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On 5 September 2018, the District Court of The Hague delivered its judgment in a class action lawsuit filed by several film producers against the Dutch State. The Court ruled that the Dutch State was liable for statements made by a former State Secretary for Security and Justice about the permissibility of reproducing material from illegal sources. The statements concerned the question of whether, under the implementation in Dutch law of the Directive 2001/29/EC (Copyright Directive), reproductions from illegal sources fell within the scope of the private copying exemption. In short, this exemption...

On 27 September 2018, the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) adopted the market analysis decision on Wholesale Fixed Access (WFA). Under the Decision, Dutch telecommunications providers KPN and VodafoneZiggo must grant competitors access to their fixed telecommunications networks in order to mitigate the potential effects of their collective significant market power (Article 14(2) Directive 2002/21/EC - SMP). The Decision is effective as of 1 October 2018. Prior to the Decision of 27 September 2018, the ACM’s market analysis decision of 17 December 2015 already imposed the obligation...

In July 2018, the Dutch Media Authority (CvdM) and the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) published a joint study on digitization and fake news. The ACM and CvdM both monitor the media. The ACM ensures that consumers are well informed and fights unfair competition, and the CvdM’s primary task is to protect the freedom of information by ensuring pluralism, accessibility and the independence of the Dutch media. The study was prompted by the rapidly changing media landscape and the increasing number of possibilities to disseminate fake news. Combining their expertise, the two organisations...

On 15 August 2018, the District Court of Amsterdam ruled that BNNVARA, a Dutch broadcasting association, had not acted unlawfully by broadcasting on its website a secretly taped conversation with a Dutch member of parliament (MP) of the political party called DENK. The conversation took place in a private meeting room of the party. The recording related to a political election campaign banner (which the party was contemplating publishing on the Internet) containing a provocative message in the name of another Dutch political party the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid): “After 15 March...

On 25 July 2018, Amsterdam District Court ruled that both a Twitter user and GeenStijl, a popular Dutch website (see IRIS 2016-9/3), acted unlawfully by disseminating, without her consent, sexually explicit (video) material of a well-known Dutch TV personality and singer. The content, which had been made in private by the claimant, had, for unclear reasons, appeared and circulated on the messaging service WhatsApp. The Twitter user had subsequently posted a tweet that contained the content, accompanied by a hashtag with the name of the claimant. GeenStijl, for a short period of time, referred to...