This position was made possible by the introduction of a levy on writable media such as blank DVDs and CDs, and other storage-capable devices such as hard drives, media players and smart phones. A portion of the sales revenues on these devices went to the rightsholders in an attempt to compensate them for their perceived losses.

But despite years of operation, earlier this month the system came to an abrupt halt. Following complaints from electronics manufacturers upset that their products were being made more expensive by the levy, a landmark ruling from the European Court of Justice declared the system illegal. The Dutch government responded by declaring that downloading from illegal sources was banned with immediate effect.

But while downloading of copyrighted content was outlawed (uploading was already illegal), few people believed that a handful of words from the government was likely to change the position on the ground. Furthermore, since the ban was hastily introduced on April 10, members of parliament have begun calling for a debate on its consequences.

“We do not want a ban, but would rather have a broad discussion focused on ways to reduce unpaid downloading,” D66 MP Kees Verhoeven told NU.nl.

“The aim of the download ban is to reduce the amount of unpaid material being downloaded, but experience shows that bans do not help in such cases.”

Labour MP Astrid Oosenbrug also called for debate on the download ban, which she first heard about through the media.

“I read about this new measure in the news,” she said, adding that soon after consumers began asking questions about how it would affect the private copying levy.

“Therefore, both MPs and citizens are unclear about the implications of this prohibition,” she said.

Calling for a debate with the Secretary of State in May, D66 MP Kees Verhoeven said that his party doesn’t want prohibition, but would prefer to see entertainment companies work on better legal offerings instead.

“It is important that the legal supply of music, films and series, is both accessible and of a high quality,” he said. “We do not want a ban, but a larger legal offer.”

Separately, in comments reported by Tweakers, Wiebe Alkema, spokesperson for the Ministry of Security and Justice, said the download ban would make it easier for entertainment companies to go after ‘pirate’ sites, since there is no longer a legal gray area.

“The burden of proof is easier,” he said.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The case in question was the first criminal proceeding against a BitTorrent uploader in the Netherlands, with the prosecutor accusing 23-year-old Stefan K of uploading 5,000 e-books.

While the man admitted to uploading the torrent, his lawyer argued that the public prosecutor had no right to go after his client because file-sharing lawsuits belong in civil court.

Current policy rules prescribe that copyright infringements should only be handled in a criminal court if the defendant is part of a criminal organization, or when the infringements are carried out as business activities.

A lower court ruled in favor of the uploader last year, but the prosecution decided to appeal. This week the appeal verdict was released, dismissing the case once again.

“It is not alleged or proven that the defendant endangered the health or safety of society. Nor does the record show that the aforementioned act was committed in the course of trade or business. The same applies to the involvement in criminal organizations or organized crime,” the court writes.

According to the court the prosecution had no grounds to go after the uploader, and violated due process by doing so.

“All things considered, the court finds that the prosecution – in the light of the criteria stated in the instructions for criminal enforcement – could not have reasonably come to the decision to prosecute, and that it violated principles of due process with its decision to prosecute the case.”

The case has now been ruled inadmissible, but the court noted that BREIN still has the option to sue the uploader in a civil proceeding.

The anti-piracy group is not happy with the appeal verdict. Even though the uploader has since removed the torrent file in question, BREIN believes that copyright holders have already suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

“Even if each book cost just one sale, there would already be 50,000 euros in lost revenue. The real damage is a multiple of that because the books have been downloaded countless times,” BREIN director Tim Kuik says.

This is not the first setback for the Dutch Department of Justice in an online piracy case.

In 2010 the criminal proceeding against P2P index site ShareConnector was also dismissed. In this case the court ruled that the public prosecutor relied too much on evidence provided by BREIN, and failed to carry out a proper investigation of its own.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Recent surveys estimate that 30% of the population downloads copyrighted music and video files without paying for them, which is currently legal under Dutch law.

However, since last year there have been discussions on making the activity unlawful.

This fall State Secretary for Security and Justice Fred Teeven reintroduced a download ban, but this plan has now been struck down by the House of Representatives. Several political parties decided that a download ban is not the right approach to tackle the “piracy” problem.

Yesterday the majority of the house accepted a motion that would take the plan off the table, and further ensured that the right to make copies for personal use should not be restricted.

“Luckily the House of Representatives clearly chooses to establish the much-needed modernization of copyright law within the limits of Internet freedom,” says Kees Verhoeven, the House member who drafted the motion.

“We need to strive towards increasing the legal availability, through new online business models. A download ban doesn’t really solve the problem of unpaid downloads but is guaranteed to lead to other problems such as the restriction of privacy of individual users,” Verhoeven adds.

The vote means that downloading movies and music for personal use remains legal. However, the entertainment industry isn’t being left out in the cold. Presently, copyright holders in the Netherlands are compensated through a “piracy tax” on blank media such as CDR media and writable DVDs.

In October it was decided that this piracy tax will be extended to a variety of other media storage devices such as tablets, smartphones, USB-drives, PCs and Laptops. The money that’s collected, up to 5 euro per device, will be distributed to copyright holders.

The piracy tax, however, is not without controversy. Hardware makers Acer, HP and Dell have sued the Dutch Government claiming that they could lose millions of Euros in revenue due to the artificial price increase.

“The excessively high tax for the film and music industry is not in proportion with the economic damage caused to the rightsholders,” they say.

For Dutch downloaders, however, everything will stay the same. Movies and music can be downloaded for free without running into legal trouble, as long as the files are not shared with others.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

A massive 30% of the population is said to do so.

Presently, the Dutch see downloading and copying movies and music for personal use as “fair use” and not punishable by law.

In return, copyright holders are compensated through a “piracy levy” on blank media such as CDr’s and writable DVDs.

Starting next year, this levy will also apply to other media storage devices such as tablets, smartphones, USB-drives, PCs and Laptops

The money that’s collected, up to 5 euro per device, will be distributed to copyright holders.

The good news is that the levies on cassettes, minidiscs and video tapes have been abolished, because these are rarely used anymore.

An overview of the levied media and the applicable rates is available below.

—–

Cd-R
€ 0,03

DVD
€ 0,03

External Hard Drive
€ 1,00

Audio-/Video player
< 2 Gb € 1,00
> 2 Gb € 2,00

HDD Recorder/Settopbox
< 160 Gb € 2,50
> 160 Gb € 5,00

Phone with Mp3-player/Smartphone
< 16 Gb € 2,50
? 16 Gb € 5,00

Tablet
< 8 Gb € 2,50
> 8 Gb € 5,00

PC/Laptop
€ 5,00

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The case involves argument over the country’s private copy levy, which sees Dutch citizens granted the right to carry out personal use copying in return for rightsholders picking up revenue from levies on blank media.

These levies are set through negotiation between a foundation representing authors and composers on one side, and producers of blank media on the other. In the most recent round the argument was raised that the current levy should also extend to cover downloads made from illegal sources, i.e from online file-sharing networks.

As confusing as it might sound, downloading from illegal sources is considered legal in the Netherlands. That notion was underlined in December 2011 when the Dutch parliament adopted a motion to keep downloading movies and music for personal use legal, and considering a situation where current copyright levies could be extended to downloading-related hardware such as hard drives.

“The Court of Appeals held that downloading from an illegal source is itself legal, mainly because the Secretary of Justice had repeatedly said so in Parliament and the language of the private copying article (from the Copyright Act) did not require a legal source explicitly,” Arnoud Engelfriet, a lawyer specializing in Internet law at the ICTRecht law firm, told TorrentFreak this morning.

However, the Supreme Court now makes the observation that the EU Copyright Directive may consider that copying from an illegal source is self-evidently illegal, so it has referred the matter to the European Court of Justice.

The Supreme Court has asked the ECJ several questions including whether private copying can only be legal if carried out from a legal source.

“[If we] suppose that’s the correct reading, can the Dutch then go further than the Directive and also legalize home copying from an illegal source? Or is *only* the Directive the source of legal acts within copyright law?” Engelfriet explains.

A report commissioned by the Dutch government in 2009 found that file-sharing has an overall positive effect on the Dutch economy, which is just as well since an estimated 30% of the population are believed to engage in the activity.

The decision of the ECJ will determine the continued legality – or otherwise – of downloading for personal use in the Netherlands, with the potential to affect millions.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The group was responsible for the demise of the once largest torrent site Mininova, achieved a conviction against the Pirate Bay founders, and more recently expanded its track record with a victory against one of the largest Usenet communities on the Internet.

All the above was accomplished even though the actual downloading of copyrighted movies and music for personal use is completely legal in BREIN’s home country. In the Netherlands only the uploading part of file-sharing is punishable by law, but if new plans from the Government are adopted this may soon change.

Today, State Secretary of Security and Justice Fred Teeven announced that the Government wants to modernize current copyright law. One of the most drastic changes put forward in the new plans is that in addition to uploading, downloading of all copyrighted material will also be outlawed.

In addition to a complete ban on the sharing of copyrighted material, the new copyright plans will also get rid of the “copy-levy” on blank CDs and DVDs. This levy, ranging from $0.20 to $0.87 per piece, was put in place to compensate rights holders for the films and music that were copied for personal use.

The State Secretary notes that the changes related to file-sharing will not mean that the Government will actively prosecute individual downloaders, but stresses that they are needed to get “pirate websites” blocked by Internet service providers. At the moment this is impossible. Last year BREIN sued two of the largest Dutch ISPs, requesting that they should block their customers’ access to The Pirate Bay, but the attempt failed.

State Secretary Teeven emphasizes that The Pirate Bay is one of the main targets, although he misspells the website url in his official letter, pointing to piratebay.org instead. According to the State Secretary, The Pirate Bay is “a major resource of illegal material” which should be blocked by ISPs.

Although applicable to all citizens, the new law is specifically aimed at the blocking of illegal websites. There will be no three-strikes rules as proposed in other countries, and the Government will not chase individual file-sharers.

In a response to the news, BREIN confirmed that it will not go after individual file-sharers in the future either. Their prime targets are the websites that facilitate copyright infringement, not their users.

Aside from toughening the law, the new plans also include ‘protections’ for the privacy of file-sharers. One of the key points is that the rights holders can only claim the personal details of an alleged infringer if that person shared copyrighted material on a massive scale. This would prevent the pay-up-or-else settlement schemes that are currently ongoing in the United States.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

These sort of problem – when users in one geographical location can access a site when others can’t – is usually down to DNS issues which generally resolve themselves in a short time. However, in the case of Demonoid, this doesn’t appear to offer the answer.

According to reports we’ve received, when users from the Netherlands try to access Demonoid all they get is a blank white page. However, should they try to access the site using a proxy or VPN making the visitor appear they are not from the Netherlands, the user can now gain access. The block happens on all the major ISPs, and are persistent.

Canadians, having been previously blocked, remain unblocked, presumably after Demonoid fell out of range of the CRIA. However, more recently reports indicate that not only are Dutch users blocked from Demonoid, but in an unlikely scenario, Brazilians appear to be blocked too. So what could be at the bottom of this?

There could be some purely technical issues with the web, but as time goes on, this seems less and less likely. It is of course possible that Demonoid itself has some technical problems, having reported that the site had a few bugs to be ironed out around 9 days ago or so. If this is the case, there will be lots of relieved people around.

It’s also possible that there is a legal angle to these blocks, after all this type of action by Demonoid isn’t new in its quest to stay within the law. Around 12 months ago Demonoid blocked Dutch users for a while, as the pressure from BREIN increased quietly behind the scenes, and then later on very publicly blocked millions of Canadians following pressure from the CRIA, only to unblock them again after moving to ‘safer’ Ukraine-based hosting.

But, if Ukraine is ‘safe’ as a host country, why block the Netherlands, and why block Brazil of all places? As it turns out there is a Demonoid/Brazil link, in that the Demonoid.com domain has a protected WHOIS provided by the Brazilian-based Neurocube.com, which in turn is hosted in the Netherlands at Demonoid’s old host, LeaseWeb. And of course, Netherlands-based anti-piracy group BREIN aren’t the biggest supporters of Demonoid either – and have lots of resources – but whether or not they still hold anything over the site in order to force a block of an entire country is a matter of speculation.

In the absence of any announcement from the new admin of Demonoid (which seems incredibly unlikely), it’s some users of Demonoid who asked us to find out why they can’t access the site. Unfortunately, we don’t have the answer for them right now, maybe they will become more clear in the future.

In the meantime, please keep us updated in the comments with access reports from your country and we’ll try to keep people updated on the position for Dutch and Brazilian Demonoid fans. If you can or cannot access Demonoid, we’d like to hear from you.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Over the past years BREIN managed to shut down 131 sites that offered links to copyrighted content. Most of these sites were smaller BitTorrent sites, hosted on free hosting accounts or on a server box connected to a private DSL line.

You might wonder why BREIN is only picking on these smaller guys? Well, the answer is pretty simple, their intimidation tactics will not impress the larger torrent sites. Most of the larger BitTorrent sites and trackers have decent lawyers, and so far BREIN doesn’t have a strong case in court because BitTorrent sites are simply NOT illegal in The Netherlands.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Aufero is everything you’d want in a media centre. Here’s a list of features.

It lets you:

• manage any existing media you have.
• create a “wish list” of videos you would like to watch, and then have those videos automatically downloaded once they become available.
• view trailers, reviews and previews, and download torrents related to them.
• manually download torrents you feed it.
• seamlessly playback videos in an array of formats on your Xbox 360 (not just WMVs).
• receive “subtle notifications” on your screen after something on your wish list has been found, downloaded, unpacked, indexed and moved into your library.
• receive e-mail notifications of relevant events when you’re not in front of your TV.
• Lastly, Aufero is simple to use and tries to increase the “wife appeal” by making it easy for less tech-savvy people to make use of.

Best of all, it sounds like the developer is planning to release Aufero under an open source license. I think Microsoft should be thanking him, because he’s just created a worthy Windows-based competitor to the AppleTV. Sadly, there’s almost no chance of that happening. For his own “protection”, the developer isn’t disclosing anything about himself, not even his name. All we know is that he (or she?) is Dutch.

Aufero is not yet available for download, as it’s in the early alpha testing phase. If you look at some of the screenshots, this is made obvious by the current UI, which is rather unpolished. But the developer stresses that it’s not complete yet.



Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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