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The District Court of Amsterdam recently ruled that official reports, based on transcriptions of recorded conversations between a victim of extortion (Dutch real estate tycoon, Willem Endstra) and an intelligence agent, are not protected by copyright. In the period of May 2003 to January 2004, Endstra had fifteen conversations with agents of the Criminele Inlichtingen Eenheid (Criminal Intelligence Unit- CIE). In these conversations, which were being recorded as they took place, the businessman indicated that he was being extorted by Willem Holleeder. Endstra was murdered in May 2004. The recordings...

The Dutch public broadcasting organisation BNN will launch a digital channel in September 2006. The channel, temporarily called The CoolCast Project, will broadcast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, via decoders and the Internet. The channel is aimed at young viewers in the age category of thirteen to thirty-four years. The board of directors of the public broadcasting organisations considers thematic channels to be an important step towards the digital future of television. In particular, it allows broadcasting organisations to reach young people. According to BNN, this is one of the...

The Delft University of Technology has launched a new peer-to-peer system, based on open-source software, which can be used to distribute television programmes through the internet. Public broadcasting organisations, as well as commercial television stations and cable and telecommunications companies, have shown keen interest in this programme called Tribler. Tribler was developed by a group of scientists in a project supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. The software allows users to download television programmes from the broadcasting organisation’s server, and then to distribute...

On 31 March 2006, Dutch Secretary of State for Education, Culture and Science Medy van der Laan sent the Tweede Kamer (House of Representatives) a letter announcing the proposed budget for Dutch films. The letter expresses the Cabinet’s desire to make a strong gesture towards supporting Dutch independent films. To make these films interesting for an international audience, the Cabinet is prepared to invest an extra EUR 7.5 million in the artistic development of Dutch film makers as per 2007. With this increase, the total budget for Dutch film adds up to EUR 40 million a year. Thus far, the Cabinet...

In June 2005, the Dutch Cabinet announced its point of view regarding the future of the Dutch public broadcasting system, in a provisional draft entitled “ Met het oog op morgen ” (“Focusing on Tomorrow”). The Cabinet wishes to drastically revise the public broadcasting system by 2008 (see IRIS 2005-5: 17 and IRIS 2005-9: 17).The ambitions expressed in the provisional draft have now been converted into a law proposal put forward by the Secretary of State for Education, Culture and Science. In February, the proposal was approved by the council of ministers. It has since been submitted to the Raad...