Dutch Law Prohibits Traffic Throttling, 3-Strikes Disconnecting, Deep Packet Inspection
The Netherlands has become the first country in Europe and only the second in the world to pass Net Neutrality legislation. The new law forces ISPs to treat all traffic equally and, crucially, also prevents them from peering too much into what the users are sending and receiving via their networks.
There's been plenty of talk around the world about this type of legislation, but it's a controversial subject, not least because ISPs, copyright-dependent companies, police and government agencies and so on, don't want anything like this ever becoming law.
Rather, they say people should just trust them to do the right thing and that they should be free to alter their service in any way they want. Normally, laws and regulation do more harm than good, in a working free market system, competition keeps companies honest, or at least keeps them striving to offer a better service than their competitors.
