In a landmark ruling the German Federal Court of Justice has ruled that consumers have the right to monetary compensation whenever their internet service is interrupted. The court went on to say that the internet is an "essential" part of life as we know it.

The ruling issued on Thursday was the response to a complaint filed by a citizen whose internet connection was on the fritz for over two months in 2008 and 2009. The ISP has already paid some compensation for the outage, but the plaintiff wanted to be compensated for his loss of internet services as well.

Germany's highest court had the same opinion and in a statement said "The Internet plays a very important role today and affects the private life of an individual in very decisive ways," it continued, "therefore loss of use of the Internet is comparable to the loss of use of a car."