National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie

However, they were found guilty of copyright infringement as they had
offered the opportunity to post files illegally on the sharing sites.
Another form of digital piracy is the theft of versions of new computer games
that are still under development by hacking into the producer’s network. Unlike
with P2P websites, the criminal nature of this hacking is not a subject of debate.
After a pre-release version of a computer game has been stolen, it can be copied
and distributed on a large scale to earn a great deal of money. In April 2007 two
Dutch brothers were arrested who had gained access to the computer network
of an international software producer in Greece. They intended to steal the test
version of a computer game and make money from it. The investigation showed
that these hackers had also gained access to 20 other companies, all of them in
the computer games sector. These are currently the only examples of piracy
with pre-release versions of computer games in the Netherlands.
5.4.5 Consequences for Dutch society
According to the website of the Home Copy Foundation, piracy has a major
economic impact. Producers miss out on income, local markets suffer from
unfair competition, governments lose tax revenue and employment is adversely
affected in sectors that suffer from piracy. The loss of turnover is compensated
for to a certain extent by a levy on blank discs.
Criminals earn money through piracy, which in turn can be used for other
criminal activities. The availability of illegal copies undermines the willingness
of the public to pay for the content.
The use of illegal products – for example, the pirated version of Windows –
results in an increased risk of malfunctions, hacking and other problems. As
there is no manufacturer support, new versions and updates are not supplied.
5.4.6 Crime-related factors and expectations
The Netherlands is an attractive country for establishing hosting sites for
file sharing and P2P due to its high-quality infrastructure and fast broadband
connections. Many youngsters (the main users) have little moral objection to
downloading, partly because there is no directly identifiable victim. Until recently,
the Netherlands also was an attractive country for hosting sites because
prosecutions were hardly ever initiated in connection with the criminal activities
involved. Due to a court ruling in 2007, however, Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
are now obliged to disclose personal details of web hosts to stakeholders in the
event of copyright infringement and to close sites on the request of stakeholders.
This more vigorous approach has already resulted in various file sharing websites
194 National Threat Assessment 2008 – Organised crime