News Dutch government moves to outlaw pirate downloads

Proposals would make pirate downloads as illegal as uploads.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/04/12/dutch-government-outlaw-pirate-downloads/1

 

I guess it'll be good business for the various VPN services on offer that hides your IP address...

 

Unenforceable. If industry groups want to take on pirates that's up to them, but the government should have just left the levy on blanks so that the affected parties carried on getting some cash.

 

Because zero-tolerance legislation has worked so well to curb the illegal use of drugs, alcohol, prostitution, etc. Have fun paying extra taxes so your government can stop 0.001% of all illegal downloaders each year, Dutch citizens!

 

I think the Dutch would call this "kansloos". Just another deluded pipe dream of Fred Teeven, one he's had for a while now (it's easy to get the distinct impression the only things Teeven knows about the internet is what his BREIN buddies wrote down for him). But this minority government has no chance of sneaking this through parliament, let alone a very hostile senate (and ISPs are already suing the government over data retention; this won't go down any better).

 

Haha, what fools.

because legislation is going to stop piracy.

 

Fail, through and through.

 

Why don't countries spend their parliament time on trying to solve IMPORTANT issues such as war and poverty and not petty intellectual property disputes?

 

This is from the country that says pot smoking? No problem.

 

Hardly petty. Millions are invested in games and torrenting them/playing them without paying is no different to stealing a copy from a shop.
We may all rightky rant about defective DRM that ruins things for paying customers, but saying that theft isn't worth legislating against is just silly.

 

Now l3v1ck, don't start that old 'copying is theft' business, it's been done over and over here and just about everywhere else. In fact, I'm surprised it hasn't been Rule 34'ed.

I'm curious with this, though. Does it mean that downloading copyrighted material without authorisation would be a criminal offense, or are they just looking to implement the same civil laws that most other Western countries have? If it's criminal, then that would open a big ol' can of worms.

 

If the film and music industries just caught up to the 21st century dropped there prices and made it easy as hell to download legally then this wouldn't be an issue.

 

most likely only interested in users who up-load data, as its easy to collect data on that

 

This. Some silver lining too.

 

That's not what it says in the dutch media.
http://nos.nl/artikel/232279-illegaal-downloaden-wordt-echt-illegaal.html
There it says he "wants to enable rights holders to sue sharing websites directly" something they couldn't till now.
Also it says this is "directed against the Middle-Man" not the end user.
"Downloading will become Illegal, but not punishable"
This was already true for games and software, and should now become true for movies and music as well.
Before, unly Uploading was illegal, downloading wasn't.
It says literally "consumers shouldn't be afraid that they would be prosecuted, as is the case in France and England" ... "There are no sanctions for downloaders".

Typical dutch move, forbid but don't enforce...just like the drug laws.

So what ticker did you read this from and how did you confirm it?

 

QFT

 

If i would take this literal then Youtube can close their doors. Because all video's are copyrighted to their owner/creator.

I wonder how far this can be taken. If I look outside through the window I 'download' everything I see into my brain. Since all things are copyrighted (Except nature) I must be a uber criminal, even worse then a terrorist...

 

We just need a Steam for movies.

 

Try Lovefilm