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An Internet Provider can refuse the sender of unsolicited commercial e-mail (also known as spam) the use of its transport facilities, because it does not have a universal service-connected legal duty to deliver. This was the judgment of the President of the Court of Amsterdam in the first-ever spam case in the Netherlands on 7 March 2002. XS4All, a Dutch Internet Provider, had applied for a temporary injunction. The injunction was sought against AbFab, a Dutch marketing company, which had sent unsolicited commercial e-mail messages to a number of XS4All subscribers. After receiving complaints...

By its decision of 15 February 2002, the Vlaams Commissariaat voor de Media (Flemish Media Authority) has decided to recognise the SBS-broadcasting station VT4 as a Flemish broadcasting organisation. From 1 March 2002, VT4 will operate under the Flemish Broadcasting Act 1995. VT4's licence from the Independent Television Commission (ITC) in the United Kingdom also ceased to be valid on 1 March 2002. Until recently, VT4, as a British broadcaster with its programmes targeting the Flemish Community, was operating with an ITC licence in accordance with the UK Broadcasting Act. Since February 1995,...

On 29 November 2001, the District Court of Amsterdam ordered a shutdown of the activities of Kazaa in the course of interlocutory proceedings. Kazaa is one of the recent peer-to-peer (P2P) programs enabling users to share computer files over the Internet. The Court also ordered Buma/Stemra, the Dutch music-rights organisation, to continue negotiations with Kazaa over a worldwide streaming-licence for the music of Buma/Stemra members. Kazaa accused Buma/Stemra of breaking off the negotiations at an advanced stage. Buma/Stemra in turn asked the Court to order Kazaa to take appropriate measures to...

Although adopted on 15 December 2000, the Second Report on the Netherlands by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) was only recently released to the public. The Report contains, inter alia, recommendations relating to the media. These recommendations are twofold. The first calls for "stricter compliance" with the self-regulatory regime that prevails in Dutch journalism. Among the provisions of this regime are the stipulation that a person's race, nationality, religion, etc., should only be mentioned when relevant and the stipulation that the soliciting of immigrants' viewpoints...

On 27 September 2001, the author of the infamous "Kournikova" virus was given an unconditional sentence of 150 hours of community service by a police court in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands. The fact that he was a first-time offender and that the damage caused seemed to have been limited, influenced the length and nature of the sentence. The virus, which has been labelled the second-largest ever to be released, infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide from 12 February of this year. It was called the "Kournikova" virus, as it was hidden in an e-mail with a picture of tennis star Anna...