The Dutch Copyright Act specifies what copyright is and how it works. The Act was introduced in 1912 and was most recently amended in 2004 to bring it up to date with the digital information society. The amended version was based on the European Directive on Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society.
The basic principle of the Copyright Act is, on the one hand, that the maker or creator (the official term is the “author”) of a work must be protected so that he can profit from his efforts in some way. On the other hand, the Copyright Act also aims to promote the freedom and exchange of information. The Act attempts to achieve the best possible balance between the rights of the author and the freedom of information. The rise of the Internet and other methods of electronic information exchange have brought about a shift in that balance in recent years. Both the creator of a work – i.e. the “author” – and the user – the researcher or librarian – now find themselves in a different situation, with new opportunities open to them. Moreover, these changes are still ongoing. This sometimes leads to confusion, but it also offers new challenges for authors, educational institutions, and publishers.