FTD is a provider of a Usenet Application which allows people to spot posts on Usenet (to find content more easily). Dutch TV producer Eyeworks found out that through FTD’s application its film ‘A Woman Visits the Doctor’ [Komt een vrouw bij de dokter] could be downloaded via Usenet. Eyeworks claimed that by facilitating an infringement on its copyright, FTD actually infringed upon Eyeworks’s copyright itself.
In a groundbreaking ruling in summary proceedings, which is published here in English (the Dutch original can be found here), the court of The Hague in The Netherlands accepted Eyework’s claim. The court found that the relevant question is ‘whether the behavior of FTD allows users to download copyrighted files (in an easier manner) and that it thus makes such files in fact available to the public.’ The court concluded that FTD indeed infringed [Read more…] about Eyeworks vs. FTD – Dutch Court rules that Facilitating Infringement by Providing Usenet Application Leads to a Direct Copyright Infringement
Introduction
A discussion of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the matter Féret vs. Belgium dated 16 July 2009
On 16 April the Indonesian Supreme Court reversed its earlier verdict of 30 August 2007 in which Time Magazine (Asia) was ordered to pay Indonesia’s former dictator Suharto damages in the amount of 77 million euro. Suharto considered an article devoted to him to be a libelous. Kennedy Van der Laan was involved on behalf of Dow Jones, the New York Times and several other media companies in drafting an “amicus letter” in the 