Dutch Judge Bans Downloading

THE HAGUE, 28/06/08 - Any Dutch person who downloads protected songs, films or software via the Internet is breaking the law, Het Financieele Dagbad reported Friday. The newspaper based this on a verdict of the district court in The Hague.

"This is the first time a Dutch judge has characterised the unauthorised downloading of copyright-protected material for private use as illegal. This week's verdict is diametrically opposed to the position of the government. It has always tolerated downloading for private use," according to the newspaper.

In the Netherlands, producers of blank media carriers such as empty DVDs remit a levy to the creative industry, to allow the copyrighted artists to receive some compensation for the downloading from the Internet. The producers found the levy too high, and therefore brought a court case against management organisation Home Copying Foundation, which distributes the levies among the copyright holders.

The judge in The Hague has now however ruled that the downloading is illegal. It comes as a great surprise that the court expressed itself emphatically about the illegality of copying in the verdict, according to Het Financieele Dagblad. Lawyer Arnout Groen, an expert in the area of copyright, spoke in the newspaper of "a really shocking verdict."

The government has up to now assumed that only distribution of unauthorised material to third parties was illegal. The downloading itself was seen as private use and permitted. According to Groen, this view has now been killed and record companies will be "ecstatic" about the verdict.

Groen: "It is a matter of waiting for the first case to be brought before a court against a downloader. Everyone who just downloads a little song is infringing copyright," according to the latest verdict. But there can still be an appeal against the verdict.

The fact is this: downloading copy written material is illegal and is taking income from the artist, publisher etc..etc..

Not a black or white issue.

We on Free Republic have ourselves run afoul of the diminishment of the "fair use" doctrine and overzealous expansion of copyright. We have been guilty of "stealing" 4 words from AP headlines.

Music and Motion Picture industry officials actually diminish sympathy for their position when they insist that you can't make backups of your own purchased media, loan your original to others, etc. Crackdown. Hardly anybody likes that, even law-abiding people.

Truth is, that these executives chose to try to protect their traditional delivery system and stifle new delivery systems for their product. They failed and the new delivery system vacuum was filled by illegal distributors. Their handling of the whole situation the last ten years has been incredibly dumb. They have initially opposed about every new delivery mechanism they have been faced with historically. They are slow and hidebound in reacting to their own customers and their own market. They want to maintain the high price, pre-packaged, medium volume, hardcopy model and fight the low-priced, individual song, high volume, electronic model. Mainly because its something new as opposed to a stable cash cow.

The reaction is to sue the people who like their product. People who often are not traditional criminals and appear sympathetic when faced with corporate lawyers. They are also buying politicians with campaign contributions to pass new laws to further limit fair use, reduce their burden of proof, increase their ability to snoop, increase penalties and seizure to extraordinary levels, and conduct internet espionage against people. All of these things setting precedents and most people, even law-abiding ones, don't like those tactics.

They even turned on colleges trying to get lawmakers to pull the funds for education for colleges that wouldn't sign up for their distribution system. As if congress should be more concerned with college music downloading than college education. People don't like those tactics, even law-abiding people.

People, even legal ones, don't like hired guns, bought politicians, and the lengths gone to in changing the laws to protect this industry.

They have the right to do a lot of what they are doing, even if its in their long term worst interest. I do oppose expanding the laws to charge $20,000 and seize someone's house though.

I think they would be better off changing their model to fit the new reality. They are allegedly creative people and allegedly great business-people. The best bet is to provide the customers with a value that the pirates cannot provide both in cost and content.

Strangely enough, the artists themselves are starting to experiment with releasing online. Prince released an album by making a deal with a British newspaper to insert the CD. Pirates cannot offer a relationship between artist and fan, they can only offer a download.

The music industry has the capability to offer special promotions, fan/artist relationship, concert tie-ins, loyalty offers, special access to artist web content. They are creative...they CAN put together products that will appeal to their customers. But it will be a different industry that has to work a little harder to try new things. The days of sucking the cash cow without doing anything are probably done. The days of $15 albums rolling off the shelves without effort are gone too.

Or they can buy enough Congressmen to mandate having the fans of their product executed.

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