Want to watch the latest season of Game of Thrones? The new Resident Evil perhaps? You can subscribe to Netflix on HBO, or buy it on Blu-Ray. Not long ago, there was another alternative, moving to the Netherlands, where downloading pirated copies was allowed.
As of yesterday and with immediate effect, the Dutch government has banned the downloading of illegal pirated material, following a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Communities that considers the entire system illegal.
Of course, the Dutch government has long taken very advanced measures against piracy. Until recently, downloading was not illegal, while uploading for file sharing was. That was the case until Thursday. Since last Thursday, downloading is also illegal. To compensate for the amount of money lost by beneficiaries affected by illegal downloads, the Dutch government imposed the “personal copy” tax on sales of blank storage media (in effect since 2003), which means that anyone who bought new devices or removable media (USB, DVD-R, etc.) had to pay a small levy. The money collected from the levies was then distributed to the beneficiaries.
Yesterday, the EU Court of Justice ruled that personal copying taxation is actually illegal because the system is unfair to those who do not download illegally and go to the market to buy some storage medium.
In a statement released after the ruling, the Court stated: “the levy system must ensure a fair balance between copyright, the interests of authors and users. In the levy system, there is no distinction between the legal or illegal nature of the source from which a private reproduction has been made, and it is not fair.”
For several years, the Dutch parliament has repeatedly tried to ban illegal downloads, but has consistently failed.
The EU court's ruling, however, overturned the status quo, stating explicitly that downloading material violates copyright law even in the Netherlands.
Following this decision, the Dutch parliament issued a statement stating that the ban takes effect immediately.
