Fun conversation with a parent of one of my kids’ friends this morning, where I had to patiently explain that I’m not lying about hosting a mumble server in my house.
My kids invited their friend to join our house mumble server, and their mom kind of freaked out about voice chat “on the internet”. Tbh, I empathize and it’s why I run a mumble server in the first place.
So I explained that I understood her concerns about who might be listening in or whatever; but that the server was physically in my home, registration isn’t open to everyone, and the server isn’t online unless at least one of my kids is home.
Her immediate response? “You can’t run stuff like that in your house though” sigh.
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calcifer :nes_fire:
•So I spent about half an hour explaining that you can, it’s reasonably common, and that it’s not illegal (she started with it’s always illegal and then it’s illegal if you’re not a company… a lot to unpack there).
I think we finally got there but she was still a bit suspicious when we hung up.
Les Orchard
•calcifer :nes_fire:
•…
I, uh… don’t see how that’s relevant
Les Orchard
•FoolishOwl
•Comcast used to prohibit having multiple devices connected to a single IP address on a residential account, but this was unenforceable and widely bypassed, and they later permitted it. Later Comcast prohibited running Internet services on your residential account, but this was also unenforceable, and later permitted.
So I can imagine someone still believing old rules were in place.
Also with software bloat, many people don't realize how little it can take to run services.
calcifer :nes_fire:
•@foolishowl that prohibition on multiple devices was mostly just confusing for people; the actual rule was not having multiple devices on the WAN side (which makes a lot of sense given cost of their address block), and gateways were never technically forbidden
But their first-line support people were very poorly trained, so unless you knew to escalate, you might have problems.
That said, “company policy” is not law, and while some ISPs tried to prohibit running services, it was never ILLEGAL.
FoolishOwl
•I think a lot of people tend to mix together formal and informal rules from different authorities and blend it all in a slurry with a bit of just world fallacy.
I'm not immune, unfortunately, and my memory of the late 90s may have lost detail.
Alexander The 1st
•calcifer :nes_fire:
•@AT1ST @foolishowl they have better technical controls that help them prevent people from just plugging in a switch and consuming address space; and they provide a router and AP now and set it up.
That’s allowed them to keep the policy, rephrase it for clarity, and deemphasize it.
Customer service is still shitty, though so ¯(°_°)/¯
Katanova, the Forest Nomad
•@foolishowl I'm gonna guess that the person that @calcifer is talking about doesn't know enough about networking to actually have any kind of rational root for *why* they believe that hosting a voice chat is illegal, beyond a vague anxiety about it being a service that THEIR KIDS use.
I think that at the root of it, it's just the phrase "MY KIDS" circling in their heads over and over.
silverwizard
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FoolishOwl
•silverwizard
All Is For All
•The ISP where I'm staying now still has TOS that say you're not allowed to run any "publicly accessible" service from a "residential" connection unless you pay extra for an otherwise identical "business account", lol. Hasn't stopped me from running a mail server, nginx, and a few other things for like 6 years, though! Of course, they also haven't even started using IPv6 addresses in 2024, so yeah, a little behind the times...