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Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker

63 points by Tsiolkovsky 12y ago

fffrad 12y ago
If I understand his point he is saying, Let's slow down the trivial things like Youtube and games to make real time road assistance better. How is this related? And I don't see the Taliban connection.
- x0ra 12y ago
  He uses "Taliban" as an image for extremism, where some other would say "nazi". In this case, he refers to "fair use" extremist who want the latest episode of their favorite show never to buffer, even if this mean slowing down other.
- trose 12y ago
  He's trying to argue that net neutrality would mean a child watching youtube could slow down another user's content, like a hospital. This is silly and shows he knows nothing about current technology. The current system allows customers to pay for guaranteed speeds from their ISP. The net neutrality issue involves the ISP charging content providers to delivery content to their customers who are already paying.
cordite 12y ago
Server hosting companies like OVH maintain their own lines or earmarked-guaranteed bandwidth shared-lines (I imagine the intercontinental ones) between their data centers. It may not be practical for hospitals and other real time needs based organizations to maintain their own physical limes, but isn't this the point where such an organization directly makes a business contract with a near backbone provider like level3? If you need guarantees, I really doubt civilian or home consumer ISPs will fill the need. If congestion is a problem so packets are unfavorably delayed or dropped, shouldn't that mean those which need greater guarantees provision their communication assets accordingly? Traders in Chicago and New York are coming up with their own solutions, be it more direct and dedicated fiber optic lines or even direct to direct chained microwave line-of-sight towers. Net neutrality or not, they need greater guarantees than offered to home consumers or small businesses, and I doubt most ISPs can provide such guarantees with our infrastructure.
- the8472 12y ago
  I suspect the first neutrino-based communications system will be used for trading.
- GauntletWizard 12y ago
  Guaranteed bandwidth shared lines are a violation of net neutrality. Tell me how this differs from having a Priority Lane that's reserved for Comcast's real-time video streams. Tell lawmakers how to write laws that differentiate them, even when cable companies are playing word and classification games. Net Neutrality is a far more complex issue than Title II regulation in the US. Title II is a good first step, but will bring with it many problems, that we'll soon have to deal with.
  - cordite 12y ago
    Perhaps what I am thinking of is predetermined point-to-point networking. Though creating a ring or a rigid mesh on top of that for such networks seems to create the whole segregated network problem again. Perhaps I feel like point-to-point (rather than classification to any receiver) could be treated differently.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    > Guaranteed bandwidth shared lines are a violation of net neutrality. Tell me how this differs from having a Priority Lane that's reserved for Comcast's real-time video streams. Tell lawmakers how to write laws that differentiate them, even when cable companies are playing word and classification games. The solution for this is quite simple. The customer can buy whatever performance and quality of service they like, but it applies to all the customer's traffic, to any transit peer up to and through the peering point.
  - leereeves 12y ago
    > Guaranteed bandwidth shared lines are a violation of net neutrality. Perhaps of an poorly written net neutrality law. But can you predict what will be a violation of net neutrality before the laws are written and the courts interpret them? It's certainly a complex issue, requiring deep understanding of the Internet. I support it in principle, but have little faith that any government will handle it well.
fragsworth 12y ago
He is so completely full of shit and blatantly trying to use rhetoric to justify the fact that he's going to vote for corporate interests that bought and paid for him. I can't help but get angry about this. What's that fallacy called where you fabricate a problem where there isn't one? Net neutrality advocates have never, ever wanted to limit what you're allowed to pay for as a consumer, and are pretty much unanimously in favor of distinguishing between paying customers to adjust connection speeds and uptime. If a hospital wants to pay $5000/month for a direct, guaranteed connection to their doctors, they are free to do that. It's no different from paying for a faster or slower connection.
- Eric_WVGG 12y ago
  I had no idea German politicians could be as virulently incoherent as Americans. Huh.
  - soong 12y ago
    Yes, nothing is ever too stupid for him, but that's a new low (again).
    - krylon 12y ago
      FWIW, Oettinger is something of an expert in discovering "new lows". He could be really funny if he wasn't in a position where people actually take him serious. It is not surprising he would just parrot the talking points of the telcos. I sometimes wonder, though, if he actually knows what complete BS he is emitting or if he actually believes that (and I am not sure which alternative I would prefer).
      - soong 12y ago
        My guess would be that despite what they are advocating believes are something you cannot be too tightly bound to as a high ranking government official. But this discussion is becoming increasingly off topic.
- 12y ago
Bud 12y ago
I notice that he does not at any point explain in any way why net neutrality as an "issue" (whatever that means) is "Taliban-like" (whatever that means). He's not even trying to be believable. Not even trying to make a serious argument. He therefore deserves scorn.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  In fairness this is only a brief translated extract from a 35-minute panel discussion. My German's pretty weak, so it's I can't tell if if there's any additional context, but I don't think it's a good idea to draw firm conclusions based on selective quoting. I'm not impressed with him, but nor am I very impressed with the non-substantive response of demanding lists of every product, installation, and system - a bullshit non-argument when the discussion is clearly about trying to come up with a framework that protects both sets of interests. Perhaps the Commissioner's attitude stems from a failure of the Pirate party to persuasively articulate their case? I haven't followed the debate in Germany, but I'm often struck by the way that political arguments can end up with people talking past each other and dogmatically repeating their own ideological standpoints without really engaging each other. Simply repeating 'the internet does not work that way' isn't a good negotiating strategy.
- krylon 12y ago
  Oettinger is not exactly known for being a master of the "serious argument" or for his intimidating intellectual capacity.
nemo44x 12y ago
This doesn't even make sense. So, if the kids in the back are playing games and the providers pay more to have access than the cars networked safety feature - we're in a worse off place. Also, I'm not so sure there are any issues with capacity and more is being added daily. Capacity for networked devices is not like making capacity for ambulances (not his analogy but essentially his point) and firetrucks. The second a government or any entity starts to decide what is first class, second class and n-class information and thus priority, the internet goes from a place of equality and freedom to a fascist place controlled by those who have dominion.
- woah 12y ago
  Whatever the upside or downside of net neutrality may be, the fact is that net neutrality laws are specifically and only about regulating the choices made by routing software. You are claiming that the government not regulating routing software on an extremely fine grained level is somehow "facism". You are as ridiculous as the politician in this article. In fact, net neutrality favors large monopolistic ISPs, while possibly making them slightly easier to bear. It forces information transmission to be a commodity, ensuring that only large monopolistic commodity providers can survive. It makes it impossible for any newcomers to take market share with innovation by making innovation illegal. Locally based networks providing fast access to their subscribers and filling in the slow times with other traffic? Illegal. Decentralized mesh networks allowing people to "mine" cryptocurrency with a transmitter on their roof? Illegal. Those are just two of the business models made illegal by net neutrality. I'm sure there are many more that I can't think of right now.
  - madaxe_again 12y ago
    You've been busy watching the telco lobby propaganda, then. I'll grant that it's a powerful and emotional, if utterly false, argument that they put forth.
  - rakoo 12y ago
    I think you got it backwards -- net neutrality is about making sure anyone can create a new protocol and be hooked to an ISP to serve their content through the Internet. > Locally based networks providing fast access to their subscribers and filling in the slow times with other traffic? Illegal. As an ISP subscriber, why would I want something other than what I decided on ? > Decentralized mesh networks allowing people to "mine" cryptocurrency with a transmitter on their roof? Illegal. I don't see what's illegal here. If you have a transmitter on your roof you are your own ISP. It is perfectly fine to not allow a kind of traffic if you're your own ISP.
eCa 12y ago
Ah, Goodwin's Law updated for the 21st century.
higherpurpose 12y ago
This guy, Günther Oettinger, has been against net neutrality from the beginning, and he's now in charge of setting the net neutrality agenda. He was also the one the newspapers lobbied so he would campaign against Google and force it to pay money to newspapers in Germany. Worse yet, he even said that ISPs should be able to lock-in customers for longer periods of time so they can "recover their investments", or something. https://gigaom.com/2014/11/07/let-isps-lock-their-customers-into-longer-contracts-new-eu-digital-economy-chief-suggests/ https://gigaom.com/2014/11/07/let-isps-lock-their-customers-... The EU Commission should stop pretending that net neutrality is getting killed by national governments. They have an inside man doing the exact same thing there. Oh, and he'll also be responsible for drafting the new EU-wide copyright laws. So yeah...the next couple of years are going to be very interesting. Julia Reda had a talk at the latest CCC on the upcoming copyright law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL_Wxu6x1HU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL_Wxu6x1HU
crazy1van 12y ago
Oettinger's rhetoric is ridiculous hyperbole. Taliban? Huh? Its a shame because he is making what I consider to be a reasonable point: there are use-cases where traffic prioritization makes sense.
- pgeorgi 12y ago
  All his examples require guarantees, not just priority. All of these examples are therefore unsuitable for a packet switched network. Whoever needs such services should get a fixed line (real or virtual) that needs to be implemented at a lower layer than anything that the net neutrality debate is all about. And for automotive communication, the "fixed line" problem is a physical one, since wireless communication is by definition a shared medium. Better just make cars not depend on guaranteed connectivity in the first place.
jszymborski 12y ago
The most lazy and obvious attempt to get net neutrality and terrorism in the same breath. Not only is it his job to obscure and twist reality, but he's not even good at it! Not sure how much self-worth I'd ascribe myself if I were him.
brc 12y ago
It's pretty offensive that people are using 'Taliban' and 'Isis' as throwaway rhetoric to collect political points. Unless the people in question are throwing gay people from buildings or killing girls for attending school, then no, it's not a Taliban like issue.
- madaxe_again 12y ago
  If supporting net neutrality is Taliban-like, his remarks are decidedly nazi-like - industry first, freedom is for fools, etc.
Aoyagi 12y ago
Seems like this EU gov't isn't as "pro-freedom" or "pro-internet" as the previous one (?) was. And I don't want to believe that's just because Viviane Reding is gone from it.

63 points by Tsiolkovsky 12y ago

If I understand his point he is saying, Let's slow down the trivial things like Youtube and games to make real time road assistance better. How is this related? And I don't see the Taliban connection.

x0ra 12y ago
He uses "Taliban" as an image for extremism, where some other would say "nazi". In this case, he refers to "fair use" extremist who want the latest episode of their favorite show never to buffer, even if this mean slowing down other.
trose 12y ago
He's trying to argue that net neutrality would mean a child watching youtube could slow down another user's content, like a hospital. This is silly and shows he knows nothing about current technology. The current system allows customers to pay for guaranteed speeds from their ISP. The net neutrality issue involves the ISP charging content providers to delivery content to their customers who are already paying.

cordite 12y ago

Server hosting companies like OVH maintain their own lines or earmarked-guaranteed bandwidth shared-lines (I imagine the intercontinental ones) between their data centers. It may not be practical for hospitals and other real time needs based organizations to maintain their own physical limes, but isn't this the point where such an organization directly makes a business contract with a near backbone provider like level3? If you need guarantees, I really doubt civilian or home consumer ISPs will fill the need. If congestion is a problem so packets are unfavorably delayed or dropped, shouldn't that mean those which need greater guarantees provision their communication assets accordingly? Traders in Chicago and New York are coming up with their own solutions, be it more direct and dedicated fiber optic lines or even direct to direct chained microwave line-of-sight towers. Net neutrality or not, they need greater guarantees than offered to home consumers or small businesses, and I doubt most ISPs can provide such guarantees with our infrastructure.

the8472 12y ago
I suspect the first neutrino-based communications system will be used for trading.
GauntletWizard 12y ago
Guaranteed bandwidth shared lines are a violation of net neutrality. Tell me how this differs from having a Priority Lane that's reserved for Comcast's real-time video streams. Tell lawmakers how to write laws that differentiate them, even when cable companies are playing word and classification games. Net Neutrality is a far more complex issue than Title II regulation in the US. Title II is a good first step, but will bring with it many problems, that we'll soon have to deal with.
- cordite 12y ago
  Perhaps what I am thinking of is predetermined point-to-point networking. Though creating a ring or a rigid mesh on top of that for such networks seems to create the whole segregated network problem again. Perhaps I feel like point-to-point (rather than classification to any receiver) could be treated differently.
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago
  > Guaranteed bandwidth shared lines are a violation of net neutrality. Tell me how this differs from having a Priority Lane that's reserved for Comcast's real-time video streams. Tell lawmakers how to write laws that differentiate them, even when cable companies are playing word and classification games. The solution for this is quite simple. The customer can buy whatever performance and quality of service they like, but it applies to all the customer's traffic, to any transit peer up to and through the peering point.
- leereeves 12y ago
  > Guaranteed bandwidth shared lines are a violation of net neutrality. Perhaps of an poorly written net neutrality law. But can you predict what will be a violation of net neutrality before the laws are written and the courts interpret them? It's certainly a complex issue, requiring deep understanding of the Internet. I support it in principle, but have little faith that any government will handle it well.

fragsworth 12y ago

He is so completely full of shit and blatantly trying to use rhetoric to justify the fact that he's going to vote for corporate interests that bought and paid for him. I can't help but get angry about this. What's that fallacy called where you fabricate a problem where there isn't one? Net neutrality advocates have never, ever wanted to limit what you're allowed to pay for as a consumer, and are pretty much unanimously in favor of distinguishing between paying customers to adjust connection speeds and uptime. If a hospital wants to pay $5000/month for a direct, guaranteed connection to their doctors, they are free to do that. It's no different from paying for a faster or slower connection.

Eric_WVGG 12y ago
I had no idea German politicians could be as virulently incoherent as Americans. Huh.
- soong 12y ago
  Yes, nothing is ever too stupid for him, but that's a new low (again).
  - krylon 12y ago
    FWIW, Oettinger is something of an expert in discovering "new lows". He could be really funny if he wasn't in a position where people actually take him serious. It is not surprising he would just parrot the talking points of the telcos. I sometimes wonder, though, if he actually knows what complete BS he is emitting or if he actually believes that (and I am not sure which alternative I would prefer).
    - soong 12y ago
      My guess would be that despite what they are advocating believes are something you cannot be too tightly bound to as a high ranking government official. But this discussion is becoming increasingly off topic.
12y ago

Bud 12y ago

I notice that he does not at any point explain in any way why net neutrality as an "issue" (whatever that means) is "Taliban-like" (whatever that means). He's not even trying to be believable. Not even trying to make a serious argument. He therefore deserves scorn.

anigbrowl 12y ago
In fairness this is only a brief translated extract from a 35-minute panel discussion. My German's pretty weak, so it's I can't tell if if there's any additional context, but I don't think it's a good idea to draw firm conclusions based on selective quoting. I'm not impressed with him, but nor am I very impressed with the non-substantive response of demanding lists of every product, installation, and system - a bullshit non-argument when the discussion is clearly about trying to come up with a framework that protects both sets of interests. Perhaps the Commissioner's attitude stems from a failure of the Pirate party to persuasively articulate their case? I haven't followed the debate in Germany, but I'm often struck by the way that political arguments can end up with people talking past each other and dogmatically repeating their own ideological standpoints without really engaging each other. Simply repeating 'the internet does not work that way' isn't a good negotiating strategy.
krylon 12y ago
Oettinger is not exactly known for being a master of the "serious argument" or for his intimidating intellectual capacity.

nemo44x 12y ago

This doesn't even make sense. So, if the kids in the back are playing games and the providers pay more to have access than the cars networked safety feature - we're in a worse off place. Also, I'm not so sure there are any issues with capacity and more is being added daily. Capacity for networked devices is not like making capacity for ambulances (not his analogy but essentially his point) and firetrucks. The second a government or any entity starts to decide what is first class, second class and n-class information and thus priority, the internet goes from a place of equality and freedom to a fascist place controlled by those who have dominion.

woah 12y ago
Whatever the upside or downside of net neutrality may be, the fact is that net neutrality laws are specifically and only about regulating the choices made by routing software. You are claiming that the government not regulating routing software on an extremely fine grained level is somehow "facism". You are as ridiculous as the politician in this article. In fact, net neutrality favors large monopolistic ISPs, while possibly making them slightly easier to bear. It forces information transmission to be a commodity, ensuring that only large monopolistic commodity providers can survive. It makes it impossible for any newcomers to take market share with innovation by making innovation illegal. Locally based networks providing fast access to their subscribers and filling in the slow times with other traffic? Illegal. Decentralized mesh networks allowing people to "mine" cryptocurrency with a transmitter on their roof? Illegal. Those are just two of the business models made illegal by net neutrality. I'm sure there are many more that I can't think of right now.
- madaxe_again 12y ago
  You've been busy watching the telco lobby propaganda, then. I'll grant that it's a powerful and emotional, if utterly false, argument that they put forth.
- rakoo 12y ago
  I think you got it backwards -- net neutrality is about making sure anyone can create a new protocol and be hooked to an ISP to serve their content through the Internet. > Locally based networks providing fast access to their subscribers and filling in the slow times with other traffic? Illegal. As an ISP subscriber, why would I want something other than what I decided on ? > Decentralized mesh networks allowing people to "mine" cryptocurrency with a transmitter on their roof? Illegal. I don't see what's illegal here. If you have a transmitter on your roof you are your own ISP. It is perfectly fine to not allow a kind of traffic if you're your own ISP.

eCa 12y ago

Ah, Goodwin's Law updated for the 21st century.

higherpurpose 12y ago

This guy, Günther Oettinger, has been against net neutrality from the beginning, and he's now in charge of setting the net neutrality agenda. He was also the one the newspapers lobbied so he would campaign against Google and force it to pay money to newspapers in Germany. Worse yet, he even said that ISPs should be able to lock-in customers for longer periods of time so they can "recover their investments", or something. https://gigaom.com/2014/11/07/let-isps-lock-their-customers-into-longer-contracts-new-eu-digital-economy-chief-suggests/ https://gigaom.com/2014/11/07/let-isps-lock-their-customers-... The EU Commission should stop pretending that net neutrality is getting killed by national governments. They have an inside man doing the exact same thing there. Oh, and he'll also be responsible for drafting the new EU-wide copyright laws. So yeah...the next couple of years are going to be very interesting. Julia Reda had a talk at the latest CCC on the upcoming copyright law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL_Wxu6x1HU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL_Wxu6x1HU

crazy1van 12y ago

Oettinger's rhetoric is ridiculous hyperbole. Taliban? Huh? Its a shame because he is making what I consider to be a reasonable point: there are use-cases where traffic prioritization makes sense.

pgeorgi 12y ago
All his examples require guarantees, not just priority. All of these examples are therefore unsuitable for a packet switched network. Whoever needs such services should get a fixed line (real or virtual) that needs to be implemented at a lower layer than anything that the net neutrality debate is all about. And for automotive communication, the "fixed line" problem is a physical one, since wireless communication is by definition a shared medium. Better just make cars not depend on guaranteed connectivity in the first place.

jszymborski 12y ago

The most lazy and obvious attempt to get net neutrality and terrorism in the same breath. Not only is it his job to obscure and twist reality, but he's not even good at it! Not sure how much self-worth I'd ascribe myself if I were him.

brc 12y ago

It's pretty offensive that people are using 'Taliban' and 'Isis' as throwaway rhetoric to collect political points. Unless the people in question are throwing gay people from buildings or killing girls for attending school, then no, it's not a Taliban like issue.

madaxe_again 12y ago
If supporting net neutrality is Taliban-like, his remarks are decidedly nazi-like - industry first, freedom is for fools, etc.

Aoyagi 12y ago

Seems like this EU gov't isn't as "pro-freedom" or "pro-internet" as the previous one (?) was. And I don't want to believe that's just because Viviane Reding is gone from it.