[The IPKat] [Guest post] Fight against online piracy: dynamic injunctions in Belgium

[Eleonora Rosati]

[Guest post] Fight against online piracy: dynamic injunctions in Belgium

 Eleonora Rosati Wednesday, August 20, 2025 - Belgium, copyright, dynamic injunctions, Enforcement Directive, Guest post, intermediary injunctions, online enforcement, piracy, Rudi Mathieu, Theodora Stamos

The IPKat has received and is pleased to host the following guest contribution by Katfriends Rudi Mathieu (Proximus ADA) and Theodora Stamos (Proximus) on relatively recent amendments to Belgian law in order to contrast online piracy and their potential application in practice. Both authors write in a personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Here’s what they have to say:

Fight against online piracy: dynamic injunctions in Belgium

by Rudi Mathieu and Theodora Stamos

Kat-blocking

Belgium adopted legislation effective as of June 1, 2024 to combat online piracy, e.g., illegal IPTV services with a fast track proceedings that can be initiated by summons or upon unilateral request before a designated court (Président du Tribunal de l’entreprise de Bruxelles).

The law is meant to protect rightholders whose copyright, related rights or sui generis database right have been infringed by an obvious and significant online piracy activity (significant either by its nature or its volume).

The key features are as follows:

• Any measure aiming to stop the infringements can be requested, both against the infringers and any intermediary whose services are used to perpetrate the online piracy;
• Dynamic blocking injunctions are possible, covering not only web locations that have been characterized as infringing by the court but also web locations where the infringing web locations might have moved (mirror sites, redirections, copycats);
• The court can delegate the exact details of implementation of its order, including the dynamic aspect thereof to a dedicated administrative service (“the Department”) provided that the administrative adjustments do not alter, extend, or limit the original judicial orders upon which they are adopted;
• Both the addressees of the injunction and any party with a legitimate interest can appeal the decision.

Dynamic blocking injunctions are already in force in countries other than Belgium, including some EU Member states. Those injunctions have to comply with all applicable legal requirements, including those of being “effective, proportionate and dissuasive” – in line with Article 3 of the Enforcement Directive.

The option of a unilateral request allows applicants to improve response time and target more easily parties not domiciled in Belgium and intermediaries that do not wish to file a third-party opposition to save on costs related to a contradictory procedure.

The law provides that both the court and the Department may hear the parties involved before issuing their decisions. This opens up the possibility, if need be, to improve adjustment of orders to technological realities, enable a better assessment of compliance with the legal conditions related to the validity of blocking orders, and decrease the risks of oppositions.

Start of application

The court issued its first decision on March 28, 2025. The action was initiated upon unilateral request by a broadcaster and audiovisual producer of a sports program. Plaintiffs requested a live domain name blocking order with a dynamic follow up for a series of domain names operating illegal IPTV services which includes unauthorized streaming of the plaintiff’s sports program. The domain name blocking request was to be implemented by the main Belgian Internet Access providers (IAP) as well by some major alternative domain names resolution services, that is: Cloudflare, Google and Cisco/Cisco Open DNS.

The court tasked the Department with a further determination of the exact modalities of implementation of the measure and competence to issue updates ensuring the dynamic follow up of the initial judicial injunction.

The first administrative order was issued on April 1, 2025.

The Department engaged with various stakeholders to fine-tune the details of the order and to adapt the latter to the technological and practical context. Given that this was the very first implementation of a dynamic and live injunction in Belgium, setting up a completely new process turned out to be necessary.

DNS blocking injunctions addressed to DNS resolution services

Already in the first decision taken under the new law, the best-known alternative resolution services in Belgium have been involved alongside local IAP. Those open DNS resolvers have filed third-party objections that are still been discussed. It can be assumed that relevant arguments relate to proportionality, effectiveness, and non-discrimination.

Preliminary conclusions on the involvement of open DNS services

Regarding the open DNS resolvers, if their involvement is considered in an isolated manner, proportionality and effectiveness may be questioned as both theoretically represent only a small proportion of the DNS resolution service used by Belgian customers when compared to (i) the impact of the measure by local IAP and (ii) the multitude of open DNS resolvers accessible to the Belgian public. If, however, the global impact of the decision is to be assessed, the involvement of these entities seems justified, especially given the ease with which their services can be switched and the fact that such ease will increase over time.

We may note that in France, courts have also decided to accept involvement of open DNS alongside with local IAP and have motivated such decision by explicit reference to the coherence of the injunction assessed on a global level.

Furthermore, given the technological context that increasingly combines an open DNS with a browser by default, at some point, the involvement of only local IAP for rerouting at the level of their resolver server may no longer be considered an effective measure. The present balance may prove instable in the long run.

While waiting for decisions on third-party objections in Belgium, decisions in other jurisdictions show that involvement of alternative resolvers seems to be established. Open DNS react differently to injunctions. Underlying these reactions, we see the strategy of some companies regarding the EU's digital sovereignty project, their risk tolerance, their understanding of net neutrality and transparency. The transparency reporting requirement outlined in the DSA could help with this specific aspect, but only retrospectively.

Tentative assessment of DNS resolution dynamic blocking injunctions

DNS resolution services were chosen by rightholders for practical reasons:

• They are local actors directly subject to the jurisdiction of Member States’ and EU law;
• They are clearly subject to specific obligations under the DSA;
• Today, the customer base of local IAP combined with the default use of IAP’s own resolution service contributes to justify the effectiveness of the measure, even if the request focused on these intermediaries only. Caution is, however, required as customers’ habits may change;
• Furthermore, they provide an opportunistic approach that does not require rightholders to conduct an in-depth analysis of the pirate service they want to stop.

Whereas dynamic follow-up allows a more responsive reaction to piracy and seems to be an undeniable asset in the fight against piracy, rights’ representatives do not seem to use all the possibilities offered by this new legislation, i.e., they do not involve more intermediaries. Instead, they seem to prefer to rely on injunctions addressed at DNS resolution services rather than carrying out an in-depth preliminary analysis of the pirate service they wish to stop.

It should be nevertheless noted that, in the most recent blocking order issued by the Belgian court and the Department, besides IAP which are still the starting point and core intermediaries targeted in the function of resolvers, search engines, online advertisements services, web archiving services have been involved as well as payment service providers.

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