To be clear, I'm not defending most of it. I'm only defending 'ISP's can charge less to home users in exchange for them agreeing not to do specific things'.

I'm not defending the anti-competitive nature of laws in the USA. I'm not defending overzealous use of 'home/business' seperation. And I'm not defending overselling backhaul

- - -

In your example, you use an rented apartment. This is a perfect example, a rented apartment is like the 20x20 MetroE line I described above, you can do whatever you want, you paid for the whole thing.

A timeshare is what your looking for -- a timeshare also a rented apartment (or house, ect), but you dont get all the time, you only get a piece of it (say 'up to 1 month per year'). You get a significantly lower rate (in theory) on a timeshare, because you only get a part of a time.

Timeshares are cheaper than a full apartment lease. You got the cheaper rate because you agreed to the restrictions.

- - -

Even ownership doesn't absolve you of these restrictions. For example, if you buy a condominium, you usually agree to the condo boards rules (many of which include things like "no guests for more than 7 days" or "no commercial / industry / business / trade activity") http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-12-08/business/02120...

- - -

If you want me to name 'other services or products that include these restrictions', I can name a bunch :

- Rental Cars (mileage restriction, modification restriction)

- Leased Cars (mileage restriction, modification restriction)

- Hotel Rooms (limits on number of people present, not allowed to use it for commercial activities, ect)

- Electricity (limit to how much you can use at residential rates, if you exceed this, your price usually jumps.)

- Commercial Libraries, e.g. Universities (time limits on checked out books, if you exceed them, you pay late fees. Not allowed to re-lend-out books you've borrowed from the library. Not allowed to make copies of books you've borrowed from the library. Ect.)

- - -

EDIT : Full disclosure, I'm trying to start an new Internet Service Provider that isn't evil, from scratch, using our own network. (Not re-selling DSL / Cable). It's really really difficult.

I'm as pro-user pro-net-neutrality pro-open-internet anti-censorship pro-EFF as they come. But from a mathematical standpoint, the numbers don't work out. There's no way to cover expenses selling dedicated 50x50mbps uncapped, completely unrestricted internet connections for $30-60/month (unless your Google, and can subsidize the whole thing).

Normal home users are fine. People who just want burst fast speeds, but push some number less than 300-600GB total each month, no problem. I don't care if your running some webcams / Minecraft servers / web servers / SSH / VPN / programming for your business / accepting orders / selling ETSY stuff / ect.

But "power users" who want to host small data centers on their $30/month residential plan, or are seeding terrabytes of Torrent data each month, or are trying to resell that connection -- it can't happen today. Your making your friends and neighbors pay more for your crazy high usage. You need to be on a business plan, and pay for dedicated internet.

Remember, 600GB is a huge amount of bandwidth for a home user. That's enough to stream 25 days straight of tv-quality video (or 214 hours of HD Netflix)

I have no problem with heavy bandwidth users. But I do have a problem with heavy bandwidth users who insist they pay only the bare minimum rates because of their flawed interpretation of 'network neutrality'.