ABSTRACT
Despite being one of the smaller countries in the EU, with just over 16 million inhabitants, the Netherlands has experienced a long tradition of industrial activity that predominantly revolves around food processing, chemicals, petroleum refining and electrical machinery. In addition, the country enjoys a highly-mechanised agricultural sector as well as transport and banking sectors. With regard to the information society, the Netherlands is one of the most developed countries in the world.1 There is a dense cable network infrastructure and the amount of Internet connectivity is comparatively high, with 78 per cent of Dutch households connected to the Internet as of 2005. A majority of 54 per cent of these were broadband connections, which is the highest percentage in the EU (for businesses these numbers are 88 per cent and 71 per cent respectively).2 These figures are not overly surprising when one takes into account that until 2004, PC ownership was promoted among citizens by means of a so-called ‘PC-privéregeling’ (‘private PC scheme’). Through this scheme, employees and students received tax benefits when they bought a new PC via their employers or universities.
