Lawmakers in the Netherlands on Wednesday passed a new law that guarantees net neutrality, making the country the first in Europe to secure such a measure.
Under the countries new law internet service providers can not manage traffic unless it specifically involves congestion or network security. The bill also restricts ISPs from performing deep packet inspection and other forms of wiretapping techniques.
The law was created in June 2010 and led to parliament passing a motion that stopped mobile operations from blocking VOIP calls on their network. The original bill directed towards mobile carriers just recently passed the Dutch senate.
Under the Netherlands net neutrality law the rules apply to any organization that provides internet access services. The law specifically states that software applications can not be used to stop access to sites and services unless a users usage is causing network congestion problems while equal types of traffic must all be treated equally. In laymens terms an ISP can not give priority to Disney.com over UniversalStudios.com or provider paid tiers in which the most expensive plan gives access to the full web while cheaper plans only provide access to popular websites.
The move also ensures for example that a video streaming service owned by an ISP does not push Hulu or Netflix out of the industry by limiting their access while providing free reign for the ISPs own service.
If a user is causing network congestion an ISP must first warn them before they throttle their internet use.
In the meantime lawmakers in the United States, Canada and other parts of the world continue to grapple with net neutrality and the effects limiting web use would have on users and the global economy as a whole.
AT&T officials attempted to agree to net neutrality but 94% of voting members turned down the measure, believing it was too restrictive for future infrastructure requirements.
