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In the Netherlands, there used to be no such thing as "illegal downloads". All downloads used to be legal, irrespective of the origin. The basis for this legal viewpoint was the law that deals with most copyright issues (Auteurswet Dutch), which allows people to have copies of copyrighted works for private use and or study (Article 16b sub 1). This led to the creation of a curious system, in which devices capable of storing "content" (USB sticks, harddisks, DVRs, laptops, desktops,...) were levied to compensate the expected loss of income proportional to the device's storage capacity.
That is about to change, as TorrentFreak (English) reports:
The European Court of Justice has ruled that the Netherlands can no longer permit its citizens to freely download copyrighted movies and music without paying for them. In its judgement the Court rules that the current system of a "piracy levy" to compensate rights holders is unlawful.
Important to note is that, as it stands, the law doesn't change it's only to be interpreted differently. The Dutch civilian-rights organization "Bits of Freedom" calls the ban "undesirable" because it opens the door to undesirable blockades, filters and restriction of freedom. You can read Bit's of Freedom's article here (Dutch).
Tweakers.net has created a small FAQ on the subject, you can visit it here (Google Translate) or view the original in Dutch.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tathra on Friday April 11 2014, @03:20AM
i'll stop "stealing" copyrighted material when the producers of such material stop destroying my culture by stealing from the public domain by having copyrights lasting hundreds of years. thanks to their initiative of cultural destruction, lots of people simply dont care about copyrights since literally nothing 'new' will become public domain for many years to come.
the majority of "unauthorized downloads" only occur because the producers refuse to make the material conveniently available in a reasonable time at a reasonable price (such as taking forever for new Game of Thrones episodes to air internationally, so people just download them a few hours after airing), and continue to extend copyrights. making it illegal only serves to create criminals where there were none before - as the saying goes, "if you outlaw X, only outlaws will X". also, making unreasonable demands with the law only serves to make people not care about following the law.
(Score: 1) by FakeBeldin on Friday April 11 2014, @09:28AM
the majority of "unauthorized downloads" only occur because the producers refuse to make the material conveniently available in a reasonable time at a reasonable price
"Reasonable time" is a very loaded term. If your broadcaster is one season behind with Game of Thrones, but airs it every week, why should you be able to overtake the gap?
Note: I'm not saying you shouldn't - but I am curious as to the reasons why you believe you have a right to that content within hours after original airdate. I actually do think you have a point (foregoing a discussion on the exact values of "reasonable time/price"). One thing you missed, though, is convenience.
Case in point: my parents have an e-reader. Whenever they want to buy a book to read on the e-reader (and yes, they only read books they bought on it), they ask me to come around to their place and help them get the book on the device. This doesn't happen so often (twice in the last 20 months), so I don't have any working knowledge of how to jump through all the DRM hoops. Takes me at least 30 minutes to figure that out again after the book is downloaded.
If you download an EPUB of the book yourself (for popular books, this is trivially found), then you can have it on your device and ready to read within seconds after downloading.
This also reminds me of Disney movies. If you watch the DVD, you are (used to be?) forced to sit through half-a-dozen non-skippable trailers, then get an FBI warning that you shouldn't have illegally copied the DVD you bought in a store, etc. You're 10 minutes in with all sorts of spam before you get to the menu.
Downloaded copies do away with all that. No threats to the user, no non-skippable parts, just the movie you wanted to see.
In both cases, the downloaded copy is far more userfriendly.
(Score: 1) by urza9814 on Friday April 11 2014, @02:41PM
Well, the parent post never actually claimed a *right* to get that content in a reasonable time/price. They only claimed that if those conditions *weren't* met, piracy will continue. Seems pretty obvious to me; I'm not gonna wait a year to buy a movie when I can download it right now. These days, by the time a movie or show is released for legal download I've often already forgotten about it! That or I already know everything that happens from seeing it all over the internet. And that's in the US -- I can't imagine what it's like in other countries with local release dates sometimes a year behind. That may have worked in the days when all of your media was from your own country, but in a global economy such strategies don't work as well.
(Score: 2) by stderr on Friday April 11 2014, @12:13PM
Forever? I watched Game Of Thrones S04E01 on Monday, April 7th at 21:00 CEST (that's 19:00 UTC) on my TV in Denmark. As far as I know that's less that 24 hours after the episode aired in the US. That's hardly "forever", is it?
According to this [cmore.dk] I already know what I'm doing on the 14th at 21:00 CEST.
Seems like this [hbonordic.dk] is another legal option.
Maybe you should blame your local TV stations instead of the producers?
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 2) by tathra on Friday April 11 2014, @07:22PM
i was only using Game of Thrones as an example, since previously it was cited as the most downloaded show [nydailynews.com]. i actually own all 5 books and watch it on HBO when it airs, and apparently HBO has learned the right way to do things (mostly), but they're only one in a business where the majority fails to listen to its customers.