Effective ‘Notice & Take Down’ Procedure Vital For Usenet Provider

In a recent interim decision the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ruled that the activities of Usenet service provider NSE fall under the safe harbour provisions of the E-commerce Directive. But NSE does need to have a sufficiently effective 'notice & take down' procedure in place. The court of appeal gave clear guidelines to online service providers on what the procedure should entail, such as the minimum capacity required for the removal of infringing content. The court of appeal still has to rule on any additional measures that NSE may have to take.

In September 2011 the Amsterdam District Court ruled that News-Service Europe (NSE) committed copyright infringement by copying binaries containing copyright-protected works onto its spool servers. NSE copied all or part of the binaries in order to make them available to third parties. NSE also infringed copyright by making the binaries available to the subscribers of its resellers. Without considering the safe harbour