EU Digital Commissioner: Net Neutrality Is A 'Taliban-Like' Issue
from the won't-someone-think-of-the-cars? dept
Until recently, most people probably assumed that real net neutrality was more likely to come to Europe than to the US. But in one of those ironic little twists, not only has the FCC voted in favor of net neutrality, but attacks on the idea in Europe have suddenly multiplied, leaving the final outcome there in doubt. Worryingly, one of the strongest verbal assaults on net neutrality comes from the very EU Commissioner who is in charge of the relevant legislation, Günther Oettinger. Techdirt has reported a couple of times on the Digital Commissioner's rather clueless comments, but this time he has surpassed himself. Speaking at an event held by the German Ministry of Finance last week, here's what the he had to say on net neutrality, as reported by the Pirate Party's MEP, Julia Reda -- her post includes a video of Oettinger speaking (in German) and a transcript of his remarks (in English):Net neutrality: Here we've got, particularly in Germany, Taliban-like developments. We have the Internet community, the Pirates on the move, it's all about enforcing perfect uniformity. They talk about "the evil industry". It’s not about the industry, it’s not about the CEO and his salary.Oettinger then goes on to explain what he thinks net neutrality is about: telemedicine and car safety, apparently.
If you want to have real time road safety, our lives are at stake, this has to have absolute priority with regards to quality and capacity.What's interesting here is that alongside the very old idea of telemedicine, Oettinger uses exactly the same new argument against net neutrality as Nokia's CEO last week. Since no one was talking about this kind of application before -- unsurprisingly, since it's a really stupid approach -- a cynic might almost think that they have both been fed the same talking point by someone.
...
I think downloading YouTube can wait a few seconds. I think we can let the game at some times be less than perfect on the screen. But road safety (a commercial service!), health (a commercial service!) and a few others come to my mind: They should be able to deviate from net neutrality, this Taliban-like issue.
Fortunately, Reda's position as Member of the European Parliament gives her the right to quiz the European Commission formally, and she is availing herself of this power to put the following rather pointed questions, which pick up on Oettinger's comments:
Can the Commission name specifically every single hospital in the European Union and their specific telemedicine products and applications which rely on real time broadband internet connections whose technical specifications rely on the absence of enforced net neutrality rules in the EU? Please list each and every hospital, product and application, please do not cluster products and applications.I can't wait for the replies.
Can the Commission name specifically every single intelligent transportation system such as a car-mounted impact warning system, car or transportation security device whose performance relies on real time internet access and whose technical specification relies on the absence of enforced net neutrality rules in the EU? Please list every manufacturer, product and application, please do not cluster products and applications.
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Filed Under: eu, eu commission, gunther oettinger, julia reda, net neutrality, paid prioritization, self-driving cars, taliban, telemedicine
Reader Comments
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"Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations,[1][2] politics and propaganda."
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The only reasonable conclusion is that Günther Oettinger was high when he made this speech.
(Either that, or the translation was hugely inaccurate. I assume that would be easier to check than Commissioner Oettinger's sobriety.)
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I translate:
"Regarding net-neutrality, we have taliban-like developments, especially in germany. There's the net-community, there are the pirates on the move, this is about a perfect levelling down."
Yes, this is a total incompetent idiot.
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Heh! I'm amused that he's so fwightened of one single Pirate. Not all of us who want net neutrality are Pirates, but if he wants to send voters our way, he has only to keep spewing out nonsense like that.
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Enlighten me here
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Re: Enlighten me here
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Re: Enlighten me here
For campaign donors, that is.
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Re: Enlighten me here
Just as the Taliban espouse how people dress, where they go to school (if at all), what books to read, how to pray, so the thinking goes that net neutrality proponents want to dictate how every one (from ISP to company to end user) gets to use their internet connection.
The idea basically being that if companies aren't allowed to have maximum flexibility to maximize the profit potential of their activities, then using the internet will become just like living in a Taliban controlled country.
Not that I agree mind you.
Just in case that wasn't enough to sway you to support his financial backers world view, cars will crash and people will die due to their inability to access medical stuff.
All that's missing is an appeal to protect the children.
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Re: Re: Enlighten me here
I've heard that argument before. I think Orwell put it the most succinctly: freedom is slavery!
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Re: Re: Enlighten me here
There will be children in the cars that crash ...
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Taliban-Like = For the children
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Oettinger was considered a disaster before he was appointed and he has barely been living up to that so far. Oettinger is a german conservative and ideologically a man of the industry. Kroes, his predecessor, was a dutch liberal and very open to public opinions.
The difference is night and day.
So much for the commissioners being uninfluenced by lobbyists and only technocrats... The horror-cabinet of Jean-Claude "taxevasion" Juncker is starting a real decay in Europe...
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Yes. Here "liberal" usually refers to "corporatist", and "conservative" refers to "corporatist".
Whereas the usual (but of course also totally wrong) meaning of the US "liberal" would be called "socialist" here; whereas the usual US meaning of "conservative" would probably be called "reactionary". At least if you ask the others.
And "libertarian" refers to "anarchist", "green" to "green", and "pirate" to "liberal" (in the original sense).
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I'm just guessing here, but I would think that every time a vehicle-impact warning system called the ShouldIDeployAirBag web service, the service would be getting a client-disconnected error when sending the response.
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THIS!!!!
Seriously? Terrorism linked to wanting my damn videos to play without choppy or shitty quality?
This is why governments are overthrown... because people eventually get sick of just exactly this kind of shit and want to start taking lives of their rulers!
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Re: THIS!!!!
Is what a corrupt political bastard looks like ladies and gents."
From the country that gave the world the original Nazis.
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Re: Re: THIS!!!!
1) Only a couple of years before the Nazis seized power, Germany was pretty much the center of the modern, civilized world, and it was as close to the opposite of fascist as nations get. What happened in Germany with regards to the Nazis can happen in literally any other nation so quickly that it would make your head spin.
2) The Nazis weren't unique, or the first, to behave that way. They were just the first to do it in the age of mass communications.
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While it's not a net neutrality issue, I'm waiting to see what happens when a self-driving car crosses a border.
In 2009 for example Mythbusters' Adam Savage received $11,000 bill for a few hours of web browsing on his iPhone in Canada. Canadians roaming the US get similar bills. If self-driving cars are dependent on a cellular connection to a back-end database, they're probably using bandwidth at a horrendous rate. A cross-border vacation could be EXPENSIVE.
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It will be subscription based and if you can't pay your subscription, your car won't move, and your medical equipment requiring a dedicated connection will stop working as well. I mean someone has to pay for the dedicated bandwidth and that's expensive, just ask those supplying them.
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Which can be considered a safety effort. I would never want to ride in a car that requires a network connection in order to operate safely. The very notion is not only unnecessary, but dangerously insane regardless of whether that traffic is prioritized or not.
Also, the concept of net neutrality does not preclude prioritizing such traffic in the first place, so even though the concept of self-driving cars that need to talk over the net to work is inherently crazy, NN wouldn't stop it.
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Importance
But seriously, if the ISPs weren't doing freaky shaping to begin with, videos and games and "important" stuff would co-exist quite nicely anyway.
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But even if it were, we have something called Quality of Service (QoS). This prioritizes traffic so for instance, your tv has priority over your kid downloading or gaming on the same line.
These morons are trying to convince people that QoS is affected by net neutrality even though it is an integral part of how the internet works which is a full and total lie.
Net neutrality is to insure that one service doesn't have an advantage over a similar service. Netflix wouldn't have an advantage over Hulu because they have made a special deal with the broadband providers, but traffic from both would have to yield for more important traffic like Voice over IP or any future medical uses on the internet, like connections to pacemakers.
In fact net neutrality protects us all by insuring that one broadband provider can't decide to strangle traffic from someone they are having a beef with or a company that have been excluded by contract with a competitor.
So if cars would stupidly rely on the internet in the future, it at least wouldn't be because of strangled traffic that they would crash, because Ford didn't pay the protection money.
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is he on drugs?
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Re: is he on drugs?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLQXuX_H9l8
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Demand the right to forget that such a speech exists.
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From a German
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(A commercial service!)
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Re: (A commercial service!)
Once you understand it in those terms, that Taliban crack makes perfect sense. It's like, "How dare you tell us how to run OUR businesses!"
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Re: (A commercial service!)
I took it to mean (a commercial service that would be prohibited from getting a fast lane under a neutral internet!). It's still stupid but in a different way.
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"electronic surgery"
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Re: "electronic surgery"
Let's guess which one a company will choose...
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Techdirt made a liar by the EU
http://ec.europa.eu/commission/content/speech-digital4europe-stakeholder-meeting_en
via Netzpolitik.org who has an old vs new speech.
https://netzpolitik.org/2015/remix-des-tages-eu-kommission-frisiert-lustige-rede-von-guenther -oettinger/
Brought to you by the Ministry of Truth I guess.
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Re: Techdirt made a liar by the EU
http://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Video/2015/2015-03-06-bmf-im-dialog-diskussion /2015-03-06-bmf-im-dialog-diskussion.html
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Hitler wasn't always wrong.
Though Stupid Jetpack Hitler IS always wrong.
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