Netherlands bans illegal downloading

Quite a funny headline. Maybe someone should think about issuing a blanket ban of everything illegal? ;-)

When will the world catch up with the fact that The Netherlands is not more the liberal country it once was? The boringness of Denmark combined with the social problems of the UK, that's where it's heading.

This is not specific to The Netherlands, it holds for all EU member states that did not already have laws declaring downloading of copyrighted material illegal.

To Clarify, banning illegal downloading sounds quite logical.<p>Until now, downloading of copyrighted material such as movies, tv shows and music was allowed for personal use. This apparently has been overruled by an EU court. Quite interested to see what this is going to change....

The Netherlands was actually one of the few (European) countries without a download ban. The EU court now overruled that.

Quite staggering how a non-elected instance can make major decisions for an entire country. Just like that.

Here is the legal stuff [1]<p>[1] <a href="http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&amp;docid=150786&amp;pageIndex=0&amp;doclang=EN" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;curia.europa.eu&#x2F;juris&#x2F;document&#x2F;document.jsf?text=&amp;doc...</a>

The headline seems misleading, since this was a decision by the EU Court of Justice that said the Dutch would have to stop downloading. The Netherlands themselves didn&#x27;t ban anything.

Not really that of a news. Wasn&#x27;t Netherlands also one of the biggest NSA hotspots in all EU?

If something is illegal, isn&#x27;t it already banned?

You wouldn&#x27;t download a car.

Is this a late April 1 joke?