July 17, 2010

Farmer must remove religious slogan from roof

Filed under: Religion by Branko Collin @ 11:49 am

The Council of State decided last Wednesday that farmer Joop van Ooijen must remove the text “Jezus redt” (Jesus saves) from his roof or else he’ll be fined 15,000 euro.

The welstandscommissie of the municipality of Giessenlanden—a typically Dutch abomination that gets to rule on the beauty of any outdoors construction—had outlawed the Christian slogan before. The Council of State (1531) is the highest court of appeal for administrative decisions, and is formally presided by the non-elected Queen.

Van Ooijen told De Volkskrant he will appeal the decision. According to the council, an appeal is not possible.

Update: As Arnoud Engelfriet points out in the comments, the appeal will likely be at a European level.

See also:

(Public domain photo by Wikipedia user Apdency)

Tags: , , , ,

June 19, 2010

Trustees keep inviting payments through bankrupt on-line shops

Filed under: Online by Branko Collin @ 12:57 pm

Bankruptcy trustees often keep on-line shops running even though the companies behind them have gone bust, and therefore cannot deliver the goods.

Last week, Webwereld reported about at least three on-line stores that kept taking orders and payments even after they had gone bankrupt. Trade association ICTWaarborg had already sounded the alarm about this last year, but notices the problem continues unabated. According to the trade org, trustees in bankruptcies should shut down the on-line stores as part of their jobs.

In the Netherlands, the trustee in bankruptcy is the one who gets their salary by skimming the property off the top, and is often a lawyer appointed by their law school buddy, the judge. As you can see, absolutely no conflict of interest could possibly take place there.

From what I understand, people can only get money back from a trustee (curator in Dutch) when there has been an ‘undeniable mistake‘. The article I link to tells of a case where somebody wanted to wire money to party A, but accidentally wired it to party B who had just been declared bankrupt. That is considered an undeniable mistake, because the party making the payment had never intended to pay the bankrupt party.

Tags: , , , ,

May 31, 2010

More people in prison on suspicion than after conviction

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:28 am

Law professor Yvo Buruma has sounded the alarm about the number of innocent people being detained pre-trial in the Netherlands.

According to Buruma the numbers of acquittals in the country has risen from 4.5% to 7% in the past five years. More people are in gaol awaiting trial than people who have already been convicted.

In a blog entry last week Buruma claims this is a worrisome development because robbing somebody of their freedom is an exceptional power that the state should only exercise under exceptional circumstances, and because a person should be considered innocent until proven otherwise. Although he does not outright say it, it would almost seem that the justice department is keeping people imprisoned for the wrong reasons.

The criminal law professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen determines four categories of aquittal:

  1. It is unclear what happened,
  2. It is unclear what part the suspect played,
  3. There was no intent, and
  4. The judge fails to see the crime in the accused’s actions.

An example of the latter is the 14-year-old who jokingly told Prime Minister Balkenende on the social networking site Hyves that he was going to die and was acquitted earlier this month.

It is perhaps interesting to note that the falsely imprisoned typically only receive 80 euro a day in damages, regardless of actual income lost.

Link: Sargasso.

Tags: , , , , ,

May 11, 2010

Journalist wins lawsuit over freedom of information request costs

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:00 am

Municipalities are not allowed to charge for complying with freedom of information requests, a court in The Hague found according to Trouw.

Reporter Brenno de Winter sought a judge’s legally binding opinion after several municipalities conspired early last year to sabotage his freedom of information requests by making him pay for them. The court reasoned that since freedom of information requests are for the good of everyone instead of the good of an individual, asking money for complying with them is illegal. However, government organisations can still charge money for the cost of photocopies.

Last week, De Winter started a lawsuit against the Minister of Transport, Camiel Eurlings, for keeping documents secret that could help explain the relative failure of the public transport chip card (the Dutch “Oyster card”).

See also: Supply the poor government with some much needed transparency

Tags: , , , ,

March 27, 2010

Angel of Death, unemployed prosecuted, Superbus – updates

Filed under: Automobiles,Health by Branko Collin @ 12:29 pm

Here are some interesting updates of past 24 Oranges stories.

* Lucia de Berk, the serial killer seemingly convicted on the basis of flawed statistics, received some good news today. Now that her case has been re-opened, the public prosecutor has asked the court to free her and drop all charges against the former nurse.

In 2004 De Berk, nicknamed Angel of Death, received a life sentence for seven murders and three attempted murders of patients under her care. Rather than proving murders had taken place, the prosecution shopped for natural deaths that could pass for suspicious, and if it turned out that De Berk had been working when the alleged victims died, added them to its list. After statisticians brought their objections to this method to public attention, the supreme court decided to let a lower court re-open the case.

The verdict has been announced for April 14.

* Minister Donner of the department of Social Affairs has been told by parliament to re-open the cases of unemployed entrepreneurs who were accused of fraud and sometimes prosecuted for it by UWV, the same organisation that had been feeding them false information that led to this ‘fraud’ in the first place.

The accused were participating in a work re-integration programme that allowed them to set up their own companies while still receiving benefits during the incubation phase. They received benefits for the difference between hours worked and hours available for work, where UWV initially defined ‘hours worked’ as ‘hours billed.’ However, the law says that non-billable hours also count as ‘hours worked.’

UWV (formerly known as GAK) is a private institute that is tasked with distributing unemployment benefits under the supervision of Donner’s department. When the minister pointed out that opening dossiers of already convicted felons was ‘impossible,’ that only seemed to rub parliament the wrong way, according to NRC.

* The Delft students that designed the eco-friendly Superbus are currently building a working prototype. In 2009, after extensive testing on a track, the chassis was built (see image).

The Superbus is a 15-metre-long vehicle that fits 23 passengers. It drives over a dedicated, cheap, concrete lane and doesn’t use bus stops. Instead, prospective passengers indicate where and when they want to board, and presumably the driver caters to these wishes. The Superbus is electrically powered, using lithium polymer battery packs and regenerative braking. Its top speed is 250 kilometres per hour (155 mph). Top Gear, are you reading this?

(Source photo: Superbus)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

October 4, 2009

Press releases are not spam

Filed under: Online by Branko Collin @ 1:23 pm

letterbox-roy_parkhousePR agencies and journalists alike have been screaming blue murder the past few days over the perceived consequences of the new anti-spam law. Laurens Verhagen of Nu.nl, the website known for never writing its own stories if it can help it, whines (Dutch) that “an unintended side-effect is that PR agencies are no longer allowed to send press releases.”

Other journalists cheer on the new law. NRC.next’s Ernst-Jan Pfauth hails the death of the press release (Dutch): “Press release are old-fashioned, unnecessary and often misused.”

But as the here-often-quoted Internet law specialist Arnoud Engelfriet explains at De Nieuwe Reporter, the law has a provision for e-mail addresses that have been explicitly designed for receiving bulk mails. Also, the spam prohibition only pertains to advertising, informative e-mails are not part of the law.

That means that from now on only advertisements dressed up as press releases are out, but I cannot imagine that even Laurens Verhagen would bemoan such an intended consequence.

A tempest in a teapot.

(Photo of a letterbox by Roy Parkhouse, some rights reserved.)

Tags: , , , ,

October 3, 2009

Buma/Stemra charges bloggers 130+ euro for YouTube vids

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 1:42 pm

Collecting society Buma/Stemra is after Dutch bloggers now. Starting in 2010 you must cough up 130 euro for every six music videos you embed in your web page, according to Madbello (Dutch).

Buma/Stemra is a copyright collecting society for composers. It makes use of a feature of Dutch copyright law that says that negotiating licenses and royalties is too cumbersome for some forms of creative works, and that therefore collecting societies can be set up that charge bulk rates and pass on the money to the creators.

IT law specialists Arnoud Engelfriet and Kamiel Koelman are quick to dismiss B/S’ claims at Tweakers.net (Dutch). Both point out that embedding content on your web page is not necessarily a new publication of that content, and therefore B/S cannot charge money for it.

Dutch copyright law makes a distinction between the act of copying and the act of publishing. A famous lawsuit that highlights the difference between the two, and that went all the way to the Dutch High Council is Poortvliet vs. Hovener (Dutch, PDF). Hovener was a publisher who had an agreement to sell 13 reproductions of Poortvliet’s paintings as part of a calendar. Although Hovener did print the calendar, they then cut out the reproductions and sold them separately, pasted on cardboard and presumably at a much higher price. No copying took place, yet it was considered a new form of publication, and therefore infringement.

Engelfriet’s and Koelman’s reasoning are in my opinion unconvincing, but even more so I think B/S rates are through the roof. A rate of 13 cents per embedded video seems much more reasonable considering that videos embedded in blogs (with the rare exception perhaps for blogs where people come to listen to the music) only work to expose an audience to the embedded works.

UPDATE: Sign the petition: bumablog

Tags: , , , , ,

July 12, 2009

Writer Simon Vinkenoog dies age 80

Filed under: Literature by Branko Collin @ 11:17 am

A week before his 81st birthday, writer Simon Vinkenoog died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Amsterdam last night. Vinkenoog was a poet, a writer of novels, and a strong proponent of the legalization of soft drugs. In 2004, when poet laureate Gerrit Komrij prematurely handed in his resignation, Vinkenoog was elected to serve the interim, until Driek van Wissen could take over.

Here is my pathetic attempt at translating one of the poems Vinkenoog wrote while in office:

Pamphlet

Pamphlet or quick prayer,*
love poem or protest song,
provided it is experienced,
grows wings, becomes redemption.

Once doom makes room
— for courage,
everything you do
becomes a living greeting:

“All that moves
will stay in motion
Make or break
— there is no choice

Nothing remains,
everything will disappear
your life a fireworks
or not.”

*) Note from the translator: what, no word for schietgebed (emergency prayer) in the English language?!

(Photo: Martijn S., some rights reserved, photo ‘shopped by me.)

Tags: , , , ,

July 9, 2009

After 195 years, Staatsblad and Staatscourant disappear

Filed under: General,History by Branko Collin @ 11:37 am

No law or decree has ever been valid in this kingdom until after publication in the Staatsblad (laws) or Staatscourant (other government decisions with the force of law). That is, until July 1st of this year, when the paper editions of Staatsblad and Staatscourant were abandoned and a law came into force that allowed electronic publication of laws and decrees.

The Staatscourant was founded by the first Dutch King, Willem I, in 1814. Volkskrant reports that the king wasn’t shy of using this formal publication for political purposes, especially since it could compete cheaply with commercial newspapers.

With the official publications now taken care of by a website, bekendmaking.nl, Staatscourant and Staatsblad publisher SDU will continue with a printed weekly called SC that will focus on commentary on laws.

Tags: , , , ,

July 6, 2009

Faith healer says: “Always consult a physician”

Filed under: Religion,Science by Branko Collin @ 8:51 am

When faith healer Jomanda took to the stage yesterday for one of her sessions in Bergen op Zoom, Noord Brabant, she had a big sign with her that said “Raadpleeg altijd een arts” (“Always consult a physician”), an odd move perhaps for somebody who believes she is a healing medium between this world and ‘God’. On her website she even claims that “doctors merely apply the bandages, only God heals.” Jomanda was recently cleared from charges (Dutch) of contributing to comedy actress Sylvia Millecam’s death.

Millecam had been struggling with breast cancer and had been avoiding traditional medicine. The alternative ‘healers’ she sought out suggested that she merely had a bacterial infection, after which she died. The case against Jomanda and two ‘alternative doctors’ was unique in that for the first time a court held it had the authority to address the care duty of somebody who was not a legal care giver. Indeed, the court seems to take this for granted (Dutch).

The court considered it proven that Jomanda had violated her care duty, but cleared her of the charges because Millecam had also sought regular help during the time she consulted the medium, and that the medium merely had a “comforting” influence, not a decisive one. The justice department is appealing.

(Photo by Mike Locke, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , , ,