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On 14 November 2024, the Dutch Supreme Court filed a request for a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The questions concern the interpretation of the notion of "communication to the public" under Article 3(1) of the Copyright in the Information Society Directive (InfoSoc Directive) in the context of geo-blocking measures. The request for a preliminary ruling has been made in the dispute between the Anne Frank Fund (the non-profit organisation based in Basel, Switzerland, which owns copyrights on Anne Frank’s diary), and the Anne Frank Foundation (which...

On 27 November 2024, the Dutch Minister for Education, Culture and Science, in a letter to parliament, announced a significant policy measure for the protection of journalists in the Netherlands. In particular, the minister announced that PersVeilig, a joint initiative of the Dutch Association of Journalists, the Dutch Association of Editors in Chief, the Police and the Public Prosecution Service, which aims to strengthen the position of journalists against violence and aggression, will receive significant structural government funding from 2025. This follows a previous 2022 government measure...

On 18 December 2024, the Dutch Media Authority (Commissariaat voor de Media – CvdM) and the video-sharing platform Snapchat, jointly adopted a code of conduct under the Dutch Media Act, which implements the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) (see IRIS 2021-1/24). Snapchat is a video-sharing platform and app “designed for people ages 13 and up” which operates throughout the EU, and is established in the Netherlands. Notably, Snapchat is considered a video-sharing platform under the Dutch Media Act and the AVMSD. Under Article 3a(3) of the Dutch Media Act, video-sharing...

On 7 October 2024, the Dutch Government published an important bill to implement the 2024 EU Directive on protecting persons who engage in public participation from manifestly unfounded claims or abusive court proceedings (strategic lawsuits against public participation – SLAPPs), known as the Anti-SLAPP Directive (see IRIS 2024-3/5 and IRIS 2022-5/6). The purpose of the directive is to provide safeguards against SLAPPs, which are manifestly unfounded claims or abusive court proceedings brought against natural and legal persons on account of their engagement in public participation. Notably,...

On 7 November 2024, the Rechtbank Rotterdam (District Court of Rotterdam) delivered an important ruling on the protection of journalistic sources, and when courts can compel journalists to testify in criminal proceedings. Notably, the court ruled that an investigative journalist of the public broadcaster BNNVARA was entitled to refuse to testify in criminal proceedings against a Dutch local councillor accused of leaking confidential information. The case arose in May 2023, during a meeting of the Municipality of Dordrecht, where councillors were confidentially informed about legal correspondence...