45% of Dutch Media-Buying Population Are "Pirates"

Anonymous writes "A non-government study in the Netherlands found that 4.7 million Dutch Internet users 15 years and older downloaded hacked and pirated DVDs, games, and music in the last 12 months — or, about 25 percent of the Dutch population. But there may be an upside to this unauthorized sharing/distribution: 'The average [Dutch] downloader buys more DVDs, music, and games than people who never download,' with illegal downloaders representing 45 percent of consumers who purchase content legally, according to the Institute For Information Law, which administered the study."

Comments

Small detail

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Netherlands downloading music and movies is not illegal (yet). Uploading is another story...

Re:Small detail

[Anonymous Coward]

This is sort of nitpicky, but there is no legal precedent for that argument, especially not with Bittorrent. There are a number of details why it won't apply:

Unlike the FastTrack, Napster and Gnutella networks, the uploading you are referring to is inherent in the technology and not an after-the-fact condition. Technological details are usually not relevant when pursuing a user of said technology.

Secondly (but this probably won't fly in court), what is being uploaded to each peer is just a small section a file, and excerpts of copyrighted material are usually exempted by fair use.

usual disclaimers apply. IANAL, DTTAH, WEB.

Legal

[Anonymous Coward]

An intersting bit to note,in a nutshell, In the netherlands it is perfectly legal to download music and videos from anywhere as long as it is not uploaded again or used for commercial gains. (personal use is A-OK)

Although many programs (bittorrent mule etc) automatically upload parts of it again, The ducth (majority) can therefore only be seen as mediocre pirates and not as true pirates!

I love my very legal newsgroup server :)

It's a dup

[El_Muerte_TDS]

It was previously covered here:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/19/1440254

And remember

[Freud]

downloading (only downloading, not uploading) is legal in The Netherlands.

Re:Correlation is not causation

[HungryHobo]

So by your logic if all a groups copyrighted work was suddenly available for download for free they'd have a massive dropoff in sales?
Sounds logical, I mean these guys went bankrupt as soon as they tried it.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MontyPython

Re:There's only one possible answer.

[johanw]

According to Dutch law, downloading of music and video is NOT illegal. Only uploading is illegal, and downloading of software without permission is illegal. Not that anyone here cares, no private person here has ever been sued for doing any of the not legal things.

Re:Of course this calls for

[Briareos]

Yes, they made it more appealing for the customer to get pirated movies now.

Looks more like they made it more appealing to get an HDMI cable (which costs around 5 EUR for 2-3 meters) - upconverting to 1080i works fine on my LG DVD recorder via HDMI. Plus there's no hassle with having to juggle multiple cables...

Re:There's only one possible answer.

[Firethorn]

Don't forget that even bars and taverns would often pay somebody to play music because there was no mechanical way to reproduce music. Then you had playhouses that would cater to the less wealthy with plays, acts, and shows.

I agree that copyright periods are ridiculously long, but that doesn't mean the underlying concept is wrong.

My thoughts as well. Personally, I'd go for a 20 year automatic/commercial/'for hire' copyright, 40 year for personal copyrights.

I mean, people are still bickering about the beetle albums!

IANAL but I am Dutch

[WoollyMittens]

According to the Dutch "Authors Law" of 1912, copying of books, music and movies for your own personal use and study is legal. It was decided that it also applies to downloads.

Most interestin conclusion: 100M loss, 200M profit

[CAPSLOCK2000]

The most interesting conclusion of this report has been left out of the summary.

The cost of downloading to society as a whole is estimated at 100 milion euros in 2008.

The profit (in cultural en social well-being) is estimated at 200 million euros.

Even though some suffer (e.g. the music industry), society as a whole makes a profit.

Re:There's only one possible answer.

[johanw]

Pot is not legal, but if you only carry a small amount for personal use or sell it under strict conditions the state won't prosecute you. As long as sellers pay taxes of course.

Legal in Europe

[DrYak]

Example, There is NO reason why we shouldn't be able to buy prebuilt little multimedia servers designed to let us rip our CDs and movies and make them available anywhere in our homes. No more dealing with discs, the kids can watch what they want while the adults watch their own movies, etc. It would be very nice. But we can't have anything like that because the IP "holders" say you only have rights to play the plastic. So if the little bit of plastic isn't there than you can't watch it.

Well the situation is different in Europe :
You bought the little plastic thingie, you own the little platic thingie and you might do whatever you see fit with it, as long as you don't distribute the content without obtaining a license for it (or without the distribution case being one of the exceptions).

If you want to put it on a server (for you own use that's it - not for the whole 'net), you are free to do it.

Certain more recent laws like in Switzerland, even explicitely state that format shifting is allowed when needed for technical reason (Your iPod doesn't have a slot for plastic thingies. You're authorized by law to re-encode the music into a iPod-friendly format) and states that DRM and other access-restriction systems can legally be circumvented in order to achieve such format shifting (or making other copies authorized among the exception to copyright law).