Party Vibe

I’m now intrigued as to what exactly the bulk of the 2000 books were and what language they were in – presumably Dutch if BREIN got involved.

yet they do not have the “BREIN” (sorry)[1] to realise that legitimately buying NL books if you don’t live there isn’t that easy even via Amazon etc (as you have to be proficient enough in Dutch to deal with the bookshop); there are people around who might want to improve their Dutch who might download a book or two first but would eventually go on to purchasing them legitimately, perhaps on a visit there or from unearthing more info about the authors and publishers they like through reading the e-books.

Surely 2000 books is a mere fraction of the total amount published in the Netherlands every year? Also real books and e books can be €30-€60 or more for Unversity level text books; which not all students can afford.

IMO this seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a what is surely a mere handful of Euros of potential “lost revenue”; unless there is some deeper issue such as the books in question being special Dutch translations from big USA authors/publishers who are making a fuss but that is very likely to be such crap as “chick lit” and “young adult fiction”.

Even if the translations stop they are no great loss as any Dutch youths smart enough to know English (which most are) realise its not worth bothering to pay for that rubbish in any language.

is is true that the Internet has disrupted a lot of the publishing industries to the point it is rare for an author to make a living salary merely from writing books but it was always difficult (under modern EU law Johannes Gutenburg could have got nicked for various copyright violations) – and there have for centuries been such things as libraries and second hand bookshops especially for more expensive books.

[1] that is the kind of pun the Dutch actually like :laugh_at:

@tryptameanie 985042 wrote:

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first step toward getting a result in court just to make all future robberies of people unfortunate enough to have an ip address easier. As happened with site blocking over here, once the were ordered by a court to block one “infringing” site, they now just wait for a court to name a site and they block it, no fight at all.

it very likely is; although from personal experience I am fairly sceptical as to whether genuine Dutch authors (as opposed to USA funded translators of content originally in English) completely share BREINs views. The same atttiude applies amongst many of their neighbours in the East within Germany.

Several musicians/songwriters and broadcasters have personally complimented me on liking their content on social media or sending in reception reports on the radio stations even though the only way I could have heard it is via methods that would not have given them any royalties. Ironically a lot of their tracks are near impossible to legitimately buy as they have got older, have taken jobs as teachers etc and can’t be bothered with dealing with music distribution companies.

I can understand any content authors becoming pissed off with pirate download sites that are funded by advertising, but Usenet is not (nor are the pirate radio stations in NL and DE).However In those countries (and mainland Europe as a whole) sharing knowledge for free is still a big part of the culture and was the original use of the Internet rather than merely for commerce and marketing. My late professor friend who grew up on the NL/DE border but moved here in the 1970s had the view that he had done relatively well in life – Philips, BT and DTELS had provided him with a decent retirement pension for working on projects the European taxpayer had funded so it was his duty to share as much knowledge as he could for the next generation without expecting further payment.

OK for younger people its harder as secure jobs are not as easy to find but there is too much hipocrisy online these days. The reason Usenet fell out of favour in the first place was due to e-marketing startup companies fucking it up with spam, it was an ironic consequence that the binary content remained more resilient due to its unique data patterns – but I get the impression it is the younger content creators who are dobbing people in to the copyright feds in the first place and its predominantly the websites run by startup new media companies that whinge at you for using adblockers (even though their ads are potentially riddled with malware worse than so-called pirate content and often aren’t even correctly targeted to the location and language of the end user)

A few years ago in England (around the same time as 2011 riots) all the RNB/urban plastic gutter gangsters went running to NCA to get some site which was sharing their music promos locked off and that prompted a lot of the UK clampdowns against pirate download sites…