Industry lobbyist exaggerates legal download market

NVPI, an organisation representing the ‘Dutch’ entertainment industry*, recently called for harsher measures against legal copying in the Netherlands, pointing out that there is a ‘sufficient’ supply of stores offering really legal downloads**. However, as Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet points out, they are stretching the truth a bit.

There are indeed 19 online stores selling legal video downloads to the Dutch, but as Engelfriet’s research shows, hardly any of them sell the movies people want to buy. The article is in Dutch, but the accompanying table speaks volumes. Engelfriet compared the 100 videos currently most popular at Bol.com to what NVPI’s champions were offering.

*) Amongst which such familiar ‘Dutch’ giants as Disney, EMI, and Nintendo.

**) I realize this must be confusing. Basically, NVPI wants to outlaw what is known as file sharing, which is currently legal in the Netherlands for some types of creative works.

(Illustration: Arnoud Engelfriet.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 8:15 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: copyright, file sharing