Netherlands The Latest To Propose Mileage Tax That Requires GPS For Tracking Driving

from the what's-wrong-with-the-gas-tax? dept

Matthew Cruse alerts us to the news that the Netherlands is the latest in a long line of governments that are considering a "mileage tax" that would require drivers to have GPS devices that track how far they drive, and then tax you for every mile driven. Various US states, including Oregon, California and Massachussetts have toyed with such ideas, and while some in Congress have pushed for it on a national scale, the Obama administration has come out against the idea.

There are lots of problems with the idea, including the privacy implications of the government collecting data on your driving habits. Plus, the massive expense of equipping cars with such devices should not be underestimated. But, the biggest question of all is why such a thing is needed at all. We already have taxes on fuel, which approximates the same thing (the more you drive, the more you pay) which doesn't have the same expense or privacy implications and has the added benefit that it helps encourage more fuel efficient driving. The idea to do a GPS-based mileage tax seems like one of those things that politicians come up with because they want more money, and they get infatuated with some new technology, without thinking through the implications (at all).

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Dutch Court Orders Pirate Bay To Delete Torrents

from the yet-again dept

Earlier this year, a Dutch court issued a default judgment against The Pirate Bay, ordering it to delete certain torrents and block Dutch web surfers from reaching the site. The Pirate Bay's founders protested the ruling, noting that they had not been properly informed of the case in the first place, and that other items in the lawsuit were highly questionable -- including what appeared to be falsified documents submitted by BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy agency.

The court has now annulled the original default judgment, but the new ruling is basically the same thing. The founders were told to delete torrents and block Dutch surfers from at least part of the site. The court also rejected the claim that the founders do not still own the site, saying they presented no evidence that the site had actually been sold to another entity, or any evidence of who now owned the site. While I still think it's questionable to force the site to block results of what is really a search engine, there is a point about who owns the site. I recognize why The Pirate Bay has done what it's done, but it almost feels like they're trying to be too cute about the ownership issue.

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Dutch Collection Society Backs Down Slightly On Video Embeds

from the but-not-really dept

Dennis Laumen alerts us to an update on the story concerning Dutch music collection society Buma/Stemra's plan to charge bloggers for embedding YouTube videos on their site. After the story got lots of publicity, Buma appears to have backed down ever so slightly, saying that "amateur" bloggers are off the hook. But, the definition of "amateur" is basically only if you don't have any ads. Put up some Google AdSense... and suddenly you're a "pro" who has to pay up.

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Peter Sunde Brings Criminal Charges Against BREIN, Claims They Falsified Documents Against The Pirate Bay

from the spectrial-indeed dept

You may remember, back in July, that a Dutch court made an odd ruling against The Pirate Bay at the behest of BREIN, the local anti-piracy group. Now, there was a lot of things odd about the case. BREIN has always been quite aggressive in demanding that sites be blocked or that ISPs be forced to block sites, but this case went really far. BREIN was able to bring the case without even letting any of the four defendants (the same four who were on trial in Sweden) know about the case. However, BREIN told the court that the defendants were fairly summoned, despite no evidence that was true at all. BREIN also claimed that The Pirate Bay had launched a DDoS attack on BREIN's website, and seemed so close to the court that when the defendants themselves asked the court for the very ruling made against them, the court told them that they could only get the copy directly from BREIN.

Of course, after all this happened, a second problem cropped up. Swedish authorities did an investigation and came to the conclusion -- as the four defendants had said all along -- that those four guys did not actually own The Pirate Bay. Instead, it was a company called Reservella, information that came out to the public after the attempt by GGF to buy The Pirate Bay (which has since collapsed).

BREIN wasted little time in adding Reservella to its lawsuits... but then did something strange. It came up with a credit report that purports to prove that one of the four defendants, Fredrik Neij, is the CEO and a director of Reservella. However, there were some oddities in that credit report, and Peter Sunde (one of the other defendants, better known as brokep) began investigating and has rather detailed evidence that the entire credit report is a fake. Almost none of the information on the report checks out, and the companies listed -- including Experian, who supposedly supplied the credit report, claim that they have no record of this particular credit report at all.

Sunde is now filing criminal charges against BREIN and its boss Tim Kuik, claiming that they forged a document and used it for fraud (trying to get money out of these four defendants). As Sunde notes, such charges seem to be far more serious than inducing copyright infringement. The evidence that Sunde lays out certainly looks convincing that the document is fake, but what's still not clear is how BREIN got the document, and whether it was responsible for creating the document, or if it was merely convinced that the fake document was real from someone else.

Still, it doesn't look good for BREIN to be caught using what appear to be faked documents in its lawsuit.

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Dutch Collection Society Looks To Charge Bloggers For Embedding YouTube Videos

from the pay-up...-again dept

Over the past year, we've noticed an explosion in ridiculous attempts by music collection societies (often totally clueless about technology) to extend their ability to collect for positively ridiculous things (while also looking to significantly increase their collection rates). The latest, sent in by Dennis Laumen, is that the Dutch collection society, Buma/Stemra, is claiming that it's going to start charging bloggers 130 euros for every 6 videos they embed. This is, of course, technologically clueless. The embedding of a video doesn't change the fact that it's actually playing from and hosted at the original site (such as YouTube). All embedding does is allow the video to appear via the other page, even though, technically, it's all still happening at its original location. Claiming that this is somehow a "new" publication of the content is technologically incorrect.

This is somewhat similar to ASCAP's recent technologically clueless claim that embedding YouTube videos should count as a public performance (along with its other recent claims that iTunes 30-second previews and your mobile phone ringtones should also be counted as public performances). You sort of get the feeling that many of these collection societies came to the conclusion about two years ago that they're functionally obsolete, and rather than adapt to the times, they've all agreed to the same basic principle of going out in a blaze of glory. They're trying to vastly increase rates while covering any and ever attempt to use music in any way, bleeding everyone dry while making it that much more difficult for up-and-coming acts to get heard (since venues that promote them can't pay the crazy rates) and (even better) setting up their payout mechanisms to massively favor the top acts.

For the most part, these collection societies are simply being greedy, without putting a single thought towards actually helping composers and songwriters. They're looking for every single penny they could possibly collect today, and ignoring the medium and long-term impact of trying to charge for any sort of promotional behavior.

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Mininova Told To Remove Infringing Material

from the good-thing-there's-none-on-the-site? dept

Earlier this year, we noted that torrent search engine Mininova was being sued, with Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN asking the court to force Mininova to block certain content. It's difficult to see how or why this should be Mininova's responsibility. As a search engine, it has no way of knowing which content is authorized and which is infringing. Yet, a court has sided with BREIN and told Mininova it needs to remove all infringing torrents from its site. The court is giving the site 3 months to implement a filter system, or face a fine of 1,000 euros per infringing torrent. Of course, Mininova already takes down torrents when alerted to the fact that they're infringing. Demanding that the company pre-determine which torrents are considered "infringing" doesn't make much sense (especially since the torrents themselves are not the "infringing" content). This seems to be yet another ruling with a court finding that assisting with potential copyright infringement somehow needs to be stopped.

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Dutch Court Sides With Anti-Piracy Group; Says Pirate Bay Must Block Dutch Web Surfers

from the or-else-what? dept

We've seen more than enough stories already about questionable court rulings around the globe saying that certain ISPs must block access to The Pirate Bay or other sites. Historically, such blocks have been a disaster. They don't work (people find an easy way around them) and the announcement of the ban itself almost always generates a lot more traffic to the banned site. It's like free advertising. However, the anti-piracy group BREIN appears to have taken a different strategy in the Netherlands. Rather than asking the court to have ISPs block The Pirate Bay, it asked the court to tell The Pirate Bay to block Dutch web surfers. BREIN, of course, has a history of overreaching, including demanding names of file sharers against local privacy laws and declaring that a usenet group, by itself was illegal.

And yet again, a court has ruled in the entertainment industry's favor, going against basic civil rights. The court has said that The Pirate Bay must start blocking Dutch web surfers from reaching the site. Somehow, I doubt the folks at The Pirate Bay will comply. They've already complained about the process, noting that they were never summoned to the court to defend themselves, while the ruling itself actually spends a fair amount of time claiming that the folks from The Pirate Bay were fairly summoned through a variety of means. The court basically concludes that they should have known about the case, and their failure to show up will not stop the case from moving forward.

Not surprisingly, the Pirate Bay folks find the whole thing to be a farce. They're already suing BREIN's lawyers for falsely claiming that The Pirate Bay had launched a DDoS attack on BREIN's website. Also, amazingly, the court wouldn't even give them a copy of the ruling against them. Of course, as brokep notes, The Pirate Bay doesn't have any operations in the Netherlands anyway, so what can the court do?

In the meantime, is it worth mentioning that it was a Dutch study that recently said that file sharing had a positive impact on the economy?

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Now BREIN Says The Pirate Bay Should Block Dutch ISPs

from the either-way dept

Various entertainment industry lobbying groups have pushed for courts to force ISPs to block access to sites like The Pirate Bay, but now it looks like BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group, is trying to hit this from a variety of angles. If it can't get ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay, it's demanding that The Pirate Bay block access from Dutch surfers. Even more bizarre, it's already dragged representatives from the proposed buyers of the The Pirate Bay, GGF, into court, despite the fact that the deal hasn't concluded (and may never actually happen). When do judges recognize that these organizations don't have any logical basis for what they claim, but that they'll simply throw everything at the wall to see what sticks in a mad dash to protect an obsolete business model from innovation?

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Netherlands Considers Internet Tax To Fund Newspapers That Can't Compete

from the well-there's-a-bad-idea dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in various versions of this translated article from Holland, noting a proposal that's been brought forth to tax internet connections in order to give the money to industries that are having trouble competing, such as newspapers. It's not at all clear that this proposal has any chance of going anywhere, and there appears to be significant opposition -- but it's really amazing that anyone would think this is a good idea in the first place. Did people suggest an automobile tax to give to the horse carriage makers a century ago?

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Entertainment Industry Pushes To Make Mininova Useless

from the it's-a-search-engine dept

Mininova, the latest BitTorrent search engine to raise the ire of the entertainment industry is currently engaged in a court battle with BREIN, an anti-piracy organization, in the Netherlands. Apparently, BREIN is making a variety of highly questionable demands of Mininova, including that it be responsible for installing filters to block certain content (at Mininova's own expense) and that it stop indexing torrents from trackers that allow public uploads. In other words: even if Mininova is considered a search engine, the industry hopes that it can set the rules of what can and cannot be searched. Hopefully the court sees through these arguments. Separately, the article appears to report that BREIN made false statements, including the idea that famed BitTorrent uploader aXXO had been given "VIP" status on the site. The only problem? Mininova offers no such thing. So which is more unethical? Creating a search engine for certain types of files, some of which may be infringing? Or lying in court?

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Usenet Community Sues Anti-Piracy Group For Calling It Criminal

from the if-you-don't-pay-for-it... dept

Anti-piracy groups often have a way with massively stretching the truth when it comes to copyright law and anyone they dislike. The Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN apparently put out a wholly misleading article entitled: "You do not pay for it, it's unlawful." This line was taken from MPAA propaganda that has been sent around to public schools -- but, of course, it is wrong. There are tons of things that you don't pay for that are perfect lawful. To make matters worse, the article then accused a Dutch Usenet community called FTD of being "criminal." Knowing that it is not criminal, the group is now suing BREIN for falsely smearing its image by saying that it is criminal and for falsely portraying copyright law in the Netherlands.

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A Tale Of Two Studies On File Sharing...

from the guess-who-paid-for-the-terrorism-one? dept

I've recently come across two separate studies concerning file sharing -- that seem to come to vastly different conclusions. The first, as pointed out by Michael Scott, is a very long (128 pages), but very thorough research report analyzing pretty much everything having to do with file sharing in the Netherlands, commissioned by the government. It studies the economic angles, the legal angles, the cultural angles -- and then compares the local results to international results. While you might quibble with some of the methodology here or there, the overall conclusions of the report are pretty strong and clear: file sharing is not a problem for the overall industry. File sharing has, in fact, created a net benefit to the economy and society in both the short and long term, and that will likely continue. The direct impact on sales of file sharing is minimal (though it depends on the category). In fact, the only areas actually in trouble right now may be the sale of plastic discs (CDs and DVDs), but much of the damage has nothing to do with file sharing, and there are indications that the "lost" money can be made up in other ways. The report recommends moving away from criminalizing user activities, and focusing instead on encouraging new business model development. A quick excerpt from the conclusions:

The short-term net welfare effects of file sharing are strongly positive given that it is practised by consumers whose demand is driven by a lack of purchasing power. To the extent that file sharing results in a decline in sales, we see a transfer of welfare from operators/producers to consumers, with no net welfare effect.

The market for CDs and the market for DVD/VHS rentals are the only sectors of the entertainment industry that are suffering from a slump in sales. Whereas this may be attributed in part to file-sharing activity, file sharing is not solely to blame for the decline. The markets for DVDs and console games continued grow impressively after P2P services were introduced, and the cinema market showed sustained growth between 1999 and 2007. The total entertainment market has remained more or less constant, suggesting budget competition among the various products.

As long as the markets for games and films are on the rise or remain stable, there is little reason for concern that the diversity and accessibility of content is at stake. File sharing has significantly enhanced access to a wide and diverse range of products, albeit that access tends not to have the approval of the copyright holders.

In other words, pretty much everything that plenty of folks around here have been saying for a better part of a decade is pretty much true. File sharing isn't damaging -- and, in fact, can represent a net economic improvement, and the business troubles faced by a few small parts of the industry are really business model challenges, rather than legal ones. The report makes it clear that focusing on legal solutions to dealing with file sharing is a big mistake that tends to only backfire and seems to be totally misdirected.

So, what's the other study? It's also quite long, but is full of fear mongering about piracy. It just so happens to be funded by the movie studios claiming that piracy is helping to promote terrorism -- and because of that, the US government needs to devote stunning levels of new resources to stopping piracy at all costs. So what does this report recommend?

• Fully funding and implementing the PRO-IP Act (PL 110-403), which toughens civil and criminal laws against counterfeiting and piracy, provides enhanced IP enforcement and prosecutorial resources, and improves IP coordination within the executive branch.
• Supporting the introduction, passage and enactment of a Customs and Border Protection Reauthorization bill to better address trafficking in illicit goods.
• Supporting the Baucus-Hatch legislative improvements to the USTR's Special 301 process to help deal with other countries that fail to live up to their international IP obligations.
• Concluding negotiations for a substantive and enforceable Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with major trading partners.
• Pursuing trade agreements with strong global IP protections.
• Expanding U.S. leadership on IP protection within the G8, the Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America, and other bilateral and multilateral frameworks.
• Building coalitions in favor of strong IP protections at international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, and U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
• Engaging Beijing to improve China's IP legal and regulatory regimes through the implementation of new patent, trademark and copyright laws.
• Pursuing reforms on data exclusivity, incremental innovation and optical discs legislation in India.
• Working towards improved retail and copyright enforcement in Russia, as well as the successful implementation of IP reform through Part IV of its Civil Code. 

Which of the two reports is more credible? Which do you think will have more impact on government policy in the next year or so? The answers to both questions are unfortunately obvious and extremely disappointing.

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Dutch Kids Convicted For Stealing Virtual Magic Amulet

from the are-you-kidding-me? dept

It's been over five years ago since we pointed out how silly the world would be if we started bringing real world justice into virtual worlds. It sets up a ridiculous situation, since the way any virtual world works is based on how it's programmed. If there's a problem with an action, it should be up to whoever controls the game to fix the problem, rather than the real world police. If you start setting a precedent where the "theft" of a virtual item in a video game is considered theft, then how do you deal with online worlds where theft is a part of the game? If the game allows it, then it should be a part of the game.

Even with plenty of people warning about how ridiculous it would be for police to get involved in searching for a stolen magic sword, it seems that hasn't stopped people from going to the police. In the past, the lawsuits have usually been for other crimes besides theft, though. We had one for illegal computer access, after a woman logged into a boyfriend's account and deleted his virtual objects. In another case, someone was charged with copyright infringement for "copying" weapons.

However, now we have a case of an actual theft charge in the Netherlands. Two kids have been convicted of theft of a (I kid you not) "virtual amulet and a virtual mask" in the game Runescape. The details are pretty scarce, but apparently the two kids "coerced" another kid to hand over the items, and to the court that's as good as theft:

"These virtual goods are goods (under Dutch law), so this is theft."

I have to admit I don't know much about Runescape, but a quick look at the website mentions that it can involve "fights to the death." Does that mean we'll soon have murder charges stemming from the game? Update: Some folks in the comments have helpfully filled in some of the details that were lacking from the original article. The two kids in this case apparently beat up and threatened at knifepoint (in real life) the other kid in order to get him to give them the virtual amulet. As others in the comments point out, it sounds like they should have been charged with assault and battery, but still not theft.

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Dutch Justice Ministry Bans Wikipedia; But Not For The Reason You Were Probably Expecting

from the it's-the-edits,-not-the-content dept

When you hear of someone banning Wikipedia, you might naturally assume it's because they're worried about the accuracy or reliability of the content (as misguided as that might be). However, it's a bit surprising to learn that the Dutch justice ministry has decided to ban Wikipedia because its employees were a little too eager to edit the site. Ever since people started outing who was behind what Wikipedia edits, there have been some amusing stories about how people adjust entries in their own favor -- and apparently, a few of those edits came from Dutch justice ministry employees, who are all now banned from using the site, at least temporarily. It's not clear from the article why the ban is temporary or under what conditions it will be lifted. The group admits that most of the edits weren't objectionable (though, a few were). However, no one seems to indicate how this ban could possibly be effective. Those who are likely to adjust Wikipedia entries for political gain are just going to do so from home, making it even harder to pick up the biased entries -- while at the same time, decreasing the likelihood that the more honest corrections can happen at a reasonable pace from those justice ministry employees who actually can make Wikipedia articles more accurate.

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Dutch Gov't Pulls The Plug On E-Voting (For Now)

from the did-they-vote-on-that? dept

While the US is still trying to figure out what to do about problematic e-voting machines, over in the Netherlands, they've apparently decided to ditch the machines (or, at least, ditching the regulation approving the machines), at least until they've figured out a way to make them more reliable, secure and trustworthy. Sounds like a reasonable plan, though it sounds like they may be looking to bring the machines back rather quickly, with just a paper trail -- which may not be enough. At some point people need to realize that many of these machines can't be retrofitted to fix things, but need to be rethought from the ground up.

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