December 15, 2011

The ‘naive and clumsy’ Dutch film industry

Filed under: Film,IT by Orangemaster @ 1:29 pm

According to a column in Webwereld, the Dutch film industry is asking the government to help them combat illegal downloading, but in fact doing nothing to solve their problem. Let’s have a look at their arguments.

The people who are currently petitioning the government to do something about downloading are movie theatre owners, represented by an ex Minister of Justice. Movie theatres have seen their profit increase by 30 percent in 2010. What’s all the fuss about then? It’s the video shops that are closing, not movie theatres. Record shops are closing left and right, but somehow that’s regarded as normal.

Another argument is that the government should ban downloading and make it illegal. How are they going to enforce it? There are enough measures already many experts will tell you. And they don’t really work.

There is no legal alternative to downloading movies in the Netherlands. If there is, please tell us. Seems like there’s a nice gap in the market, so why is nothing being done? Let me guess, the legislation is messed up and nobody wants to wait six months like a second-class citizen to watch the latest movies anymore.

Yes, people should be paid for their wares, yes downloading hurts many industries, but technology is just going to evolve further, so the time to get creative with solutions is now.

The report was labelled ‘strictly confidential’ and yet it winded up on the Internet for all to see. Either the document wasn’t ‘strictly confidential’ or the people working on this report are not the brightest of lightbulbs.

(Link: webwereld.nl, Photo of film cans by tallfoot, some rights reserved)

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May 3, 2011

Louis Vuitton’s ‘valuable’ brands top trash pile

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 4:22 pm

Last Saturday I wrote that I love buying other people’s junk at the flea market, but I have my limits. One person was selling dozens of Louis Vuitton bags on Queen’s Day, heaped together as on a trash pile, unloved and unbought.

A dirty blanket on the upmarket Apollolaan held these ‘valuable’ branded products, yet none of the intellectual property lawyers living there seemed interested in suing the seller for causing the sort of “irreparable damage” and “serious detriment to the name and reputation of Louis Vuitton”* that the company is suing Danish artist Nadia Plesner for. The French company fined Plesner hundreds of thousands of euro last January with the aid of an all too willing Dutch judge.

Plesner of course appealed the decision, and a fresh decision from a fresh judge is expected to arrive tomorrow.

*) Quotes lifted directly from the court order that Louis Vuitton presumably dictated to judge Hensen.

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February 28, 2011

Copyright vigilantes Brein seize servers illegally

Filed under: Online,Technology by Branko Collin @ 8:46 am

Dutch MPAA representatives Brein have broken the law by removing computer equipment worth hundreds of thousands of euro without a court order, law professor Ton Jongbloed told Tweakers.net last Tuesday. Brein seized 8 servers from hosting provider Al Transa last January.

The Brein foundation claims that the servers contained the warez site SWAN, although its not clear how it reasons that this makes it OK to break the law. Owner Craig Salmond says he will report the foundation to the police for theft, unless Brein gives back his hardware and offers a formal apology. His lawyer added that computervredebreuk, illegal hacking of a computer would also be a possible charge. Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet sees a charge of fraud as more likely to lead to a conviction, whereas the lawyers of IT en Recht are putting their money on a charge of vigilantism.

According to Webwereld, Brein gained the ability to log in to Salmond’s servers before they took the computers. Engelfriet thinks a charge of theft is unlikely to stick, as the maintainer of the 8 computers, another provider called Worldstream, voluntarily handed the machines over to Brein.

On a totally unrelated note, in December 2010 a judge decided to keep a 16-year-old script kiddie another two weeks in jail (by now he has been released) after he allegedly had hacked websites of MasterCard and Visa in retaliation for their treatment of Wikileaks front man Julian Assange. Call it a hunch, but I have severe doubts that we will ever hear of Brein manager Tim Kuik receiving a similar treatment at the hands of his good buddies at the Justice department. I doubt he will even ever spend a second in jail, at least not for copyright related matters. He just doesn’t fit the profile, never mind that the wealthy Brein foundation is in a much better position to make the prosecutor look silly than a gormless teenage high school student is.

(Photo by Malene Thyssen, some rights reserved)

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December 25, 2010

Winter hunting ban; porn and clown voices; secretary most wanted job; and more

Filed under: Animals,Automobiles,General,Sustainability,Technology by Branko Collin @ 3:20 pm

* Several provinces have instated hunting bans for a variety of animals because of the cold weather. Zeeland, Drenthe, Noord Holland and Limburg have ordered a general hunting ban, while others have limited their bans to a selection of animals. The Party for the Animals (PvdD) has called for a nationwide ban, Trouw reports.

* Car navigation software voiced by porn actress Kim Holland was the most popular of the Navigatiestemmen.nl stable in 2010, Blik op Persbericht reports. Her voice was also the most popular in 2009. The winner of 2008, Clown Bassie, came second this year. Unrelated: recently Holland’s demand that Internet provider Ziggo release the personal data of a customer suspected of infringing her copyrights was rejected on appeal.

* The most wanted job title on Monsterboard.nl in 2010 was secretary, just like last year. Visitors searched 500,000 times for the title. Manager and controller were other popular job titles, Blik op Nieuws writes.

* Almost 1 billion worth of guilder coins and bills are still hiding underneath mattresses and in other places, Z24 reports. Half of that money is in coins, and can no longer be exchanged for euro. Paper money can be exchanged at the central bank (DNB) until 2031. The amount of unclaimed banknotes seems to be the same as last year’s.

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December 11, 2010

Filming civil servants may cost you your welfare cheque

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 6:28 pm

The Hague residents who wish to go all Wikileaks on civil servants by filming their interrogators, risk losing their welfare benefits, Sargasso reports.

Blogger Dimitri Tokmetzis discovered this when he received the results of a freedom of information request about the so-called Haagse Pand Brigade, a unit of municipal civil servants that invades the homes of those vaguely suspected of such wrongdoings as welfare fraud, growing marijuana or illegal sub-letting.

A manual for the Brigade dictates:

Sometimes welfare recipients wish to make an audio or video recording of the visit. This recording could be against the will of team members, and could lead to publication that is against their will. This can have far-reaching personal consequences for the team members. This is not tolerable, and therefore we prescribe the following:

1) If a customer indicates that he wishes to record the visit, or if he is already in the process of recording the visit, the team members will indicate clearly that they do not give permission for the recording, and will stop the visit.

2) The team members will explain to the customer that their behaviour will be interpreted as refusing to cooperate in determining the right to welfare benefits (article 17 WWB), and that this can have consequences for their right to welfare. When the customer publishes his recordings, he will be reported to the police.

For the record, in the Netherlands you do generally not need permission to film someone, and so-called portrait rights (the limited right to object to publication of your portrait) are part of civil law, not of criminal law.

Tokmetzis adds that since the Brigade members are doing their work in public, they should expect and accept public scrutiny.

(Photo by FaceMePLS, some rights reserved)

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November 17, 2010

Copyright collection agency to charge for embedding after all

Filed under: Film,General,Music,Online by Orangemaster @ 7:57 pm
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In December 2009, after a wave of criticism from the media and beyond, Dutch copyright collection agency Buma/Stemra (B/S) decided to back off on its plans to make people pay for embedded music streams. However, today they announced that they will go ahead with their plans after all. According to B/S logic, embedding music is another form of ‘rebroadcasting’, which require licences. Buma/Stemra will start charging for music streams and video streams like YouTube, all of which will be confirmed soon. According to Tweakers, last year the projected rates for embedding videos with music were lower than embedding music streams — why, nobody knows.

They also say they won’t bug private persons, just companies. We’ll see.

In other copright news, a court in The Hague has ruled that downloading copyrighted material without permission of the rights holder is permitted as long as it’s a copy for home use. There was some doubt as to how copyright law should be interpreted on this issue, but not anymore. Read more about it in Dutch from our friendly neighbourhood Internet legal expert, Arnoud Engelfriet.

(Link: tweakers)

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October 20, 2010

Dick Bruna miffed by Japanese copy of Miffy

Filed under: Comics,Design,General by Orangemaster @ 4:09 pm

Dick Bruna, the man who introduced the world to Miffy, one of the Netherlands’ biggest export ‘products’ some 50 years ago, is sueing Japanese company Sanrio for its Japanese Miffy, called Kathy. For the record, Miffy is the English name of Nijntje, a shortened, affectionate name for ‘bunny’ in Dutch (konijntje).

At 83 years of age and basically world famous, Bruna is surely not trying to gain status with this case, but simply make the point that you can’t just make lesser copies of his work and get away with it. We’ll keep you posted if we hear more.

“Japan’s ‘Kathy’ is drawn with the same simple lines, wears an almost identical dress and has very similar ears. The main difference is that Kathy wears a bow.” It really does look like ‘Hello Kitty’ went ‘Hello Bunny’.

(Link: rnw.nl, Image: nijntje.nl)

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September 4, 2010

Wikimedia’s September photo hunt for monuments

Filed under: History,Photography by Branko Collin @ 12:48 pm

During September the Dutch Wikimedia chapter (the people behind Wikipedia) are calling upon everybody to send in correctly licensed photos of official national monuments, so that Wikipedia can use the uploads.

The Wiki Loves Monuments site has posted a very long list of the monuments, divided by province and town, and tagged with the exact geographic location, so that participants who would like to take fresh photos can easily plot a hike through their neighbourhood.

There is a competition attached to the event, with an iPad being the first prize, and an HTC Desire the second. You have until September 30 to upload your photos, and you don’t have to limit yourself to photos taken this month.

An earlier similar and very successful event was called Wiki Loves Art, and was held in June 2009, resulting in about 5,000 Creative Commons licensed photos. That the current edition is held in September is no accident, as the Open Monuments Day on September 11 gives a lot of access to (the inside of) monuments that are closed the rest of the year.

(Link: Wikimedia.org. Photo by Wikimedia user PVT Pauline, some rights reserved.)

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June 5, 2010

Merely mentioning file names is illegal in the Netherlands

Filed under: Online by Branko Collin @ 2:12 pm

Usenet community FTD has lost the lawsuit it had started pre-emptively against the Brein foundation to establish that its activities are legal.

FTD’s members publish information about where to find binary postings that contain works published without copyright owners’ consent. According to a very annoyed Arnoud Engelfriet, one of FTD’s lawyers (photo), the judge held that mentioning file names isn’t just aiding illegal publication, it is a form of illegal publication in itself if the person doing the mentioning is performing a key role in getting the work distributed.

The judge in this case, C.A.J.F.M. Hensen, has a job on the side teaching people how to fight ‘piracy,’ and as such has a clear interest in establishing as hard a line as possible in copyright law.

Brein calls itself an ‘anti-piracy’ bureau, and is the Dutch equivalent of the infamous RIAA. FTD is considering an appeal.

(Photo of Arnoud Engelfriet by Petra de Boevere, some rights reserved.)

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January 23, 2010

Judges plagiarize blog posting in copyright case

Filed under: Online by Branko Collin @ 1:25 pm

Embedding is a form of publication, and therefore infringement if it happens without permission, Dutch judges Brandenburg, Huijbers-Koopman and Struik concluded two weeks ago in an infringement case. Oddly enough, their judgement seems to hinge on the court’s conclusion (Paragraph 4.99, PDF) that “in case law and legal literature it is generally held that an embedded link constitutes a publication. After all, the material can be viewed or heard within the context of the website of those who placed the link, and placement causes the material to reach a new audience.”

The court seems to have borrowed this quote literally and without attribution from a blog posting by SOLV lawyer Douwe Linders who, according to Webwereld, said that “it looks a lot like copy and paste.” Since it is literally copy and paste, not just a lot like it, it sounds like Linders was unaware that the court had copied him, and that he had not given the court any permission to do so.

Although Dutch copyright law does allow you to quote bits of a work for a number of reasons, it does not allow you to do so without attribution. Further, by pretending the court had written this bit itself, the judges also plagiarized Linders’ words, which is a much more serious offence in my opinion (although, unlike copyright infringement, not actually illegal).

I have never heard before of a copyright infringement case in which judges infringe copyrighted myths and present them as fact in order to bury alleged infringers. This stinks in my opinion, but then I am not a lawyer. Perhaps in their world this is how roses smell.

According to Webwereld, the court’s argument “has caused consternation in copyright land.” Although I agree with Linders’ opinion that embedding generally constitutes a form of publication, the debate about this is far from over, as the comments collected by Webwereld attest.

(The literal Dutch text by Douwe Linders: “In de rechtspraak en juridische literatuur wordt betrekkelijk eensgezind aangenomen dat een embedded link wel een openbaarmaking inhoudt. Immers, het materiaal is dan te bekijken of beluisteren binnen de context van de website van degene die de link heeft geplaatst en door de plaatsing wordt over het algemeen een nieuw publiek bereikt.”)

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