Belgian court orders blocking of the Internet Archive's Open Library

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The Commercial Court in Brussels has issued a comprehensive blocking order to make access to so-called shadow libraries such as Anna's Archive, Libgen, Z-Library and OceanofPDF more difficult. The aim of such platforms is to make research results more easily accessible to the general public and to bring scientific articles out from behind paywalls. It is striking that this decree also includes the Open Library of the Internet Archive. This is a project of a non-profit organization in California under US law.

What is also unusual about the order from mid-July, which was published by the Torrentfreak portal, is that up to now it has mainly been internet providers who have been ordered to block websites. The new order from Belgium goes much further. It is not only aimed at access providers such as Telenet, Proximus, Mobile Vikings, Orange and Elon Musk's satellite service Starlink, but also at many other companies that play a role in the distribution of websites.

These include search engines such as Google and Bing, DNS providers, operators of content delivery networks (CDNs) and resolvers such as Cloudflare, which are responsible for translating domain names into IP addresses, host providers such as Amazon Web Services, Hostinger and GoDaddy, as well as advertisers. Even payment service providers such as PayPal, Cash App and Alipay are included. The companies involved are obliged to remove the affected websites from search results, cease hosting and deactivate the domain names.

Fair use doctrine does not apply

The Open Library lends books on a "one book, one user" basis from – in a similar way to a traditional library. In contrast to commercial providers, the operator creates its own digital copies of the books instead of buying licenses. Publishers and authors argue that digitizing and lending protected content without their permission is illegal. They refer to a sensational US legal dispute that the Internet Archive lost.

The operator argued that its "controlled digital lending program" constituted lawful use on the basis of the US "fair use" doctrine. However, it was unable to prevail with this argument and has since had to remove around 500,000 books from its range due to the copyright lawsuit filed by major publishers.

In the Belgian legal dispute, the copyright holders describe the Open Library as a public portal where registered users can easily access and download their books. This includes around 1542 works from the publisher Dupuis and over 5000 volumes from Casterman. According to the publishers, the operators of the online library are not easy to identify, although the Internet Archive and its creators, such as Internet pioneer Brewster Kahle, are widely known. There is allegedly a lack of legally required information on the website. The rights holders see this as an indication that the platform is being operated illegally.

The Internet Archive was not heard

The Brussels court now agreed with the view of the applicants and their US counterparts and found a "clear and substantial infringement". The Belgian judges issued the blocking order without hearing representatives of the Internet Archive: The order was issued "ex parte", i.e. without informing or involving the second party.

At the moment, the Open Library is apparently still accessible from Belgium and is not actively blocked. A representative of the Internet Archive told Torrentfreak that he was not aware of any disruptions. Several domains of the four shadow libraries are already on the official blocking list of the responsible Belgian authority, but the web address of the Open Library is not yet listed. In view of the far-reaching order, it is to be expected that some of the included Internet intermediaries will appeal against it.

DNS resolvers increasingly under scrutiny

Traditional DNS blocking measures require local ISPs to make it more difficult for their customers to access illegal sites. Such measures are widespread worldwide, but are considered easy to circumvent. Recently, blocking requests have therefore increasingly been directed against other intermediaries such as DNS resolvers. Corresponding, highly controversial decrees are known from Germany, France and Italy, for example. The Zurich-based DNS service Quad9, for example, was forced to issue a global block against the portal Canna.to and a second domain in 2023. The reason: the Hamburg Regional Court threatened the DNS resolver with a fine of 10,000 euros in a dispute over access to download pages with copyrighted songs from Sony Music. However, the Dresden Higher Regional Court did not classify Quad9 as an offender shortly afterwards.

For some months now, relevant orders have also been issued against access providers and DNS resolvers in Belgium. This has triggered considerable resistance. Cisco, for example, discontinued its OpenDNS service in the country. Shadow libraries are also a thorn in the side of rights exploiters in this country: Vodafone, Telekom, 1&1 and Telefónica have been blocking their customers' access to Sci-Hub with DNS blocks since 2024. The measures are based on a recommendation from the private Copyright Clearing House on the Internet (CUII), which recently realigned itself.

(nen)