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On 11 April 2011 Fred Teeven, the Dutch State Secretary for Public Safety and Justice, published a mission statement titled “Speerpuntenbrief auteursrecht 20©20” in which he proposes to modernise the Dutch Copyright Law. In his mission statement Teeven addresses a number of issues, which will be discussed below. The main emphasis of the mission statement is to enhance the public’s trust in the copyright system and strengthen the position of authors of copyright protected works. First and foremost Teeven plans to alter the download system in the Netherlands. At present it is legal to download copyrighted...

On 9 March 2011 the Court of Appeals of the district of The Hague (Court of Appeals) issued a judgment in a case regarding the question of whether breaking into an encrypted router and using the Wi-Fi connection is a criminal offence under Article 138ab of the Dutch Criminal Code. The decision of the Court of Appeals relates to the case of a high school student who posted a threat on the Internet message board 4chan.org in which he declared his intention to begin a shooting spree at his high school, the Maerlant College in The Hague. He posted this threat using a Wi-Fi connection he had hacked...

The European Commission has finished the preliminary analysis of the measures implementing the Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive into national law notified by 16 Member States: Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. Subsequently, the European Commission has sent fact-finding letters to these states inquiring about these implementing measures. The Commission is thus seeking to ensure that all provisions of the AVMS Directive have been correctly transposed into...

On 22 December 2010, the Court of Appeal of The Hague dismissed a case brought by the public prosecutor against seven suspects charged with intentional copyright infringement. The case regards two websites on which users exchange material that is protected by copyright. A file composed by the Dutch anti-piracy organisation Stichting BREIN (Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland - Netherlands Entertainment Industry Rights Protection) served as the motive and the basis for prosecution. In total Stichting BREIN handed three files to the prosecution, the Team Opsporing Piraterij (Team...

On 16 December 2010 the General Court of the European Union handed down a decision in an action for annulment brought by the Netherlands and the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (Dutch Broadcasting Foundation - NOS), a public service broadcaster, regarding state aid for the latter. The NOS has a double role in Dutch public service broadcasting . Besides its duty as a public service broadcaster, its management board (operating under the name of Publieke Omroep - PO) also has the responsibility for coordinating the entire public service broadcasting system. In both of these two functions the NOS’s main...