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Five Dutch ISPs will launch a "procedure on the merits" action against Dutch anti-piracy organisation Dutch Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands (BREIN). As reported yesterday, BREIN intends to sue the ISPs next month to obtain the identity of 42 individuals suspected of illegally swapping copyrighted music. The ISPs believe a normal summary proceeding or kort geding will not allow a full investigation of the merits or otherwise of BREIN's case. A procedure on the merits demands such investigation.
An internet piracy watchdog has called on the Dutch judicial authorities to force five internet access providers to hand over personal data on people downloading music and films on a large scale. The five internet providers in question -- UPC (UGC), Wanadoo (France Telecom) Tiscali, KPN and Essent Kabelcom -- have refused to hand over the data the Brein Foundation needs to identify on the pirates, saying this would be a breach of privacy.
The Dutch Supreme Court has been advised to decide that the ISP Lycos has to hand over the personal data of an anonymous customer to a private third party. The so-called "Advocaat-Generaal", a neutral counsel to the Supreme Court on cases brought before the court, apparently follows the conclusion in an earlier ruling by the Amsterdam Court of Appeals in the Lycos v. Pessers case.
Games piracy in the Netherlands includes the modification and sale of games consoles and related software that have their anti-copying devices (both hard- and software) circumvented. Brein (The Dutch Anti Piracy Organisation) takes action based on Dutch legislation, which forbids tampering with such devices.
The court ruled that BREIN made a crucial mistake in collecting evidence against the individuals. BREIN hired US company Media Sentry, which monitors popular online forums and P2P services for copyright infringement and tracks unauthorised online distribution. Apparently the company only looked at shared folders of Kazaa, but these folders may also have contained files for personal use, the court argues. There is not enough proof that these particular files were uploaded.
A controversial proposed tax in the Netherlands on MP3 players of as much as € 3.28 ($4.30) per gigabyte has been revised, though still not enough to please the electronics industry.A new proposal by the Foundation Onderhandeling Thuiskopievergoeding (SONT), which negotiates between hardware manufacturers and the collecting agency Stichting Thuiskopie, suggests a surcharge of €0.20 per 32MB with a maximum of €1 and €8 to €25 for audio players with a hard disk of 10GB or more. There also will be a tax on DVRs of €0.15 per gigabyte. SONT believes the levy will be more tolerable than the previous proposed tax, which was to put €180 ($235) to the price of a top end iPod.However, ICT Office, the 450 members strong Dutch trade association for IT, Telecom and Office industries, has already condemned the new proposal. Spokesman Bernd Taselaar said Friday that the proposed levy ignores European policies and will hurt business. Other critics say that levies on MP3 players are outmoded, as more and more users buy content online, which means that copyright is being purchased twice over if a levy is also paid. The proposal also seem to ignore the fact that hard disc capacity is growing every few months. Introducing a levy would make hardware unjustly expensive.
The Dutch Supreme Court on Friday ordered Internet company Lycos to reveal the identity of a client in a benchmark decision on privacy that was praised by copyright groups as a way to go after illegal swapping of music and movies online.It is the first ruling of its kind in the Netherlands on Internet privacy and could have far reaching consequences for other Internet providers.The country's highest court ruled that Lycos had wrongly protected the identity of a user who anonymously posted slanderous allegations against an Internet postage stamp dealer on a member site."The court considers it probable that the information posted on the web site is illegal and damaging to Pessers," the ruling said. "Pessers has a genuine interest in obtaining the client's details and there is no other way to obtain them."The Brein Institute, which represents the global entertainment industry in the Netherlands, said in a statement the ruling will enable it to seek damages from people who illegally swap copyrighted software, music and movies over the Internet.
In the Netherlands the courts have ruled that it is legal to download music and movie files from the Internet, it is just not legal to upload. It is the act of uploading the constitues copyright infringement according to the court's interpretation of Dutch law. To call the LamaBox a file sharing appliance, therefore, is really incorrect. It is really a file taking appliance as it complies with Dutch law and only downloads, not uploads. What also makes the LamaBox unique is that it does not limit its queries to one network or another. When a user plugs in the specific song or movie thay are looking for the LamaBox searches through the FastTrack, Gnutella, eDonkey networks. It also utilizes BitTorrent technology allowing the unit to poll various torrent sites. Details are sketchy as to what sites, important as many are being shut down by the major media conglomerates. Networks like FastTrack are also under legal pressure to make changes to their technology so future firmware upgrades will be needed for the LamaBox to stay current
The Court of Appeals in Amsterdam, Netherlands, judged that knowingly operating a website which enhances the availability of MP3 files on the Internet is illegal. Techno Design, the company behind Zoemp3.nl, created a search engine that linked to copyrighted MP3 files. Until yesterday’s ruling, this type of search engine was not illegal; providing copyrighted MP3 files were not on Techno Design’s (or similar owner’s) server.“Rex”, administrator of MyBitTorrent.com stated“I think Dutch BitTorrent sites will be 'safe' for now. The biggest Dutch sites haven't been contacted by BREIN yet, so they do not need to worry. Also ZoekMP3.nl was linking to intellectual property and sites like myBittorrent.com only link to metadata, which is NOT copyrighted!”
Last Friday, an appeals court in the Netherlands ruled that facilitating MP3 downloads through a search engine, even when those files are not hosted by the search engine itself, is in violation of Dutch law. However, reader comments on the Dutch news site Webwereld, which reported on the case, pointed out that two of the three judges involved in the decision are members of organisations that support professional musicians or (music) rights holders.One of the judges is a member of Comité Executif de l'Association Littéraire et Artistique (an international agreement aimed at protecting literary and artistic copyright), whose Dutch subsidiary includes the managing director the Dutch Association of Phonogram and Videogram Producers (NVPI), who is behind anti-piracy organisation BREIN. BREIN took the website to court.Dutch lawyer Christiaan A Alberdingk Thijm, who defended Mp3search.nl against BREIN two years ago, said the impartiality of the court was not his biggest concern."What bothers me more is that this case wasn't defended at all," , "The ruling is inherently contradictory.While the court decided not to rule on the issue of copyright infringement by Mp3search.nl, it applied a statement of the WIPO copyright treaty to conclude that the site acted unlawful
A Dutch appeals court has thwarted attempts by the Dutch anti-piracy organisation BREIN to get the identities of file-sharers from five ISPs, including Wanadoo and Tiscali.The court found that the manner in which IP addresses were collected and processed by US company MediaSentry had no lawful basis under European privacy laws. A lower court in Utrecht had reached a similar conclusion last year.The court also argued that the software MediaSentry uses can't properly identify users or provide evidence of infringement.Last year, expert witnesses at Delft University of Technology criticised MediaSentry's software for being too limited and simplistic. For instance, MediaSentry took filenames in Kazaa at face value. More importantly, the software scans all the content of the shared folder on the suspect's hard disk. In that process, it breached privacy laws.The Dutch Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands (BREIN) represented 52 media and entertainment companies and has been investigating 42 people suspected of swapping song files. Nine file-sharers decided to settle with BREIN.BREIN says it will go to a higher court, but lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, who represented the ISPs, sees the decision as an important victory.
