Curiosity is what drives us. It is how we keep a well-grounded view of every question we take on.
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A new certification mark in influencer marketing: how does it work, and why does it matter to companies and influencers alike?
The reliability and transparency of online marketing matter more than ever, and there is now a new development in the Netherlands: the ‘Certified by Influencerregels.com’ mark. It has been introduced by the DDMA (the Dutch trade association for data and marketing), the bvA (the Dutch …
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'A popular parlour game': who are the authors of a film?
The occasion for this article is the amendment of article 45d(2) of the Dutch Copyright Act in 2021. Since 7 June 2021, the second paragraph of article 45d has given all authors of a film a right to proportionate equitable remuneration, a share of the income that is meant to reflect the value of …
Read articleReading time: 16 min
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AI in the creative sector: six practical legal tips
DALL-E makes images, Sora makes videos, Suno composes complete songs and ChatGPT writes your copy. For creators that is a toolbox full of possibilities. It also raises questions. May an AI company use your work to train a model? And is what you make with AI actually yours? In this article I set out …
Read articleReading time: 11 min
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The voice actor voted out? The use of AI in voice-overs
Voice actors have a new competitor called artificial intelligence, better known as AI. Today the Dutch arm of the supermarket chain Aldi announced that it is replacing voice actor Diederik Ebbinge, for almost four years the voice behind the well-known Aldi commercials, with artificial intelligence. …
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A trade mark or design right on your dish? Get it registered!
Social media is full of it: the croissant filled with pastry cream and topped with a layer of pink icing or chocolate, otherwise known as the crompouce. And so pastry chefs have taken to their ovens en masse to ride the hype. But in their enthusiasm they forgot to check the trade mark and design …
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Government, leave Musk's X (fka Twitter)
X is disruptive and malignant. X harbours and encourages multiple attacks on our liberal democracy. X’s algorithms promote extreme opinions. People no longer connect with each other. There is no open and fruitful exchange of ideas. Deliberately created disruptive misinformation remains …
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The fight over AI training data
All AI has to be trained. ChatGPT and its ilk scrape their training data together by grazing the internet, but for a great deal of AI that does not work. Those systems need specific data. If an AI wants to tell a pupil which topics they should practise further, the collected works of Goethe are of …
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A necessary update to the author's contract in the age of AI. Three tips.
The AI landscape is slowly taking on colour. Details are being filled in. Through a strike by the screenwriters in the US and the compromise that followed, through conversations with media companies in the Netherlands, and through a stream of publications. It sometimes puts me in mind of a …
Read articleReading time: 8 min -
The future of the writer in an age of AI
Does the writing profession still have a future? Can AI not write more precisely, more quickly, more clearly and more beautifully than the writing human being? Should everyone who lives by the pen retrain? This article is a report of a tour of our network. From non-fiction jobbing writers, to …
Read articleReading time: 7 min -
How does an author prove they are not an AI? Two tips.
Introduction New works of art by painters long dead, tracks in the style and with the timbre of artist A sung by a computer, summaries produced in under a minute that pass the teachers’ critical scrutiny with flying colours: what can artificial intelligence (AI) not do these days? One press of …
Read articleReading time: 13 min -
Fighting the AI
In my previous blog I wrote that many authors are worried about AI. Their profession is under pressure. AI can take over many of their assignments. That goes directly to their livelihood. All the more galling, then, that AI can only function by copying the works produced by those same authors into …
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What does the transparency obligation mean for you as an exploiting party?
The transparency obligation under Dutch copyright contract law has applied since 7 June 2022. Merel Teunissen on what it asks of publishers, producers and broadcasters: which information you owe your authors, how sub-licensees fit in, and the two situations in which you may withhold it. Spoiler: your records will have to be in good order.
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The transparency obligation: what information must an exploiting party give me as an author or performer?
Since 7 June 2022, anyone who has entrusted the exploitation of their work to another has had the right to be informed annually about that exploitation and about what it earns. Merel Teunissen on what the exploiting party has to disclose, how sub-licensees fit in, when the obligation does not apply and what you can do when it is not met.
Read articleReading time: 7 min -
Throwing out the GDPR to make Central Bank Digital Currency?
A monetary paradox is at work in the world’s wealthiest nations: more money is spent there than anywhere else, yet day by day fewer people seem to carry notes and coins in their wallets. The opposite paradox exists in the global south, where most people do not even have a bank account and so …
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What is an NFT?
An NFT is a kind of certificate of ownership with which someone can show they own that NFT. In short: an NFT is in fact part of a code pointing to a digital file (object) held online.
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The meteoric rise of the 'juice' channels: are they free to spread every bit of gossip?
With the rapid development of the media landscape and the democratisation of media, the latest innovation in gossip journalism has arrived: the ‘juice’ channel. Along with a great deal of juice, this new phenomenon brings its share of problems. Where the old-school gossip magazines still …
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NFT secondary markets: Unlimited royalties or one-time resale rights?
The growing craze around NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and the extraordinary prices they fetch mean that more and more artists are considering selling tokens of ownership of their artworks on the blockchain as collectibles. The hype and the sums involved bring with them interesting innovations when it …
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Letting and insolvency: what awaits the landlord?
In this blog I will look at what awaits a landlord where a tenant of commercial premises is at risk of becoming insolvent, or has already been declared insolvent. I hope to make clear what to do and what not to do. In practice three periods can be distinguished: (a) the period before the insolvency, …
Read articleReading time: 7 min
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Some civil-law observations on the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act
At the firm I make a point of reminding everyone that copyright is part of civil law. And my maxim is one people here could recite in their sleep: it starts in Book 3! The preliminary draft of the Act amending the law on authors’ contracts was published on 4 April. That draft also proposes an …
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Is Marvel about to lose its heroes?
Copyright in commissioned work Think of superheroes and you soon think of Marvel. Almost all the best-loved superheroes (and villains), from Spider-Man to Thanos, belong to what is known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The American company has an impressive copyright portfolio to match. The …
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Unfair penalty clauses in tenancy agreements
Introduction As a property owner, things are going your way at the moment. Prices across the Netherlands are still rising quarter on quarter, and in the larger cities in particular you can take your pick of tenants. At the same time, as a landlord you depend heavily on the tenant to keep your …
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NFTs and Shared Ownership
Another season, another NFT trend. The market in non-fungible tokens that made global headlines this year is still making waves. One of the more recent developments has been the use of NFTs in real estate. Though the first NFT-based auction of real estate took place in 2017, the idea is only now …
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How to NFT
So you want to join the NFT hype. Maybe you have an unpublished photograph lying around. Maybe you published an image years ago that people loved and you would like to tokenise it. Maybe you modelled in a photoshoot and you would now like to add ‘NFT aficionado’ to your influencer …
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NFTs and Copyright Infringement
Imagine you are the artist behind an image and you hold the copyright in it. On one of your leisurely strolls across the internet, you find that someone has made an NFT of your image and has minted a thousand of these NFTs. They are now recorded on the blockchain. Only, you never gave permission for …
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How do you get fake reviews removed?
From hairdressers to literature, these days we order and book everything online. Reviews left by other users are a great help in doing so. How do you choose between the hundreds of toasters on an online marketplace, or the endless list of carrot cake recipes? Without a personal recommendation we …
Read articleReading time: 11 min -
NFTs: Privacy and Data Protection
If you are on Instagram, chances are you have seen your favourite artists start selling their pieces as NFTs. If you read the newspaper, you will have read about the first tweet selling for millions. If you are more of a long-read enthusiast, you may have read about the environmental impact …
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What does ownership of an NFT mean?
You may have noticed that NFTs have been popping up in the news. Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, sold a collage of his works for a whopping $69.3 million worth of Ether, a cryptocurrency. Quite the sum for a JPEG file. Everybody seems to be jumping on the NFT bandwagon lately: Taco …
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No cure, no pay on the blockchain
In March of last year, an Amsterdam resident won back €470 in service fees from Airbnb. When you book with Airbnb, both the host and the guest are charged service fees, and the court found that this double charge was contrary to Dutch law. Advertisements to claim your service fees back through a …
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Selling Streams: Revenue in the Digital Music Industry
There is a lot of money in music, that is not a secret. Most of us also know that a considerable part of the revenue is not earned by the artists themselves. But it remains somewhat unclear who earns from whom and where exactly the money is coming from. Like the rest of the world, the music industry …
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Corona Vaccinations and the GDPR
About half of Dutch healthcare workers intend to get the Covid-19 vaccine, according to a poll conducted by the Federation of Dutch Trade Unions. The attitude to vaccination varies greatly between sectors: among those working in university medical centres, approximately two thirds are willing to be …
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Copyright and anonymity: Banksy tries trademarks
‘Copyright is for losers’, according to street artist Banksy. Unsurprisingly, this has led to several of his artworks being printed on all manner of goods which are then sold by numerous companies. Among them is the London-based company Full Colour Black, which produces postcards. Trade …
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Fake news censorship: the limits of freedom of expression
A couple of months ago the New York Post published an article on its website sharply criticising the American (then) presidential candidate Joe Biden. Private emails had supposedly been leaked to the press, suggesting that Biden had met an adviser to the Ukrainian company Burisma during his …
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What can you do with NFTs?
This is Dragon, a CryptoKitty that was sold for $170,000 two years ago. CryptoKitties are at once blockchain collectibles and a game of sorts. The cats can be bred, producing new cats belonging to a new generation on the Ethereum blockchain. Early-generation kitties, of which there are only a few, …
Read articleReading time: 5 min
