Well, the Netherlands had a problematic court case some time back, and this fixes it. Well, if you're a copyright owner it was problematic.
You see copyright law technically doesn't restrict illegal downloading. It only limits distribution, and technically that means uploading, not downloading. So there was a series of court cases that said as much [1].
So now that case has been invalidated, and downloading material without a licence is now judged illegal in the Netherlands (like everywhere else).
One caveat that this case has for copyright holders is that it was judged to be a civil offence, not a criminal one. So illegal downloading cannot use police resources, and the copyright owner must sue (or appoint someone to sue on their behalf) before any action can be taken by the courts. Such action can only include financial sanctions [2], no jail time or impounding.
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/113968/article.html
[2] keep in mind that not paying a court-ordered restitution IS a criminal offence. So turning a civil offence into a criminal one is possible. It has historically not been done (meaning in the last century, before that it was actually common).
When will the world catch up with the fact that The Netherlands is not more the liberal country it once was? The boringness of Denmark combined with the social problems of the UK, that's where it's heading.
This story is not about liberalness, it's about a levy and the EU court ruling. The country comparison is like comparing apples to oranges. I'm an ex UK citizen who now lives in the Netherlands and you couldn't be further off the mark sir.
So illegal downloading is a "liberal" thing really?; if someone has been hurted by it is indie labels and film-makers for whom realizing an artistic vision was once at least a bit profitable. Not the big fish who still can make money producing shallow generic crap for the masses and can take the damage of a huge statistical slice that doesn't pay for it.
This is not specific to The Netherlands, it holds for all EU member states that did not already have laws declaring downloading of copyrighted material illegal.
The case for Germany is kind of weird, though: downloading is illegal, but streaming is not (or, to be more precise, it's the streaming service's job to make sure they don't host illegal content[1]).
So essentially I'm not allowed to download a movie, but I'm allowed to load it in my browser and watch it later.
However! If I copy the file from the browser's cache to another directory, then that's again illegal. I find this puzzling, but then again, I won't be the one who complains for having a loophole (or is it?) that allows me to download any movie without fear of retribution.
To Clarify, banning illegal downloading sounds quite logical.
Until now, downloading of copyrighted material such as movies, tv shows and music was allowed for personal use. This apparently has been overruled by an EU court. Quite interested to see what this is going to change....
I think very little will change. A little background: The Netherlands has for a long time allowed for people to make a copy of media (video, music, but not software), for personal use. This included media you'd borrow from a library, for example, or even your neighbor. To compensate, carriers (optical media, flash memory and the like) are a bit more expensive because an additional fee (of several euros; height depends on the size of the medium more or less) is added to the price of said media.
Then, the internet came to be and suddenly you could make a copy easily, but the rules were left unaltered, but the compensation went up in price.
A very important detail of the fact that downloading for personal use (redistributing, e.g. uploading, has always been illegal) was allowed even if the source was "illegal" (e.g. torrents, usenet). The reason for that is that it can be hard to tell whether or not the source you download from is distributing legally or illegally.
The above is now no longer OK, apparently, but if you borrow a CD from the library, you can still copy it for personal use just fine.
We've kind of reverted to the situation we had before the internet was mainstream.
The reason I think nothing will change is that "distribution" (I use this term loosely to allow a torrent site, for example, to fall in this category for argument's sake) has always been a target, and individuals downloading for personal use never were. The organization tasked with dealing with copyright infringement has stated to keep its arrows pointed at the distributing side of all this, not the individual downloader.
I'd be very very surprised if it's going to be enforced in any way, due to being almost unenforceable.
The media industry STILL has to work on giving the consumer what they want, and seeing as how Netflix and Spotify are good examples of services that are now available here and seem to be doing pretty good, it might be okay.
The problem with this interpretation is that in the vast majority of cases, one cannot know whether downloading is authorized or not.
Virtually every video, audio or text file of works created in the past century, more or less, is copyrighted. That alone is not the relevant criterion. The criterion of infringement is whether the particular action is authorized by the copyright holder. But this, no one can routinely know in the course of internet activities.
There is no central or public database of works that would reveal even who the copyright owner is - and even if there were, it would have to also record the authorization status of everyone in relation to every work.
So you are looking around online and someone is offering a file - if you are subject to lawsuits, fines or whatever other interference for downloading, then in principle it's not safe to even look at a web page. What the new rule amounts to in practice is something like "well if you infer that the web page is intended to be retrieved, you're probably safe, but you can be penalized for guessing incorrectly about music or videos". (Note that movie companies have actually sued youtube/Google over files including some that the movie companies themselves published on youtube.)
It simultaneously keeps everyone continually vulnerable to selective enforcement by private companies (specifically, big copyright accumulators), and casts a chilling effect on the relationship of fans with artists who would like to release works on more liberal terms than Hollywood companies (can you trust a statement on a web page that something is authorized???).
Surely if it was legal to download copyrighted material before, for personal use, then it wasn't... illegal.
So what they've actually done is ban the downloading of copyrighted material, not ban the illegality of downloading copyright material since that's a double-negative.
Well, it can be quite the double edged sword. After all, the same non-elected instance has recently enforced net neutrality in the EU (and it certainly received a lot of praise for that). It has also recently introduced a ban on roaming charges on mobile networks abroad (but within the EU). In the case of the Netherlands, it has recently ruled a law, which forces providers to store metadata of their clients for 6 to 24 months, illegal, due to a violation of our privacy . These decisions are beneficial for EU citizens, consumers.
Isn't that how courts work in most countries? Major decisions get passed down all the time by courts. Legislation thrown out, new legislation ordered. The only difference here is that it's a European court rather than a national court.
The headline seems misleading, since this was a decision by the EU Court of Justice that said the Dutch would have to stop downloading. The Netherlands themselves didn't ban anything.
[+] [-] fauigerzigerk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhdevos|12 years ago|reply
This was about people residing in the country illegally. Everyone understands the headline immediately, but it's still pretty ridiculous.
[+] [-] waps|12 years ago|reply
You see copyright law technically doesn't restrict illegal downloading. It only limits distribution, and technically that means uploading, not downloading. So there was a series of court cases that said as much [1].
So now that case has been invalidated, and downloading material without a licence is now judged illegal in the Netherlands (like everywhere else).
One caveat that this case has for copyright holders is that it was judged to be a civil offence, not a criminal one. So illegal downloading cannot use police resources, and the copyright owner must sue (or appoint someone to sue on their behalf) before any action can be taken by the courts. Such action can only include financial sanctions [2], no jail time or impounding.
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/113968/article.html [2] keep in mind that not paying a court-ordered restitution IS a criminal offence. So turning a civil offence into a criminal one is possible. It has historically not been done (meaning in the last century, before that it was actually common).
[+] [-] dep_b|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otaku888|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tremols|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theorique|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bulte-rs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daenney|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] probably_wrong|12 years ago|reply
So essentially I'm not allowed to download a movie, but I'm allowed to load it in my browser and watch it later.
However! If I copy the file from the browser's cache to another directory, then that's again illegal. I find this puzzling, but then again, I won't be the one who complains for having a loophole (or is it?) that allows me to download any movie without fear of retribution.
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/viewing-pirated-streams-is-not-ille...
[+] [-] renang|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codfrantic|12 years ago|reply
Until now, downloading of copyrighted material such as movies, tv shows and music was allowed for personal use. This apparently has been overruled by an EU court. Quite interested to see what this is going to change....
[+] [-] cyphax|12 years ago|reply
A very important detail of the fact that downloading for personal use (redistributing, e.g. uploading, has always been illegal) was allowed even if the source was "illegal" (e.g. torrents, usenet). The reason for that is that it can be hard to tell whether or not the source you download from is distributing legally or illegally. The above is now no longer OK, apparently, but if you borrow a CD from the library, you can still copy it for personal use just fine. We've kind of reverted to the situation we had before the internet was mainstream.
The reason I think nothing will change is that "distribution" (I use this term loosely to allow a torrent site, for example, to fall in this category for argument's sake) has always been a target, and individuals downloading for personal use never were. The organization tasked with dealing with copyright infringement has stated to keep its arrows pointed at the distributing side of all this, not the individual downloader.
I'd be very very surprised if it's going to be enforced in any way, due to being almost unenforceable.
The media industry STILL has to work on giving the consumer what they want, and seeing as how Netflix and Spotify are good examples of services that are now available here and seem to be doing pretty good, it might be okay.
[+] [-] ds9|12 years ago|reply
Virtually every video, audio or text file of works created in the past century, more or less, is copyrighted. That alone is not the relevant criterion. The criterion of infringement is whether the particular action is authorized by the copyright holder. But this, no one can routinely know in the course of internet activities.
There is no central or public database of works that would reveal even who the copyright owner is - and even if there were, it would have to also record the authorization status of everyone in relation to every work.
So you are looking around online and someone is offering a file - if you are subject to lawsuits, fines or whatever other interference for downloading, then in principle it's not safe to even look at a web page. What the new rule amounts to in practice is something like "well if you infer that the web page is intended to be retrieved, you're probably safe, but you can be penalized for guessing incorrectly about music or videos". (Note that movie companies have actually sued youtube/Google over files including some that the movie companies themselves published on youtube.)
It simultaneously keeps everyone continually vulnerable to selective enforcement by private companies (specifically, big copyright accumulators), and casts a chilling effect on the relationship of fans with artists who would like to release works on more liberal terms than Hollywood companies (can you trust a statement on a web page that something is authorized???).
[+] [-] KhalPanda|12 years ago|reply
So what they've actually done is ban the downloading of copyrighted material, not ban the illegality of downloading copyright material since that's a double-negative.
[+] [-] prawks|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gpvos|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CmonDev|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pearjuice|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyphax|12 years ago|reply
You gain some, you lose some. :)
[+] [-] jeremysmyth|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] easy_rider|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...
[+] [-] jsumrall|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] romanovcode|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] easy_rider|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rikkus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wsc981|12 years ago|reply
Edit: added a link for clarity.
[0]: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2014/04/cabinet_drops_...
[+] [-] easy_rider|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rurban|12 years ago|reply