Netherlands bans illegal downloading
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This was about people residing in the country illegally. Everyone understands the headline immediately, but it's still pretty ridiculous.
You see copyright law technically doesn't restrict illegal downloading. It only limits distribution, and technically that means uploading, not downloading. So there was a series of court cases that said as much [1].
So now that case has been invalidated, and downloading material without a licence is now judged illegal in the Netherlands (like everywhere else).
One caveat that this case has for copyright holders is that it was judged to be a civil offence, not a criminal one. So illegal downloading cannot use police resources, and the copyright owner must sue (or appoint someone to sue on their behalf) before any action can be taken by the courts. Such action can only include financial sanctions [2], no jail time or impounding.
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/113968/article.html [2] keep in mind that not paying a court-ordered restitution IS a criminal offence. So turning a civil offence into a criminal one is possible. It has historically not been done (meaning in the last century, before that it was actually common).
To my knowledge in Germany and the entire USA only uploading is illegal, not downloading. Because of this only people who use file-sharing software like bittorrent or similar get sued.
Acting against the downloading itself is a whole new ballgame.
I mean, I'm all for tolerance. But denying the problem makes it worse. Even denying that this particular "minority" is particularly problematic, it might seem discriminatory, but it's also the blatant in-your-face truth. That makes it worth pointing out, and worth asking the simple question : why ?
In most religions the founder was the instigator of large-scale warfare (usually a foreignor or otherwise non-local person that managed to whip a large group of people into open revolt, like Moses or Muhammad). In islam, this is particularly obvious, as it's prophet probably came from Syria, and is responsible for massacres totalling at least 10000 bodies.
But islam is an exception in the opposite way of Christianity. Where Christianity is famous for choosing not to fight in situations where reasonable people would probably have picked up arms. Additionally Christianity is famous for having guilt for actions that Christians at best contributed to, but that no reasonable person can consider state actions. America is a good example, who feel guilty for massacring native Americans. Well, reading the history books, tell me this : what killed native Americans ? Conflict with the colonists ? Or diseases the colonists carried (which they did not know they carried at the time. And yes, some assholes existed. But look at historical massacres in, say, India. Tell me this : were they an accidental situation + a few assholes ? Or were they a systematically coordinated extermination campaign organized and carried out by an army ?). Good look finding a Turk that feels guilt about the Armenian massacre. Or a Pakistani that feels guilty about the partition massacres, about causing the biggest massacre of the 20th century, and then doing it again a decade later. Or an Iranian that feels guilt about the massacres they committed recently (ie. 30 years ago) in Iraq. Or an Iraqi that feels guilty about what Irak's army did in Iran. Or a Maroccan that feels guilty about what happened in Western Sahara to the indigenous population. Or ... Sorry to state the obvious, but this is part of muslim culture.
Islam is famous for committing huge massacres in small conflicts. This was true when islam was 1 year old (and 200 years away from being a religion), and it's true today. And yes, we do know islam was famous for committing massacres when it was very young, because we have written accounts of negotations between the prophet's emissaries and local leaders that say exactly that, both in the islamic history version of them, and in kept records. Muslim religious history accounts, incidentally, don't deny this : Islam massacred an entire city in a conflict was essentially about the location of Muhammad's tent camp, which was judged not sufficiently prestigious by him (He was a slave -and other wares- trader at the time). Another city was massacred because they did not let a woman "marry" one of the muslim commanders. This is not denied in those historical accounts, this is told, and presented as the way people should behave. What was massacred in the name of Islam recently, I don't think requires any real explanations.
But all this sort of talk, while it can prepare one for what is coming ("he who doesn't know history is doomed to repeat it" and all), is water under the bridge. Whether or not we tolerate islam is not a decision we can make, or anyone can make really. This is going to frustrate a lot of people, but it is simply not how history works. Everybody seems to be under the ridiculous impression that this is the first time Europe sees massive muslim immigration, that racism is new, or that current attitudes to immigrants are particularly innovative somehow ... when of course in reality it's more like the tenth time this happens. Of course, the ten previous times can pretty much be summarized like this : muslims move in, get into ever more conflicts, commit genocide but suffer military defeat, get shot/knifed in large numbers and islam gets outlawed.
So let's ask ourselves the question : if history is to be learned from, what's coming is a large scale "terrorist" act, not with a single perpetrator, but a large group of muslims (say 500-1000 or more) committing a large scale massacre in a large European city, then the local army moves in, and after the soldiers see the dead bodies "somehow" every muslim gets killed, including a couple hundred that weren't part of the "terrorist" act.
What will the response to that be ?
And sorry to point out the obvious : most people are against war because of the very real costs wars have on normal people. That is the real cause of tolerance, not some moral imperative. The (justified) fear of war, fear of conflict. Needless to say, when the generally observed cost of not going to war massively exceeds the cost of going to war, this will reverse. So the response of modern states is not going to be all that different from the response of the hundreds of states that have historically faced this issue.
Also I work in the US. I have controversial opinions, which I believe to be based on obvious facts, but for obvious reasons I don't express them at work.
So here we are. What should we do ?
Areas with nearly no migrants and no long-standing tolerance or liberal values continue to have no migrants and no tolerance or liberalism.
A few very poor areas with poor populations continue to suck for both 'migrants' and 'native Dutch', as they always have. Both sides and a few opportunist populists overplay these areas. This situation would exist if the 'migrants' were Muslim, Catholics, or Rastafarians, because it really isn't about values, but instead economics and racism.
Not that I don't agree to the fact that Amsterdam still is one of the coolest places in the world also because of all the different people living there together. But sometimes you could acknowledge that not everybody that comes to Amsterdam comes with the idea to make it a better place together. Wouldn't you agree a true citizen of Amsterdam would be tolerant toward people of the same sex walking hand in hand?
But the famous red light district has been closed for a large part, new ridiculous rules for coffeeshops, ban on magic mushrooms (together with a rush of half or non true news items that seemed a throwback to the time the US wanted to ban marijuana in the 1920's and needed popular support for that).
It just goes on and on and on and all measures really only seem to affect people's liberties never the true criminals.
Both do better with more people being aware of them and their content being seen or heard by more people. And, they are not the ones who are going to afford the types of lobbying and legal prosecution that it takes to go after their downloaders.
The only people benefiting from these laws are the very large studios which continue to pull in record profits year after year. The people hurting is everyone else.
Also I cannot imagine those indie movie makers profiting much from robber baron constructions like BUMA STEMRA, all indie music makers I know personally really hate their guts and feel stolen because they are forced to pay their fees to play gigs or press vinyl but never ever get a decent kick back.
So essentially I'm not allowed to download a movie, but I'm allowed to load it in my browser and watch it later.
However! If I copy the file from the browser's cache to another directory, then that's again illegal. I find this puzzling, but then again, I won't be the one who complains for having a loophole (or is it?) that allows me to download any movie without fear of retribution.
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/viewing-pirated-streams-is-not-ille...
Until now, downloading of copyrighted material such as movies, tv shows and music was allowed for personal use. This apparently has been overruled by an EU court. Quite interested to see what this is going to change....
A very important detail of the fact that downloading for personal use (redistributing, e.g. uploading, has always been illegal) was allowed even if the source was "illegal" (e.g. torrents, usenet). The reason for that is that it can be hard to tell whether or not the source you download from is distributing legally or illegally. The above is now no longer OK, apparently, but if you borrow a CD from the library, you can still copy it for personal use just fine. We've kind of reverted to the situation we had before the internet was mainstream.
The reason I think nothing will change is that "distribution" (I use this term loosely to allow a torrent site, for example, to fall in this category for argument's sake) has always been a target, and individuals downloading for personal use never were. The organization tasked with dealing with copyright infringement has stated to keep its arrows pointed at the distributing side of all this, not the individual downloader.
I'd be very very surprised if it's going to be enforced in any way, due to being almost unenforceable.
The media industry STILL has to work on giving the consumer what they want, and seeing as how Netflix and Spotify are good examples of services that are now available here and seem to be doing pretty good, it might be okay.
The 'home copy' law is so you can create copies for your own use of material you bought yourself, as long as you keep it to yourself - things like transferring a CD to your mp3 player.
Similarly, it is (was?) legal to download copyrighted material to your own computer for your own use, if you already owned the material.
There is/was another loophole in the copyright law, which states it's not allowed to distribute copyrighted material. However, this law doesn't state anything about receiving and using copyrighted material; it's the distributor / uploader that's responsible for that. And since, in the case of internet piracy, that uploader is often not under Dutch jurisdiction, it kinda falls on its face.
But it does. :)
It is explained here: http://www.iusmentis.com/auteursrecht/nl/thuiskopie/ but it is in Dutch. It states that: - You may make only a few copies but it's unspecified how many that is.
- The copy has to be for personal use
- You may make the copy for someone else, but this is not true for music
- You don't have to own the material you want to copy
- There are some exceptions, namely electronic databases (paper database are allowed), physical structures (no copying other buildings please!) and computer software
So what they've actually done is ban the downloading of copyrighted material, not ban the illegality of downloading copyright material since that's a double-negative.
The law hasn't changed. It's been clarified by the European court and the Dutch Government follows this interpretation as of now.
Virtually every video, audio or text file of works created in the past century, more or less, is copyrighted. That alone is not the relevant criterion. The criterion of infringement is whether the particular action is authorized by the copyright holder. But this, no one can routinely know in the course of internet activities.
There is no central or public database of works that would reveal even who the copyright owner is - and even if there were, it would have to also record the authorization status of everyone in relation to every work.
So you are looking around online and someone is offering a file - if you are subject to lawsuits, fines or whatever other interference for downloading, then in principle it's not safe to even look at a web page. What the new rule amounts to in practice is something like "well if you infer that the web page is intended to be retrieved, you're probably safe, but you can be penalized for guessing incorrectly about music or videos". (Note that movie companies have actually sued youtube/Google over files including some that the movie companies themselves published on youtube.)
It simultaneously keeps everyone continually vulnerable to selective enforcement by private companies (specifically, big copyright accumulators), and casts a chilling effect on the relationship of fans with artists who would like to release works on more liberal terms than Hollywood companies (can you trust a statement on a web page that something is authorized???).
You gain some, you lose some. :)
When the EU declared the DRD no longer in force the Dutch national entities enforcing it immediately stepped up to make sure that it was made clear that nothing would change. And now that downloading from non-sanctioned sources is made illegal there will possibly be prosecution of individuals or renewed efforts to block certain websites. And on top of that all the copy levy will most likely continue to exist.
If there were any balance in this I'd be happy about it.
[1] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...
Edit: added a link for clarity.
[0]: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2014/04/cabinet_drops_...
This doesn't make sense as a sentence. Surely the Netherlands has a justice system and prisons, and surely those people in prison are there because they were convicted of doing something illegal. So it stands that you can and will be punished in the Netherlands for doing something illegal.
"Illegal residence is only punishable if the party involved has been declared 'undesirable'" (http://en.justitiaetpax.nl/project/aliens-detention-in-the-n...)