DUTCH Nederlandseluchtvaart.nl forum is to close…

According to
http://www.nederlandseluchtvaart.nl/forums/f2-algemeen-general/vanaf-donderdag-site-tijdelijk-gesloten-21008/
the forum is to be closed temporarily from this Thursday (i.e. tomorrow) onwards.

For those who can understand Dutch and are interested,
http://www.nederlandseluchtvaart.nl/forums/f2-algemeen-general/over-sluiting-nlv-20974/index2.html and onwards has some more background information.

Perhaps a bit of an elaboration might be useful for non-Dutch speakers:

This guy runs two forums, Nederlandseluchtvaart.nl for Dutch aviation news and discussions, and Simmerspaintshop.com, I guess for Flightsim enthusiasts. He’s had some issues in the past with people posting photos on the forums for which they didn’t hold the copyrights. There are rules which members agree to when registering but this doesn’t take away the problems. He’s had Google withdraw advertising (which helps pay for the site) from the forum for an apparent breach of copyright while the owners of the image (a screenshot from the Il-2 game) apparently haven’t filed a claim.

Now he has received a hefty bill from a lawyer for having had a photo on the site in the past. The copyright holder of this image has not taken the trouble to contact the site owner but went straight to a lawyer.

He is now taking the, understandable, standpoint that this is a bit too much for what was supposed to be a hobby, especially as the chances of it happening again are high.

If anyone is interested, he is willing to transfer the sites to someone who wants to keep them online.

Sad news indeed, we trust your translation! 😉

Great shame indeed.