A trio of DMCA subpoena applications filed in the United States this week aim to extract any information held by three well-known internet companies, on potentially dozens of pirate site operators using their services.

The vast majority of the requests appear in a single DMCA subpoena targeting Cloudflare. Of the 52 main domains in that application, six also appear in another application directed at Tonic Corporation’s .to registry.

While .to domains are preferred by some operators due to the limited information requested by the registry when acquiring them, ACE/MPA file requests similar to the one below several times each year.

The final subpoena contains a single request for Zenlayer to offer up the personal details of whoever is behind the app MAGIS TV v7.1.2, which appears to serve movies direct from the company’s servers.

Stability vs. Mobility

In the DMCA subpoena above targeting Tonic, 1337x.to is easily recognized as the main domain of one of the most popular torrent sites online today, having been in use for well over a decade. The domain predates the launch of Google’s transparency report a decade ago, but since then has been targeted by at least 6.59 million URL takedown notices sent to Google alone.

For comparison, other domains mentioned in the subpoenas, including netmovies.to (2022) and 1hd.to (2023), have attracted relatively few takedown notices. Further examples, including Binged.to and Freek.to, only raised their heads above the parapet in the last quarter of 2024, and have barely received any at all.

That leaves freeky.to which appears to have attracted just four takedown notices – ever. As the data in the table below shows, traffic growth at some of these sites has been remarkable in the absence of significant pushback.

The data above begins in January but for Freek.to, December 2024 was an even more productive month; over 24 million visits according to SimilarWeb data, with less than 5% of its overall traffic attributed to organic search.

Time to Burn

With ACE/MPA now clearly on the case, future tactics should be interesting to watch. That being said, ACE has seen this same pattern of activity several times before. Sooner or later, the domains above will likely cease to exist, or at least, won’t present the problems they once did after their return to storage.

At that point, all eyes will be on the new rising stars of pirate streaming, having apparently appeared out of thin air but just in time to seamlessly scoop up a massive windfall of traffic.

The Rest of the Rest

Other domains listed in the DMCA subpoena include hydrahd.me, a domain that received 87.1m visits in January, 82.1m in February, and ‘just’ 54.7m in March. The domain hydrahd.cc also ‘lost’ significant traffic, falling from 2.57m in January to less than 1 million in March. Hydrahd.com started the year with 500K visits but by March had just 125K left.

Fortunately, hydrahd.ac performed significantly better; zero visits in January and February led to a healthy 21.3m in March. The reasons for the site returning an intermittent Error 451 (Unavailable for Legal Reasons) this week are currently unknown.

The rest of the domains can be found with additional data in the table below. How many will choose to self-destruct and/or hand themselves in for seamless recycling will probably become apparent in due course, at least among those with the strength, patience, and spare time to keep up.

Copies of the DMCA subpoena applications are available here ( 1 , 2 , 3 ,pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

A trio of DMCA subpoena applications filed in the United States this week aim to extract any information held by three well-known internet companies, on potentially dozens of pirate site operators using their services.

The vast majority of the requests appear in a single DMCA subpoena targeting Cloudflare. Of the 52 main domains in that application, six also appear in another application directed at Tonic Corporation’s .to registry.

While .to domains are preferred by some operators due to the limited information requested by the registry when acquiring them, ACE/MPA file requests similar to the one below several times each year.

The final subpoena contains a single request for Zenlayer to offer up the personal details of whoever is behind the app MAGIS TV v7.1.2, which appears to serve movies direct from the company’s servers.

Stability vs. Mobility

In the DMCA subpoena above targeting Tonic, 1337x.to is easily recognized as the main domain of one of the most popular torrent sites online today, having been in use for well over a decade. The domain predates the launch of Google’s transparency report a decade ago, but since then has been targeted by at least 6.59 million URL takedown notices sent to Google alone.

For comparison, other domains mentioned in the subpoenas, including netmovies.to (2022) and 1hd.to (2023), have attracted relatively few takedown notices. Further examples, including Binged.to and Freek.to, only raised their heads above the parapet in the last quarter of 2024, and have barely received any at all.

That leaves freeky.to which appears to have attracted just four takedown notices – ever. As the data in the table below shows, traffic growth at some of these sites has been remarkable in the absence of significant pushback.

The data above begins in January but for Freek.to, December 2024 was an even more productive month; over 24 million visits according to SimilarWeb data, with less than 5% of its overall traffic attributed to organic search.

Time to Burn

With ACE/MPA now clearly on the case, future tactics should be interesting to watch. That being said, ACE has seen this same pattern of activity several times before. Sooner or later, the domains above will likely cease to exist, or at least, won’t present the problems they once did after their return to storage.

At that point, all eyes will be on the new rising stars of pirate streaming, having apparently appeared out of thin air but just in time to seamlessly scoop up a massive windfall of traffic.

The Rest of the Rest

Other domains listed in the DMCA subpoena include hydrahd.me, a domain that received 87.1m visits in January, 82.1m in February, and ‘just’ 54.7m in March. The domain hydrahd.cc also ‘lost’ significant traffic, falling from 2.57m in January to less than 1 million in March. Hydrahd.com started the year with 500K visits but by March had just 125K left.

Fortunately, hydrahd.ac performed significantly better; zero visits in January and February led to a healthy 21.3m in March. The reasons for the site returning an intermittent Error 451 (Unavailable for Legal Reasons) this week are currently unknown.

The rest of the domains can be found with additional data in the table below. How many will choose to self-destruct and/or hand themselves in for seamless recycling will probably become apparent in due course, at least among those with the strength, patience, and spare time to keep up.

Copies of the DMCA subpoena applications are available here ( 1 , 2 , 3 ,pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

A trio of DMCA subpoena applications filed in the United States this week aim to extract any information held by three well-known internet companies, on potentially dozens of pirate site operators using their services.

The vast majority of the requests appear in a single DMCA subpoena targeting Cloudflare. Of the 52 main domains in that application, six also appear in another application directed at Tonic Corporation’s .to registry.

While .to domains are preferred by some operators due to the limited information requested by the registry when acquiring them, ACE/MPA file requests similar to the one below several times each year.

The final subpoena contains a single request for Zenlayer to offer up the personal details of whoever is behind the app MAGIS TV v7.1.2, which appears to serve movies direct from the company’s servers.

Stability vs. Mobility

In the DMCA subpoena above targeting Tonic, 1337x.to is easily recognized as the main domain of one of the most popular torrent sites online today, having been in use for well over a decade. The domain predates the launch of Google’s transparency report a decade ago, but since then has been targeted by at least 6.59 million URL takedown notices sent to Google alone.

For comparison, other domains mentioned in the subpoenas, including netmovies.to (2022) and 1hd.to (2023), have attracted relatively few takedown notices. Further examples, including Binged.to and Freek.to, only raised their heads above the parapet in the last quarter of 2024, and have barely received any at all.

That leaves freeky.to which appears to have attracted just four takedown notices – ever. As the data in the table below shows, traffic growth at some of these sites has been remarkable in the absence of significant pushback.

The data above begins in January but for Freek.to, December 2024 was an even more productive month; over 24 million visits according to SimilarWeb data, with less than 5% of its overall traffic attributed to organic search.

Time to Burn

With ACE/MPA now clearly on the case, future tactics should be interesting to watch. That being said, ACE has seen this same pattern of activity several times before. Sooner or later, the domains above will likely cease to exist, or at least, won’t present the problems they once did after their return to storage.

At that point, all eyes will be on the new rising stars of pirate streaming, having apparently appeared out of thin air but just in time to seamlessly scoop up a massive windfall of traffic.

The Rest of the Rest

Other domains listed in the DMCA subpoena include hydrahd.me, a domain that received 87.1m visits in January, 82.1m in February, and ‘just’ 54.7m in March. The domain hydrahd.cc also ‘lost’ significant traffic, falling from 2.57m in January to less than 1 million in March. Hydrahd.com started the year with 500K visits but by March had just 125K left.

Fortunately, hydrahd.ac performed significantly better; zero visits in January and February led to a healthy 21.3m in March. The reasons for the site returning an intermittent Error 451 (Unavailable for Legal Reasons) this week are currently unknown.

The rest of the domains can be found with additional data in the table below. How many will choose to self-destruct and/or hand themselves in for seamless recycling will probably become apparent in due course, at least among those with the strength, patience, and spare time to keep up.

Copies of the DMCA subpoena applications are available here ( 1 , 2 , 3 ,pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for shadow libraries that allows users to find pirated books and other related resources.

In late 2023, the search engine Anna’s Archive expanded its offering by making data from OCLC’s proprietary WorldCat database available online.

Anna’s Archive scraped several terabytes of data over the course of a year and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free.

These records contain no copyrighted books or articles. However, they can help to create a to-do list of all missing shadow library content on the web, with the ultimate goal of making as much content publicly available as possible.

OCLC Sued Anna’s Archive

This ‘metadata’ heist was a massive breakthrough in the quest to archive as much published content as possible online. However, OCLC responded with a lawsuit filed at an Ohio federal court, accusing the site and its operators of hacking and demanding damages.

The non-profit says that it spent more than a million dollars responding to Anna’s Archive’s alleged hacking efforts. Even then, it couldn’t prevent the data from being released through a torrent.

Following the alleged hacking efforts, OCLC attempted to identify the perpetrators. The investigation led them to Seattle resident Maria Dolores A. Matienzo, the sole named defendant in the case.

The complaint mentioned that Matienzo describes herself as an “archivist” and uses the handle “anarchivist” on social media and Github. The defendant was allegedly employed as a software engineer at an AI startup and previously worked as a catalog librarian at a direct competitor of OCLC.

Maria A. Denies Involvement

Responding to the allegations in court, Matienzo denied any involvement with Anna’s Archive.

“I am not affiliated in any way with Anna’s Archive and had no involvement in the alleged hacking and/or scraping of data from WorldCat.org that was allegedly orchestrated and carried out by Anna’s Archive,” Matienzo wrote.

In a motion to dismiss , Matienzo’s attorney wrote that there is no “shred of evidence” that links the defendant to the search engine, let alone any of the alleged hacking or scraping efforts.

As the case progressed, no other defendants were identified. OCLC moved for a default judgment against the ‘unnamed’ operators, while Matienzo’s motion to dismiss was pending. Last month, however, an Ohio federal judge slammed on the brakes .

In a detailed order, Judge Watson expressed uncertainty about the legality of large-scale data scraping under state law.

Citing this uncertainty, the judge denied OCLC’s request for default judgment against Anna’s Archive and denied Matienzo’s motion to dismiss without prejudice, pending clarification from the Supreme Court of Ohio, to which several core legal questions were referred.

Key Defendant Dropped From Lawsuit

Disappointed by the decision, OCLC asked the court to reconsider its position. It also requested the only named defendant to be dropped from the case, to focus on obtaining a final judgment against Anna’s Archive, which could help to get the associated domain names blocked.

The Ohio federal court initially denied the request over procedural issues, after which OCLC and Matienzo filed a joint motion this week, asking the court to drop the defendant from the case.

“At this juncture of the proceedings, OCLC and Matienzo have reached an agreement that Matienzo be dropped from this action. As a result, OCLC no longer seeks relief from Matienzo in this action,” the joint motion reads.

This request has yet to be approved by the court but with agreement from both sides, that’s likely just a formality. And because the defendant will be dropped ‘with prejudice’, similar claims can’t be refiled against her at a later stage.

From the public filings, it appears that OCLC has no idea who the real operators of Anna’s Archive are. There sure are plenty of archivists named Anna , but ideally, they need something more than association by name.

Instant update: The motion to dismiss Matienzo from the case was granted .

—

A copy of the joint motion to drop defendant Maria Matienzo from the lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for shadow libraries that allows users to find pirated books and other related resources.

In late 2023, the search engine Anna’s Archive expanded its offering by making data from OCLC’s proprietary WorldCat database available online.

Anna’s Archive scraped several terabytes of data over the course of a year and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free.

These records contain no copyrighted books or articles. However, they can help to create a to-do list of all missing shadow library content on the web, with the ultimate goal of making as much content publicly available as possible.

OCLC Sued Anna’s Archive

This ‘metadata’ heist was a massive breakthrough in the quest to archive as much published content as possible online. However, OCLC responded with a lawsuit filed at an Ohio federal court, accusing the site and its operators of hacking and demanding damages.

The non-profit says that it spent more than a million dollars responding to Anna’s Archive’s alleged hacking efforts. Even then, it couldn’t prevent the data from being released through a torrent.

Following the alleged hacking efforts, OCLC attempted to identify the perpetrators. The investigation led them to Seattle resident Maria Dolores A. Matienzo, the sole named defendant in the case.

The complaint mentioned that Matienzo describes herself as an “archivist” and uses the handle “anarchivist” on social media and Github. The defendant was allegedly employed as a software engineer at an AI startup and previously worked as a catalog librarian at a direct competitor of OCLC.

Maria A. Denies Involvement

Responding to the allegations in court, Matienzo denied any involvement with Anna’s Archive.

“I am not affiliated in any way with Anna’s Archive and had no involvement in the alleged hacking and/or scraping of data from WorldCat.org that was allegedly orchestrated and carried out by Anna’s Archive,” Matienzo wrote.

In a motion to dismiss , Matienzo’s attorney wrote that there is no “shred of evidence” that links the defendant to the search engine, let alone any of the alleged hacking or scraping efforts.

As the case progressed, no other defendants were identified. OCLC moved for a default judgment against the ‘unnamed’ operators, while Matienzo’s motion to dismiss was pending. Last month, however, an Ohio federal judge slammed on the brakes .

In a detailed order, Judge Watson expressed uncertainty about the legality of large-scale data scraping under state law.

Citing this uncertainty, the judge denied OCLC’s request for default judgment against Anna’s Archive and denied Matienzo’s motion to dismiss without prejudice, pending clarification from the Supreme Court of Ohio, to which several core legal questions were referred.

Key Defendant Dropped From Lawsuit

Disappointed by the decision, OCLC asked the court to reconsider its position. It also requested the only named defendant to be dropped from the case, to focus on obtaining a final judgment against Anna’s Archive, which could help to get the associated domain names blocked.

The Ohio federal court initially denied the request over procedural issues, after which OCLC and Matienzo filed a joint motion this week, asking the court to drop the defendant from the case.

“At this juncture of the proceedings, OCLC and Matienzo have reached an agreement that Matienzo be dropped from this action. As a result, OCLC no longer seeks relief from Matienzo in this action,” the joint motion reads.

This request has yet to be approved by the court but with agreement from both sides, that’s likely just a formality. And because the defendant will be dropped ‘with prejudice’, similar claims can’t be refiled against her at a later stage.

From the public filings, it appears that OCLC has no idea who the real operators of Anna’s Archive are. There sure are plenty of archivists named Anna , but ideally, they need something more than association by name.

Instant update: The motion to dismiss Matienzo from the case was granted .

—

A copy of the joint motion to drop defendant Maria Matienzo from the lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for shadow libraries that allows users to find pirated books and other related resources.

In late 2023, the search engine Anna’s Archive expanded its offering by making data from OCLC’s proprietary WorldCat database available online.

Anna’s Archive scraped several terabytes of data over the course of a year and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free.

These records contain no copyrighted books or articles. However, they can help to create a to-do list of all missing shadow library content on the web, with the ultimate goal of making as much content publicly available as possible.

OCLC Sued Anna’s Archive

This ‘metadata’ heist was a massive breakthrough in the quest to archive as much published content as possible online. However, OCLC responded with a lawsuit filed at an Ohio federal court, accusing the site and its operators of hacking and demanding damages.

The non-profit says that it spent more than a million dollars responding to Anna’s Archive’s alleged hacking efforts. Even then, it couldn’t prevent the data from being released through a torrent.

Following the alleged hacking efforts, OCLC attempted to identify the perpetrators. The investigation led them to Seattle resident Maria Dolores A. Matienzo, the sole named defendant in the case.

The complaint mentioned that Matienzo describes herself as an “archivist” and uses the handle “anarchivist” on social media and Github. The defendant was allegedly employed as a software engineer at an AI startup and previously worked as a catalog librarian at a direct competitor of OCLC.

Maria A. Denies Involvement

Responding to the allegations in court, Matienzo denied any involvement with Anna’s Archive.

“I am not affiliated in any way with Anna’s Archive and had no involvement in the alleged hacking and/or scraping of data from WorldCat.org that was allegedly orchestrated and carried out by Anna’s Archive,” Matienzo wrote.

In a motion to dismiss , Matienzo’s attorney wrote that there is no “shred of evidence” that links the defendant to the search engine, let alone any of the alleged hacking or scraping efforts.

As the case progressed, no other defendants were identified. OCLC moved for a default judgment against the ‘unnamed’ operators, while Matienzo’s motion to dismiss was pending. Last month, however, an Ohio federal judge slammed on the brakes .

In a detailed order, Judge Watson expressed uncertainty about the legality of large-scale data scraping under state law.

Citing this uncertainty, the judge denied OCLC’s request for default judgment against Anna’s Archive and denied Matienzo’s motion to dismiss without prejudice, pending clarification from the Supreme Court of Ohio, to which several core legal questions were referred.

Key Defendant Dropped From Lawsuit

Disappointed by the decision, OCLC asked the court to reconsider its position. It also requested the only named defendant to be dropped from the case, to focus on obtaining a final judgment against Anna’s Archive, which could help to get the associated domain names blocked.

The Ohio federal court initially denied the request over procedural issues, after which OCLC and Matienzo filed a joint motion this week, asking the court to drop the defendant from the case.

“At this juncture of the proceedings, OCLC and Matienzo have reached an agreement that Matienzo be dropped from this action. As a result, OCLC no longer seeks relief from Matienzo in this action,” the joint motion reads.

This request has yet to be approved by the court but with agreement from both sides, that’s likely just a formality. And because the defendant will be dropped ‘with prejudice’, similar claims can’t be refiled against her at a later stage.

From the public filings, it appears that OCLC has no idea who the real operators of Anna’s Archive are. There sure are plenty of archivists named Anna , but ideally, they need something more than association by name.

Instant update: The motion to dismiss Matienzo from the case was granted .

—

A copy of the joint motion to drop defendant Maria Matienzo from the lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Without assurances that hosts, domain registries, registrars, DNS providers, and consumer ISPs would not be immediately held liable for internet users’ activities, investing in the growth of the early internet may have proven less attractive.

Of course, not being held immediately liable is a far cry from not being held liable at all. After years of relatively plain sailing, multiple ISPs in the United States are currently embroiled in multi-multi million dollar lawsuits for not policing infringing users. In Europe, countries including Italy and France have introduced legislation to ensure that if online services facilitate or assist piracy in any way, they can be compelled by law to help tackle it.

DNS Under Pressure

Given their critical role online, and the fact that not a single byte of infringing content has ever touched their services, some believed that DNS providers would be among the last services to be put under pressure.

After Sony sued Quad9 and wider discussions opened up soon after, in 2023 Canal+ used French law to target DNS providers . Last year, Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco were ordered to prevent their services from translating domain names into IP addresses used by dozens of sports piracy sites.

While all three companies objected, it’s understood that Cloudflare and Google eventually complied with the order. Cisco’s compliance was also achieved, albeit by its unexpected decision to suspend access to its DNS service for the whole of France and the overseas territories listed in the order.

So Long France, Goodbye Belgium

Another court order obtained by DAZN at the end of March followed a similar pattern.

Handed down by a court in Belgium, it compels the same three DNS providers to cease returning IP addresses when internet users provide the domain names of around 100 pirate sports streaming sites.

At last count those sites were linked to over 130 domain names which in its role as a search engine operator, Google was also ordered to deindex from search results.

During the evening of April 5, Belgian media reported that a major blocking campaign was underway to protect content licensed by DAZN and 12th Player, most likely football matches from Belgium’s Pro League. DAZN described the action as the “the first of its kind” and a “real step forward” in the fight against content piracy. Google and Cloudflare’s participation was not confirmed, but it seems likely that Cisco was not involved all.

In a very short statement posted to the Cisco community forum, employee tom1 announced that effective April 11, 2025, OpenDNS will no longer be accessible to users in Belgium due to a court order. The nature of the order isn’t clarified, but it almost certainly refers to the order obtained by DAZN.

Cisco’s suspension of OpenDNS in Belgium mirrors its response to a similar court order in France. Both statements were delivered without fanfare which may suggest that the company prefers not to be seen as taking a stand. In reality, Cisco’s reasons are currently unknown and that has provoked some interesting comments from users on the Cisco community forum.

Possible Motivation to Exit

Whether the rightsholders requested it, or the Judge simply thought it was appropriate, is still unclear, but the blocking order has a sting in its tail for non-compliance. Believed to be targeted at Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco – but not Belgian ISPs also required to comply with its terms – the order warns of penalties of €100,000 for each day of non-compliance. A user on Cisco’s forum felt that compliance shouldn’t be a problem.

“The court is very specific what needs to be blocked (130 pirate sports streaming domains and five illegal IPTV platforms). Blocking DNS requests based on domain categorization is at the core of the service of OpenDNS. There is nothing stating that OpenDNS should stop its services in Belgium,” Wiggum wrote .

“So why isn’t OpenDNS complying to this ruling? Instead, by pulling out of [Belgium], the Internet becomes less safe for those making use of it.”

While these are valid points, without the order being made available to the public, the definition of “non-compliance” is an unknown factor with potential to tip the scales. €100,000 per day is an awful lot of money for failing to deal with alleged copyright infringement over which the company has zero visibility.

Compliance is an Ongoing Commitment

The second and most critical factor is the assumption that blocking 130 domains is the end of Cisco’s obligations. The blocking order is dynamic, meaning that DAZN can and will add additional domains to the block list whenever that’s required. On the basis that blocking new domains quickly is the main goal of dynamic blocking, it’s at least possible that Cisco preferred an exit rather than a ruinous penalty hanging over its head.

Speculation, of course, but with no such penalties directed at the pirate sites themselves, it’s not difficult to see why being held liable may not sit well with intermediaries distant from any potential infringement.

For those who until recently were simply going about their daily business, blindly directing overwhelmingly legal internet traffic, perhaps the mandatory police uniform didn’t fit or sit well.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Without assurances that hosts, domain registries, registrars, DNS providers, and consumer ISPs would not be immediately held liable for internet users’ activities, investing in the growth of the early internet may have proven less attractive.

Of course, not being held immediately liable is a far cry from not being held liable at all. After years of relatively plain sailing, multiple ISPs in the United States are currently embroiled in multi-multi million dollar lawsuits for not policing infringing users. In Europe, countries including Italy and France have introduced legislation to ensure that if online services facilitate or assist piracy in any way, they can be compelled by law to help tackle it.

DNS Under Pressure

Given their critical role online, and the fact that not a single byte of infringing content has ever touched their services, some believed that DNS providers would be among the last services to be put under pressure.

After Sony sued Quad9 and wider discussions opened up soon after, in 2023 Canal+ used French law to target DNS providers . Last year, Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco were ordered to prevent their services from translating domain names into IP addresses used by dozens of sports piracy sites.

While all three companies objected, it’s understood that Cloudflare and Google eventually complied with the order. Cisco’s compliance was also achieved, albeit by its unexpected decision to suspend access to its DNS service for the whole of France and the overseas territories listed in the order.

So Long France, Goodbye Belgium

Another court order obtained by DAZN at the end of March followed a similar pattern.

Handed down by a court in Belgium, it compels the same three DNS providers to cease returning IP addresses when internet users provide the domain names of around 100 pirate sports streaming sites.

At last count those sites were linked to over 130 domain names which in its role as a search engine operator, Google was also ordered to deindex from search results.

During the evening of April 5, Belgian media reported that a major blocking campaign was underway to protect content licensed by DAZN and 12th Player, most likely football matches from Belgium’s Pro League. DAZN described the action as the “the first of its kind” and a “real step forward” in the fight against content piracy. Google and Cloudflare’s participation was not confirmed, but it seems likely that Cisco was not involved all.

In a very short statement posted to the Cisco community forum, employee tom1 announced that effective April 11, 2025, OpenDNS will no longer be accessible to users in Belgium due to a court order. The nature of the order isn’t clarified, but it almost certainly refers to the order obtained by DAZN.

Cisco’s suspension of OpenDNS in Belgium mirrors its response to a similar court order in France. Both statements were delivered without fanfare which may suggest that the company prefers not to be seen as taking a stand. In reality, Cisco’s reasons are currently unknown and that has provoked some interesting comments from users on the Cisco community forum.

Possible Motivation to Exit

Whether the rightsholders requested it, or the Judge simply thought it was appropriate, is still unclear, but the blocking order has a sting in its tail for non-compliance. Believed to be targeted at Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco – but not Belgian ISPs also required to comply with its terms – the order warns of penalties of €100,000 for each day of non-compliance. A user on Cisco’s forum felt that compliance shouldn’t be a problem.

“The court is very specific what needs to be blocked (130 pirate sports streaming domains and five illegal IPTV platforms). Blocking DNS requests based on domain categorization is at the core of the service of OpenDNS. There is nothing stating that OpenDNS should stop its services in Belgium,” Wiggum wrote .

“So why isn’t OpenDNS complying to this ruling? Instead, by pulling out of [Belgium], the Internet becomes less safe for those making use of it.”

While these are valid points, without the order being made available to the public, the definition of “non-compliance” is an unknown factor with potential to tip the scales. €100,000 per day is an awful lot of money for failing to deal with alleged copyright infringement over which the company has zero visibility.

Compliance is an Ongoing Commitment

The second and most critical factor is the assumption that blocking 130 domains is the end of Cisco’s obligations. The blocking order is dynamic, meaning that DAZN can and will add additional domains to the block list whenever that’s required. On the basis that blocking new domains quickly is the main goal of dynamic blocking, it’s at least possible that Cisco preferred an exit rather than a ruinous penalty hanging over its head.

Speculation, of course, but with no such penalties directed at the pirate sites themselves, it’s not difficult to see why being held liable may not sit well with intermediaries distant from any potential infringement.

For those who until recently were simply going about their daily business, blindly directing overwhelmingly legal internet traffic, perhaps the mandatory police uniform didn’t fit or sit well.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Without assurances that hosts, domain registries, registrars, DNS providers, and consumer ISPs would not be immediately held liable for internet users’ activities, investing in the growth of the early internet may have proven less attractive.

Of course, not being held immediately liable is a far cry from not being held liable at all. After years of relatively plain sailing, multiple ISPs in the United States are currently embroiled in multi-multi million dollar lawsuits for not policing infringing users. In Europe, countries including Italy and France have introduced legislation to ensure that if online services facilitate or assist piracy in any way, they can be compelled by law to help tackle it.

DNS Under Pressure

Given their critical role online, and the fact that not a single byte of infringing content has ever touched their services, some believed that DNS providers would be among the last services to be put under pressure.

After Sony sued Quad9 and wider discussions opened up soon after, in 2023 Canal+ used French law to target DNS providers . Last year, Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco were ordered to prevent their services from translating domain names into IP addresses used by dozens of sports piracy sites.

While all three companies objected, it’s understood that Cloudflare and Google eventually complied with the order. Cisco’s compliance was also achieved, albeit by its unexpected decision to suspend access to its DNS service for the whole of France and the overseas territories listed in the order.

So Long France, Goodbye Belgium

Another court order obtained by DAZN at the end of March followed a similar pattern.

Handed down by a court in Belgium, it compels the same three DNS providers to cease returning IP addresses when internet users provide the domain names of around 100 pirate sports streaming sites.

At last count those sites were linked to over 130 domain names which in its role as a search engine operator, Google was also ordered to deindex from search results.

During the evening of April 5, Belgian media reported that a major blocking campaign was underway to protect content licensed by DAZN and 12th Player, most likely football matches from Belgium’s Pro League. DAZN described the action as the “the first of its kind” and a “real step forward” in the fight against content piracy. Google and Cloudflare’s participation was not confirmed, but it seems likely that Cisco was not involved all.

In a very short statement posted to the Cisco community forum, employee tom1 announced that effective April 11, 2025, OpenDNS will no longer be accessible to users in Belgium due to a court order. The nature of the order isn’t clarified, but it almost certainly refers to the order obtained by DAZN.

Cisco’s suspension of OpenDNS in Belgium mirrors its response to a similar court order in France. Both statements were delivered without fanfare which may suggest that the company prefers not to be seen as taking a stand. In reality, Cisco’s reasons are currently unknown and that has provoked some interesting comments from users on the Cisco community forum.

Possible Motivation to Exit

Whether the rightsholders requested it, or the Judge simply thought it was appropriate, is still unclear, but the blocking order has a sting in its tail for non-compliance. Believed to be targeted at Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco – but not Belgian ISPs also required to comply with its terms – the order warns of penalties of €100,000 for each day of non-compliance. A user on Cisco’s forum felt that compliance shouldn’t be a problem.

“The court is very specific what needs to be blocked (130 pirate sports streaming domains and five illegal IPTV platforms). Blocking DNS requests based on domain categorization is at the core of the service of OpenDNS. There is nothing stating that OpenDNS should stop its services in Belgium,” Wiggum wrote .

“So why isn’t OpenDNS complying to this ruling? Instead, by pulling out of [Belgium], the Internet becomes less safe for those making use of it.”

While these are valid points, without the order being made available to the public, the definition of “non-compliance” is an unknown factor with potential to tip the scales. €100,000 per day is an awful lot of money for failing to deal with alleged copyright infringement over which the company has zero visibility.

Compliance is an Ongoing Commitment

The second and most critical factor is the assumption that blocking 130 domains is the end of Cisco’s obligations. The blocking order is dynamic, meaning that DAZN can and will add additional domains to the block list whenever that’s required. On the basis that blocking new domains quickly is the main goal of dynamic blocking, it’s at least possible that Cisco preferred an exit rather than a ruinous penalty hanging over its head.

Speculation, of course, but with no such penalties directed at the pirate sites themselves, it’s not difficult to see why being held liable may not sit well with intermediaries distant from any potential infringement.

For those who until recently were simply going about their daily business, blindly directing overwhelmingly legal internet traffic, perhaps the mandatory police uniform didn’t fit or sit well.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.