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In a ruling of 10 May 1996 the Dutch supreme court, the Hoge Raad, has adopted the European Court for Human Right's judgement in the case of Goodwin v UK ( see IRIS 1996-4: 5). As in the case of Goodwin, the Hoge Raad ruled that Article 10 ECHM entails in principle a privilege of non-disclosure for a journalist to protect his sources of information. The European Court's judgement forced the Dutch judiciary to alter its position on the question of a 'journalistic privilege'. In its last judgement on this subject, of 11 November 1977, the Hoge Raad ruled that Dutch law generally forced the journalist...

On 2 April 1996 the Dutch Parliament approved the proposed change to the Media Act, which now allows commercial broadcasting local and regional level. This result is attained by removing the limitation that commercial broadcasters have to broadcast nationwide. The new Media Act also renders permanent the up to 1 January 1996 experimental advertising regime, by which the local and regional broadcasters were allowed to broadcast advertisements and keep the advertising income themselves. Furthermore, the modified Media Act appoints the Dutch Media Authority supervisory power in conflicts concerning...

In IRIS 1996-2: 14 we reported that the Holland Media Group SA (HMG) had decided to shut down its television channel RTL5 following the decision taken by the European Commission of 20 September requiring HMG to sell RTL5. In reaction to the decision, Mr Karel van Miert, the Commissioner responsible for competition matters, indicated that this constituted a new situation in which the Commission would have to reconsider its initial point of view. In the meantime, as we report elsewhere in this issue of IRIS a new private commercial television channel is being established in the Netherlands, i.e.,...

The Dutch Football Federation ( KNVB ) sold the broadcasting rights for its leagues to a new commercial broadcasting channel, Sport 7, which will specialise in sports. The new station is set to start this August. The channel is jointly owned by several investors, under which Philips, ING Bank, production company EndeMol and the Dutch Football Federation, KNVB (10% share). The public broadcasters that lost out by this decision, represented by the coordinator NOS, have threatened to ask for a judicial review to sell the broadcasting rights to a third party, but the NOS has not yet taken any action...

In a verdict in summary judgment of 12 March 1996, the President of the District Court of The Hague ruled that Internet Providers can, in principle, not be held responsible for wrongful acts of users, e.g. copyright infringements by third parties. The Church of Scientology had issued a writ against 22 Internet Providers and one Internet User. The Church claimed that defendents had infringed upon the copyrights on the Church's 'religious materials', by making them available on Internet. The President dismissed the claim regarding the Internet-user, writer Karin Spaink, because she had replaced the...