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Filmmakers Take Dutch State To Court Over Lost Piracy Revenue (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A coalition of Dutch film and TV producers is following through on their threat to file a lawsuit against the local Government. The filmmakers hold the authorities responsible for the country's high piracy rates. They claim the government tolerated and even encouraged unauthorized downloading for years and want to see compensation as a result. Last year the Dutch Government denied these allegations, noting that the filmmakers could go after downloaders directly if they want to recoup their losses. However, they are not backing down. On Tuesday a group of film and TV show companies issued a summons announcing their legal action, NRC reports. Through the court they hope to hold the Government liable, and if that's the case, a separate damages procedure will likely follow.
Anti-piracy copyright holders need to take a lesson from Canada. The music industry there convinced the government that piracy was pervasive and destroying their industry, and that a tax should be levied on all blank CDs to compensate them for their losses under the theory that people were burning pirated music onto blank CDs. The government agreed, and instituted the tax.
Later when the music companies tried to sue individuals for copyright violation, the courts decided that since The People had already compensated the music industry for their losses via the CD tax, there was no need for any more lawsuits.
Double-dipping may be normal for the music and movie industry (when's the last time one of them offered you a discount for upgrading your DVD collection to Blu-Ray, or CD to streamed, even though you ostensibly already bought a license when you bought the first one?). But it's not normal for the rest of the world, and the courts will slap them down if they try to impose their perverted view of how things should work onto the real world.
Leave the leftists in the poverty they create and encourage.
What is in the EU directive are a minimum set of requirements for copyright laws, but NO ACTUAL LAW, the governments have to supply it, worked to whatever they desire within the guidelines given.
And rescinding copyrights for abuse is 100% within those guidelines.
And as soon as they actually sold the "pirated" material in the country, I could actually see that argument.
But the main reason for the widespread "piracy", aside of the obvious "The Netherlands is an old seafaring nation so of course they have a pirate heritage to defend" joke, is that you, dear media industry, fail to offer what people want. Believe me, we want to buy your stuff. You're not selling. Why are we supposed to wait half a year or even longer before we're allowed to see what you have broadcast in the US or UK? And a friend of mine who is into Anime could easily triple the length of this post with the hoops he's supposed to jump through to get half of his favorite shows at all, or at least within less than a decade after they have been out in Japan.
Sell me what I want or step aside to let those that do step in!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.