(apologies to Andre, who gets this twice)
Actually, Dutch law already has such a provision:
Dutch government
materials are copyrighted only when copyright is explicitly claimed.
From the English translation of Dutch copyright law
(
http://www.ivir.nl/legislation/nl/copyrightact.html):
The further communication to the public or reproduction of a literary,
scientific or artistic work communicated to the public by or on behalf
of the public authorities shall not be deemed an infringement of the
copyright in such a work, unless the copyright has been explicitly
reserved, either in a general manner by law, decree or ordinance, or
in a specific case by a notice on the work itself or at the
communication to the public. Even if no such reservation has been
made, the author shall retain the exclusive right to have appear in
the form of a collection his works which have been communicated to the
public by or on behalf of the public authorities.
Problem now is how to get those materials...
This is very interesting, though I'm a bit confused about how the last
sentence works - I suspect the translator's understanding of
"exclusive right" and mine differ.
Do you know how it works in practice?
It's been a while since I read the journals on that article, so I don't
remember the details, but the consensus seemed to be that even with that new
article (and other articles following from a EU directive) the release of
Dutch government information won't increase.
Garion96