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Digital
Dutch government to step up digital copyright law
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 13 April 2011
The Dutch government are the latest to announce proposals for new laws to crack down on online piracy, though they aren’t going anywhere near as far as their counterparts in France and the UK – who both introduced variations of the three-strikes system – rather they are playing catch up given that existing copyright law in The Netherlands doesn’t actually say downloading unlicensed content off the internet is illegal.
Under the current Dutch copyright system, while uploading unlicensed content to file-sharing networks or websites is illegal, the downloading of such material is allowed under the private copy clause of the country’s fair use provisions. But under new proposals from the government there, that would cease to be the case, meaning anyone who downloads music could open themselves up to copyright infringement actions. In the UK, where there has never been a private copy right, that downloading unlicensed music is illegal has never been in doubt, even if it’s hard to do anything about it.
The private copy levy applied to blank CDs and DVDs and directly linked to the old private copy right would also be abolished under the new proposals, which are supported by the country’s anti-piracy group BREIN, who say that although the change in the law is important, they will not actually go after individual downloader’s, preferring to target those who run the websites that enable file-sharing instead.
