3 weeks ago the METISfiles reported on the ruling of the EU court on case C-174/15, which stated that the lending of an electronic book (e-book) may – under certain conditions – be treated in the same way as the lending of a traditional book. After Angela Ruiz Robles patented the idea of the electronic…
Back in 2012 a study “E-Lending Public Libraries”, carried out on behalf of the Dutch Ministry of OCW (Education, Culture and Science), concluded that the existing lending right regime of the Dutch copyright act did not apply to e-books. Moreover the study also concluded that the current European law and regulation framework does not offer…
In our series on the Dutch Digital Economy we have so far analyzed the Dutch B2B and B2C e-commerce market. The total business conducted in the B2B and B2C commerce in 2014 equaled € 1015 billion of which 8,7% can be attributed to e-commerce. But when analyzing e-commerce there are a few other markets that…
With Jack Dorsey back in the saddle Twitter is trying to get some grip on its future. Not a small effort for Dorsey as he is also CEO of Square who just announced its IPO. But Twitter needs quite a bit of work as investors are not really happy with how things are going. Dick…
A few weeks ago The METISfiles reported on the intensified battle in the world of advertising. While it seems that the fight is limited to adblock software developers on one side and publishing, media and advertising agencies on the other hand, there is more to it. Let’s take this from the top. To sell stuff…
Two Dutch startups are exploring new horizons. De Correspondent, a Dutch digital only magazine, and Blendle, an article republisher, both recently announced plans to conquer the international market. De Correspondent wants to take the plunge into the US while Blendle is putting their investor’s money in the German market. Publishing however has never been a…
The discussion on data privacy continues to be a hot topic. And for good reasons. Our online presence is becoming more and more an integral part of our daily life. Only two decades ago sending mail (snailmail) was protected by a law that explicitly stated that mail was not to be opened during transport to…
In the recent past The METISfiles reported on traditional content publishers. We think they are an endangered species because they don’t seem to be able to come up with digital publishing value-add. And now there is Tom Kabinet, another challenger to the publishing industry. In the world of books an e-book format is considered a…
A few days ago the AD newspaper reported that Dutch citizens hardly buy e-books but apparently download them from torrent sites by the dozen. Considering that there is an installed base of over a million e-readers and some seven million tablets, there definitely is a digital reading platform that covers most of the Dutch reader…