German Federal Court Rules That Internet Connection Is Crucial To Everyday Life 110
Qedward writes "Internet access is as crucial to everyday life as having a phone connection and the loss of connectivity is deserving of financial compensation, the German Federal Court of Justice has ruled. Because having an internet connection is so significant for a large part of the German population, a customer whose service provider failed to provide connectivity between December 2008 and February 2009 is entitled to compensation, the court ruled today. 'It is the first time the court ruled that an internet connection is as important a commodity as having a phone,' said court spokeswoman Dietlind Weinland. The court, however, denied the plaintiff's request of €50 a day for his fax machine not working."
Re:Phone / Internet (Score:5, Informative)
You don't get compensation if your phone is out of order, why should you for internet?
You do get compensation in Australia, through Service Level Agreements.
Re:Phone / Internet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"crucial"??? (Score:2, Informative)
Don't overlook the fact that Germans speak German, the word "crucial" was not used by them. TFA links to a German text which uses the formulations "zentraler Wichtigkeit" and "zentraler Bedeutung". It seems that "central importance" was translated as "crucial", which to me sounds quite a bit stronger. If they had meant it to be that strong I think they would have used words like "entscheidend" or "essenziell" instead of "zentral" in the original.