Illegal downloading: to forbid or not to forbid? That’s the question!

The Dutch Parliament and Dutch anti-piracy foundation BREIN have different solutions to the downloading issue in the Netherlands, following the General Consultation on the priorities letter Copyright 20©20 of Secretary of State Teeven. The Parliament is against a prohibition to download copyright protected content derived from illegal sources, while BREIN believes such a prohibition is the solution to shutting down sites that facilitate illegal downloading.

Although the political parties stated they do not want such a prohibition, because they don’t want individual consumers to be criminalised, Teeven claims the prohibition is only intended to close sites that facilitate illegal downloading. Teeven even intends to build guarantees into the bill to prevent small-scale users from prosecution. Despite these guarantees, the Parliament is against Teeven’s proposal. According to the Dutch Democratic Party (D66) MP Kees Verhoeven, the solution lies in innovation and the expansion of legal online, as well as strengthening the author's contract rights and supervision of collective management organizations.

In response to the Parliament’s point of view, BREIN announced to sue individual uploaders if the prohibition on downloading from illegal sources is not implemented in Dutch copyright law. On its website, BREIN states that if downloading from obvious illegal sources is not made unlawful, and access to sites that facilitate illegal downloading will not be blocked, there is nothing else to do for copyright holders but to enforce their rights by making use of the current legislation and start suing individual uploaders.

The statement of BREIN claiming it will sue individual uploaders is quite surprising. So far, BREIN always stated they focus their battle on major uploaders that facilitate illegal file sharing and file sharing websites, and not individual downloaders. Verhoeven also reacted surprised with respect to BREIN’s statement. He declared the Dutch Democratic Party is against the use of content without paying the creators, but BREINs proposal is not the right way to deal with illegal individual users. According to the Dutch Democratic Party, in many cases the uploading is done unconsciously, so this should not be criminalized. BREIN should not think that just because uploading is illegal according to Dutch copyright law, they should go and address individual users.  
The discussion on the priorities letter Copyright 20©20 of Secretary of State Teeven continues on Wednesday, December 7th.

References: Webwereld, BREIN.

By: Karen Groen