Search results : 499

On 22 September 2017, The Hague District Court ordered a preliminary injunction against internet services providers (ISPs) Ziggo and XS4AALL to temporarily block access to The Pirate Bay until the Dutch Supreme Court had issued a judgment in the main proceedings. This case has to be seen in light of the main proceedings before the Dutch Supreme Court, between the applicant BREIN, a foundation protecting the rights and interests of Dutch copyright holders, and Ziggo and XS4ALL as defendants, both of them ISPs who give their end-users access to The Pirate Bay. The main proceedings were suspended...

On 26 September 2017, the District Court of Amsterdam dismissed a complaint against a well-known Dutch crime reporter for allegedly unlawful statements made on the television programme RTL Boulevard. The lawsuit was also directed at the producer of the programme, Fremantlemedia Netherlands BV. The claimant in the case writes and publishes information about crimes in several media outlets. One of the crimes he commented on was the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl in 1999. The claimant had an alternative reading of the case, and amongst other things, argued that the person convicted of these...

On 29 September 2017, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that the claim of the telecom company Pretium to oblige the broadcaster Tros to hand over unedited hidden camera footage would be an impermissible restriction on the right to freedom of speech (see IRIS 2015-7/23). The decision relates to the question of the extent to which hidden camera footage falls within the scope of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), and whether an order to hand over audiovisual material may be rejected if the desired evidence can be obtained by other means. In 2008, Tros aired an episode of the...

On 6 July 2017, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, DPA), published a draft decision on the lawfulness of personal data processing proposed by Dutch FilmWorks B.V. (DFW). DFW had notified the DPA last March of its intention to collect and further process personal data for the purpose of the online enforcement of DFW’s copyright. Because DFW plans to process data without informing data subjects, Article 31(1)(b) of the Dutch Data Protection Act requires prior investigation by the DPA. With its decision, the DPA plans to declare the proposed processing lawful (for a...

In a notable judgment concerning preventive censorship and broadcasting, on 17 August 2017, the District Court of Midden-Nederland ruled that the Dutch public broadcasting association BNN/VARA may broadcast an episode of the YouTube documentary show #BOOS (Dutch for “angry”). The show aims to solve consumer complaints, mostly from young people. In the episode in question, the presenter confronted a landlord with complaints from his student tenants. The confrontation resulted in a fight which left the presenter suffering from a broken jaw. The landlord requested an injunction to prevent the documentary...