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In the Netherlands a code of conduct on Notice-and-Take-Down (NTD) has been drawn up. The code establishes a procedure for intermediaries that have been notified about online content that is punishable or unlawful. The code was presented to the secretary of Economic Affairs and announced in a press release on 9 October 2008. It was adopted in the context of a project undertaken by the Nationale Infrastructuur Cyber Crime (National Infrastructure against Cybercrime - NICC), a public private partnership that brings together stakeholders to collaborate in the fight against cybercrime. The partnership...

On 19 August 2008, the Dutch district court of Haarlem issued a preliminary injunction in a case which the British Performing Rights Society (PRS) commenced against the Dutch copyright collecting society BUMA. PRS had complained that BUMA illegitimately granted licences covering the PRS repertoire outside the Netherlands. BUMA had previously signed a pan-European licence agreement with the US-based online electronic music retailer beatport.com. This licence covered all of the world’s music repertoire for which BUMA, because of the reciprocal representation agreements (RRAs) with collecting societies...

The movie “Fitna”, created by the Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders, has given rise to two provisional judgements in the Netherlands. The first judgement, concerning freedom of speech, turned out to be positive for the politician, while the second resulted in a fine, due to intellectual property infringements. On 28 March 2008, the movie “Fitna” was broadcast from the Internet site Liveleak.com. The movie included negative remarks about Islam. The prophet Mohammed was called a “barbarian” and Islam and the Koran were linked with fascism. Before the release of the movie, the Dutch Government...

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) recently published four country reports adopted in its third monitoring cycle of the laws, policies and practices intended to combat racism in the Member States of the Council of Europe. Each of the country reports, which examine the situation in Andorra, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine, contains specific recommendations concerning the media. As in earlier ECRI country reports (see IRIS 2005-7: 3), a number of recommendations are recurrent. For example, national authorities are called upon to encourage media/journalistic initiatives...

In two recent judgments, the European Court of Human Rights has given substantial protection to journalists’ right of non-disclosure of their sources under Article 10 of the Convention. The case of Voskuil v. the Netherlands concerns Mr Voskuil’s allegations that he was denied the right not to disclose his source for two articles he had written for the newspaper Sp!ts and that he was detained for more than two weeks in an attempt to compel him to do so. Voskuil had been summoned to appear as a witness for the defence in the appeal proceedings concerning three individuals accused of...