
Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker - Tsiolkovsky
https://juliareda.eu/2015/03/oettinger-net-neutrality-taliban-like/
======
fragsworth
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.

~~~
gojomo
"Net neutrality advocates have never, ever wanted to limit what you're allowed
to pay for as a consumer."

I'd like to pay $3/month for my Netflix traffic to not count towards any caps.
Is that allowed?

Now, can I ask my ISP to just bill Netflix, who (with more customers than any
US fixed-wire ISP) can negotiate something less than $3/month?

~~~
Terr_
When you buy power to toast some bread, do you pay a different dollar-per-watt
rate, depending on whether your toaster was made by the same company that owns
the power plant?

The problem with allowing special arrangements it that companies can--and do--
use them in anticompetitive and manipulative ways.

~~~
gojomo
Because net paths can be congested, there can be many different ways at
different costs to deliver the same bits, and different net applications have
different sensitivities to lag/loss, the electrons/bits analogy isn't very
applicable.

Let ISPs try to abuse their momentary position. They're newish businesses in a
rapidly-changing market and technological environment. Not one of them has the
same "single provider at any cost" monopoly that phone companies had when the
Title II telecom regulatory regime was designed.

Some of the companies they might try to shake down – Google, Apple, and others
– have the capital to route around them with better services.

~~~
quanticle
>They're newish businesses in a rapidly-changing market and technological
environment. Not one of them has the same "single provider at any cost"
monopoly that phone companies had when the Title II telecom regulatory regime
was designed.

On the contrary, almost _all_ of them have that monopoly, oftentimes to the
point where they've negotiated with exclusivity arrangements with
municipalities. This means that even if Google, Apple, Netflix, etc. are
willing and able to to lay down their own infrastructure, they're prevented
from doing so by the government. If that doesn't make ISPs deserving of Title
II regulation, I don't know what does.

~~~
gojomo
You seem to be counting only cable companies and the highest-end services to
imply a 'monopoly' over internet service where none exists.

Other sets of wires into the home exist and are capable of delivering high-
speed internet. (Most notably: legacy copper wires offering DSL.) More wires
can be run, just like cable TV was. It'll be even easier now than the cable
buildouts of the 60s-80s; the world is richer, awash in capital, with better
tools.

Wireless also keeps getting better and is now competitive with wired for most
daily internet needs – email, web, VOIP, audio streaming, light video, gaming
– all except for bulk HD video. (Just like people have 'cord cut' their cable
TV to rely on net entertainment, others are 'wire cutting' their fixed-line
internet service, and relying solely on their wireless internet, from one of
3+ providers.) So speaking for the US, most people have 6+ options to get core
internet service. That's no "ISP monopoly".

We agree that locally-franchised monopolies over certain wireline services are
a problem, where they exist. (OTOH, some localities have enabled multiple
cable companies and other competitive wireline services, like Google Fiber.)
Those localities with bad policies should undo their mistakes, as they see
neighbors and peer-localities having made much better choices. But those
scattered problem communities are no reason to compel a specific national
service formula on all ISPs everywhere, even where there is competition.

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nemo44x
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
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.

~~~
rakoo
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.

------
higherpurpose
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-...](https://gigaom.com/2014/11/07/let-isps-lock-their-customers-
into-longer-contracts-new-eu-digital-economy-chief-suggests/)

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)

------
Bud
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
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.

------
cordite
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.

~~~
GauntletWizard
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.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> 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.

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

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jszymborski
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.

------
crazy1van
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
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.

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fffrad
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.

~~~
trose
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.

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

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Aoyagi
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.

