The United States has some of the most effective laws in the world for stopping online copyright infringement. Takedown notices sent to United States-based services providers under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are an effective means of having pirated content blocked. In addition, they also make it easy to obtain a subpoena against John Does.

However, one of the most common tactics by more persistent copyright infringers is to move the pirated material to a host in a country with more difficult laws for enforcing copyrights. One of the most common countries that pirates move their servers to seems to be the Netherlands. Here are a few tips on how to combat infringement in the Netherlands, when DMCA notices are of no effect.

Target Advertisers and Affiliate Programs

Although a server may be outside of the United States, its advertisers and the companies it sells affiliate products for may not be. If a pirate site in the Netherlands hosts content for Google or Yahoo’s advertising networks, or has Amazon affiliate links, send a copyright infringement complaint to those companies. They do not tolerate infringement and will likely ban the accountholder, causing a decrease in the revenue they get from stealing your content.

Send DMCA Notices to American Search Engines

Many search engines are based in the United States, and are likely to de-index problem websites that they have in their search results. Although Google is not responsible for the copyright infringing sites that its crawler may automatically index and allow to be searched, it does tend to respond to DMCA takedown notices about material that Google itself hosts from those websites. In other words, cached versions of websites which publish your copyrighted material may be removable by sending a DMCA notice to Google. As a result, Google may decide to de-index the website in the future to save itself the hassle of dealing with more takedown notices.

File a Domestic Suit and Serve the Foreign Party

Even though the defendant is likely in a foreign country, you can start a lawsuit domestically in the United States in an area where the copyrighted material is transmitted to, which, unless the infringing website has geo-IP blocking, is likely to be everywhere in the world.

After starting the suit, in which the infringer will be named as a John Doe unless their identity is known, you will need to prepare letters rogatory or a Model Letter of Request under The Hague Evidence Convention, detailing the discovery information required from the ISP, and then seek judicial assistance in the Netherlands. Information on seeking judicial assistance locally can be obtained from the Bureau of Juridical Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in The Hague.

Suing in the Dutch Court System

In addition to commencing an action in the United States, which can possibly raise complications when requesting evidence or enforcing judgments due to different national policies on copyright law, the owner of content can also launch a case locally in the Dutch courts by seeking Dutch legal counsel. BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group, has won several cases which establish the right of a litigant to seek information from an ISP which discloses the identity of an alleged infringer, and which impose liability on certain persons who assist infringers (e.g. BREIN v Techno Design; BREIN v KPN).

SIDN Domain Dispute

If the issue in the Netherlands is not one of hosted copyright infringement, but of trademark infringement occurring in the domain name of the .nl website, a domain name dispute can be commenced much like the ICANN system in the United States.

Unless it is a personal name registered in the Netherlands, which would not normally apply to Americans who have had their trademark infringed, the grounds for complaining must be that the domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark, or trade name, protected under Dutch law, and that the complainant holds the rights to that trademark or trade name. Additionally, the registrant must have no rights of legitimate use in the name, and the name must have been registered in bad faith.

If all of these elements exist, a person whose trademark has been infringed on may register a complaint with the SIDN, which is the .nl TLD’s equivalent to ICANN. This procedure costs money, and the SIDN’s regulations provide no award for costs to the winning party, so it will be up to you to decide whether it is worth filing a complaint over the infringement.

This was a brief summary of how to deal with Dutch copyright infringers. It is by no means complete, and different laws will apply to different copyright holders’ circumstances. Additionally, new case law developments may affect the outcome of a legal proceeding. Hopefully this summary was of value, but should you have any legal problems involving intellectual property infringement in the Netherlands, you should contact a qualified intellectual property attorney.