[Katsunami]

There can't be any consequences in some cases. Let's say that I know that a book is free to read 50 years after the author dies. So, I want to read a Dickens book, and type into Google:

Free Great Expectations Dickens.

Then I find an online version, that I can read in my browser; in a forum post, possibly. How should I know that I'm not allowed to read that, only because I'm a Dutchman? No-one is going to sue me for reading on the internet. It's just impossible to enforce.

I can understand that there could be problems if this same thing is done with stuff that is still in copyright, but it has happened only very occasionally that books I want to read (or movies I want to see) are not available. Edit: even then, it's a problem of the uploader. If someone posts The Lord of the Rings, in plain text, on Mobileread, then it's not my fault that I can read it for free. It cannot be expected of one to check each site for copyrighted stuff and then to decide to read it or not.

Also, in the Netherlands, downloading music, movies and other entertainment is fully legal at this moment. I'm not saying that one is entitled to download everything they'd ever wish to have; hardly so, but the law over here protects individual people, precisely because of the point made in the previous paragraph. Still, some people in our current government are trying very hard to get that to change though.... pressured by the entertainment industries. Some even suspect that some people in the government are receiving boons from the industries to get laws against downloading passed.