COPYRIGHT ISSUES AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY.doc

COPYRIGHT ISSUES AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY: DUTCH PERSPECTIVES F. Willem Grosheide* III B 1 1 Access to works online 1.1 The right to information 1.1.1 General It may here be taken for grantedthat since the second half of the 20th century the Information Society may now be considered as running parallel to the 19th century Industrial Society. One of the striking effects of this development particularly made possible by the spread of digital technology is the commodification of information, i.e. today information, together with physical goods is the raw material of socio-economic and cultural life in the industrialised world. As a consequence, if the question of access to property and ownership of physical goods was a major issue in the 19th century, this became equally true for the question of access to property and the ownership of information in the 20th century. Besides, since the rapid and broad extension of transborder socio-economic and cultural exchange is another characteristic of daily life in the late 20th century industrialised societies, the effects of the said commodification are at the same time experienced on a worldwide basis. Understandably, the indicated development has influenced and still influences the national and international legal environment with regard to access to information. For the Netherlands, belonging to the Western part of the industrialised world, this means that its legal environment has gradually become less determined by domestic and more by European developments. European developments on two levels: that of the Council of Europe, i.e. the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and that of the European Union, i.e. the Treaty of Rome/(EC Treaty). In light of the Treaty of Rome, adaptatin of national Dutch law to EU legislative actions in the domain of copyright law and related law should be mentioned. From the various directives that are in force in this respect in particular mention should be made of the recent Copyri