It seemed for a brief moment today that EU commissioner Viviane Reding had discovered a sense of humility.
Listed in today’s running order for press documents made available to journalists at the commission’s daily briefing was an item from the Luxembourgeoise, seemingly accepting a wooden spoon from the UK Internet Industry Awards:
‘Speech by Viviane Reding UK internet association awards “Internet villain of the year” to the European Commission’ the daily missive promised.
But sadly no such speech was to be found.
It was, BM learns, a clerical error. It should instead have read:
‘Speech by Viviane Reding: How Accessible Should Publicly Funded Research Be? Conference on Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area Access, Dissemination and Preservation in the Digital Age’
So, close then.
Reding was awarded the prize of ‘Internet Villain of the Year’ last week (see here) by the Internet Service Providers’ Association for:
“foisting the most arcane set of rules yet seen for prior registration of .eu domains, requiring UK registered companies to submit legal affidavits to justify the authenticity of their business.”
BM now looks forward to the wooden spoon nominations from the European mobile phone operators, the TV broadcasters association, the EU hairdressers lobby and the Pan-European Sartorial Standards Council …
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