Picture this: it’s mid‑July 2025. A Brussels Business Court issues a sweeping, ex parte order—meaning the defendant never had a chance to defend itself—targeting not just notorious piracy hubs like Anna’s Archive, LibGen, Z‑Library and OceanofPDF, but also the Internet Archive’s Open Library. The court deems there is “clear and significant infringement,” granting provisional site blocks across Belgium.
Now brace for the kicker: this isn’t just about local ISPs. Telenet, Proximus, Mobile Vikings, Orange, even Starlink must enforce DNS blocks. But that’s merely the beginning. The court’s ambit spans search engines (Google, Bing), DNS providers, CDNs, hosting firms like Cloudflare and AWS, payment processors like PayPal Europe and Alipay Europe—every digital conduit that touches these platforms is on notice.
The publishers behind the push—Belgian industry groups representing authors and publishers—argue Open Library’s Controlled Digital Lending model bypasses licensing, creating unauthorized digital copies. They cite over a thousand titles from Dupuis and several thousand from Casterman available via the platform, all without Belgian legal clearance.
What makes this so chilling is the unprecedented scope. Historically, Belgium has blocked piracy sites, but those measures focused on ISPs. This order elevates censorship across intermediaries: advertisers must pull ad placements; CDN providers must refuse service; registrars must suspend domains; payment platforms must cut off funds. No precedent in Europe comes close.
And when the order went live, Internet Archive hadn’t even been informed—they were blindsided. But two days later, the IA reported no confirmed disruption yet, and the Open Library domain doesn’t appear on Belgium’s official blacklist. The order remains in effect, though enforcement—practical or technical—is still unfolding.
Open Library began as a public-serving project—created by Aaron Swartz and Brewster Kahle under the ethos of universal access. It operates like a real library: one digital copy lent per user, based on Controlled Digital Lending. No sweeping piracy network, but a nonprofit archive. Yet that nuance was tossed aside by the Belgian court in favor of a sweeping injunction—without due process.
So what happens next? Expect legal pushback by Internet Archive, likely in US courts or through appeals. Expect tech intermediaries to resist or delay enforcement. And expect privacy and civil‑liberties groups to warn this sets a dangerous precedent—where a single country can force global takedowns via DNS, payment, search and hosting choke points.
The question fans and free‑speech advocates will ask: Are European nations now able to declare digital censorship laws that echo authoritarian regimes—and do so without letting affected parties even show up in court first?
This is not just about copyrighted books—it’s about who controls access to knowledge. If a nonprofit archive can be blocked like a pirate site, what’s next? Academic papers? Historical archives? Journalism?
It’s mid‑July 2025 and this Brussels court just rewrote the rules on censorship—and we’re only seeing the first pages.
