable regulation.)

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In response to a post I did on Verizon’s obnoxious DNS policies, a Techdirt reader writes:

Verizon DOES block your ability to use 3rd-party mail servers. GMail is web-based, son. A server at a friend’s ISP, connecting over port 25, is BLOCKED by Verizon, period end of story. Now, I use another port and so go my merry way, but Verizon, having blocked port 25, can block any ports they wish under the same guiding principle. Verizon sets limits.

And another reader responds:

Isn’t that standard practice? To (somewhat) prevent spoofing email, ISPs require outbound mail to go through in-house servers, but inbound on port 110 can be any source you have access to.

Does anyone know if this is true? I’ve occasionally encountered Wifi connections in hotels or coffee shops that block outbound SMTP, but I’d always assumed that real residential ISPs don’t do that sort of thing. Such a policy does little or nothing to combat spam, but it sure is a pain in the butt for those of us who use real mail clients and don’t use our ISP’s SMTP servers.

Relatedly, would such a policy a violation of network neutrality? It sure seems like it violates the letter of Snowe-Dorgan, which would imply that thousands of annoyingly-configured hotspots would instantly become illegal if network neutrality regs passed.

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It’ll cost ya’.

H.R. 3919, The Broadband Census of America Act of 2007, would cost over $2.50 per U.S. household. At that price, you might expect them to literally go door to door, but they’re not going to.

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