October 10, 2008

By By Jen Wilson, London

The Dutch music industry has welcomed the Netherlands' government publication of a "Notice-and-Take-Down" Code of Conduct aimed at tackling websites hosting unauthorized content such as music, film and games.

The Code of Conduct was developed by Ministry of Economic Affairs and a coalition of ISPs, ministries, the police, investigation services and organizations such as anti-piracy body BREIN. "This is a good start, now it is about the execution in practice," said BREIN director Tim Kuik in a statement issued today.

Under the terms of the Code, Internet users are provided with a list of participants and their roles in dealing with reports of online violations. In principle, this list should give users a number of options if the person they originally contact is unavailable to investigate the report.

"Affiliated businesses -- 85% of all access providers and several hosting providers -- hereby send a clear signal that the Internet is not to be used for illegal practices. I call upon others to follow their lead," said Minister for Foreign Trade, Frank Heemskerk at yesterday's launch event in The Hague, Netherlands (Oct. 8).

Heemskerk says the government "will follow up later this year with more measures to fight cybercrime."

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