Search results : 477

On 12 December 2011, the European Commission notified the Onafhankelijke Post en Telecommunicatie Authoriteit (Independent Post and Telecommunication Authority - OPTA), the Dutch national regulatory authority, that it had no comments on OPTA’s assessment of the retail market for TV services in the Netherlands. As the retail market for TV services is not listed in the Commission Recommendation 2007/879/EC of 17 December 2007 on relevant product and service markets within the electronic communications sector susceptible to ex ante regulation, OPTA has carried out the three criteria test to assess...

On 11 January 2012 the District Court of The Hague ordered two Dutch internet access providers to block access to The Pirate Bay. Furthermore, Stichting BREIN, a foundation protecting the interests of the Dutch copyright industry, has been granted a right to directly request the providers to block future IP-addresses and (sub) domain names that may refer to The Pirate Bay. The providers in question, Ziggo and XS4ALL, have already announced they will appeal the ruling. BREIN, on the other hand, has announced it will request similar measures from other providers. The District Court found the legal...

On 21 October 2011, the Rechtbank Amsterdam (Amsterdam Court) dismissed an action brought by a convicted criminal against the broadcasting of the filming of his crime. The plaintiff was involved in the kidnapping of a well-known Dutch businessman in 1983. He is currently in prison for a conviction unconnected with the abduction. The defendant in the instant case was a Dutch film production company that filmed the kidnapping. Inter alia, the plaintiff claimed that the film portrayed the victim’s abduction and weeklong imprisonment as more violent than it actually was and thus breached his right...

The Dutch Commissariaat voor de Media (Media Authority - CvdM) recently published a Regulation containing policy rules defining “commercial media on-demand services”, or video on-demand services, under the Dutch Media Act. Under the regulation, such video services must be registered as of 1 November 2011. The policy provides an elaboration of the criteria that determine whether a commercial media on-demand service is covered by the Dutch Media Act. The Act regulates matters such as the separation of commercial and editorial content, the protection of minors, advertising, product placement and sponsoring....

On 19 July 2011 the European Commission sent requests for information in the form of letters of formal notice, the first step in the process of an EU infringement procedure, to 20 EU member states. The member states in question, namely Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain, have not yet notified to the Commission measures to implement the new EU Telecoms Package, formally adopted after two years of heated negotiations at the end of 2009...