The Business Court in Brussels, Belgium, has issued a broad site-blocking order that aims to restrict access to shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Libgen, OceanofPDF, Z-Library, and the Internet Archive’s Open Library. In addition to ISP blocks, the order also directs search engines, DNS resolvers, advertisers, domain name services, CDNs and hosting companies to take action. For now, Open Library doesn’t appear to be actively blocked.
Traditional site-blocking measures that require local ISPs to block subscriber access to popular pirate sites are in common use around the world.
Note: this article was updated to add that Open Library does not appear to be actively blocked. More details here.
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A few months ago DNS blocking arrived in Belgium, where several orders required both ISPs and DNS resolvers to restrict access to pirate sites. This prompted significant pushback, most notably Cisco’s OpenDNS ceasing operations in the country.
Broad Blocking Order Targets Internet Archive’s ‘Open Library’
A new order, issued by the Brussels Business Court in mid-July, targets an even broader set of intermediaries and stands out for other reasons as well.
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Open Library was created by the late Aaron Swartz and Internet Archive’s founder Brewster Kahle, among others. As an open library its goal is to archive all published books, allowing patrons to borrow copies of them online.
The library aims to operate similarly to other libraries, loaning only one copy per book at a time. Instead of licensing digital copies, however, it has an in-house scanning operation to create and archive its own copies.
Open Library 
The Open Library project was previously sued by publishers in the United States, where the Internet Archive ultimately losing the case. As a result, over 500,000 books were made unavailable.
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According to the publishers, the operators of the Open Library are not easily identified, while legally required information is allegedly missing from the site, which they see as an indication that the site is meant to operate illegally.
This description seems at odds with the fact that Open Library is part of the Internet Archive, which is a U.S.-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit.
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Internet Archive was not heard in this case, as the blocking order was issued ex parte, without its knowledge. This is remarkable, as the organization is a legal entity in the United States, which receives support from many American libraries.
The broad nature of the order doesn’t stop there either. In addition to requiring ISPs, including Elon Musk’s Starlink, to block the library’s domain names, it also directs a broad range of other intermediaries to take action.
This includes search engines, DNS resolvers, advertisers, domain name services, CDNs, and hosting companies. An abbreviated overview of the requested measures is as follows;
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Update: After publication, a representative from Internet Archive informed us that they are not aware of any disruption to their services at this time.
The Open Library domain (openlibrary.org) doesn’t appear on the master blacklist of FOD Economie either, while several domains of the other four ‘target sites’ are included. We have reached out to the responsible authority in Belgium to get clarification on this discrepancy and will update the article if we hear back.
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A copy of the order from the Business Court in Brussels (in Dutch) is available here (pdf)
So this decision is totally unenforceable by Belgium, but does show how corrupt and in the pocket of big businesses the system in Belgium actually is.
Robin Edgar
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