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.
Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker
21–30 of 64 posts
Re: Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker
#22He 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 unanimous…
"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?
> I'd like to pay $3/month for my Netflix traffic to not count towards any caps. Is that allowed?
No, because it's discriminating against non-Netflix traffic. But there is certainly nothing wrong with paying the market rate for all your traffic to not count towards any caps (i.e. an uncapped connection).
Re: Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker
#23This 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…
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.
Re: Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker
#24Server 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 leve…
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 wi…
> 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.
Re: Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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?
> I'd like to pay $3/month for my Netflix traffic to not count towards any caps. Is that allowed? No, because it's discriminating against non-Netflix traffic. But there is certainly nothing wrong with paying the market rate for all your traffic to not count towards any caps (i.e. an uncapped connection).
Basically, the whole principle of Net Neutrality (as I understand it without knowing the details of the U.S. law, much less the European one) is: you bill data in the last mile to the consumer and you are not allowed to charge them based on the semantics or origin of the data. You do not charge the provider at all, unless they are the direct ISP you are peering with. You can however, give the customer a fast lane and a slow lane if you want, with different caps, and they can tell you which traffic they want you to get to them faster.
As far as I understand it, nothing prevents the hospital to get:
Connection 1: Availability guarantee 99.999%, bandwidth 150Gbps max with 50Gbps dedicated, RTT for last mile: Connection 2: Normal, small business grade connection.
Then the hospital can use connection 1 for critical medical equipment and connection 2 for everything else. But, they could do just the reverse (why would they?) and the ISP would need to abide by connection 1's guarantees regardless of content (assuming the upstream connection from the provider is also good enough).
Re: Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker
#26The 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.
Re: Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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?
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.
The problem with allowing special arrangements is that politicians can--and do--use regulations in anticompetitive and manipulative ways.
Re: Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker
#28He 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 unanimous…
"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?
Are you willing to trade the warranty that every protocol that you are EVER going to use will be treated equal for a better TV reception NOW ?
Re: Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker
#29I 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.
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.
Re: Net neutrality is a “Taliban-like issue”, says Europe’s top digital policymaker
#30It'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.