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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...

In ACI c.s. v. Stichting de Thuiskopie & SONT, the second judgment issued by the Court of Appeals of The Hague district (Court of Appeals) regarding the private use exception under Dutch Copyright law, on 15 November 2010 (see IRIS 2011-1/41), the Court ruled on the appeal by ACI c.s. on the judgment of the District Court of The Hague. This is another judgment in a series of cases involving the Stichting de Thuiskopie (Foundation for the Private Copy) (e.g., see IRIS 2005-9/30). The action was brought by ACI c.s. and questions the preconditions and criteria that are applicable in calculating the...

On 15 November 2010 the Court of Appeals of the district of The Hague (Court of Appeals) issued judgments in two separate cases regarding the private use exception under Dutch Copyright law (see also IRIS 2011-1/42). In FTD BV v. Eyeworks Film & TV Drama BV, the Court of Appeals ruled on the appeal by FTD BV against a judgment in preliminary proceedings (see IRIS 2010-7/30). The Court of Appeals ruled that FTD did not infringe the copyright of Eyeworks because their platform does not make copyrighted material available to the public. The FTD application did not contain any signal that referred...

On 31 March 2009 the Chamber of the Third Section of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a highly controversial judgment in the case of Sanoma Uitgevers B.V. v. the Netherlands. In a 4/3 decision, the Court was of the opinion that the order to hand over a CD-ROM with photographs in the possession of the editor-in-chief of a weekly magazine claiming protection of journalistic sources did not amount to a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The finding and motivation of the majority of the Chamber was not only strongly disapproved of in the world of...