Summary
Article on the judgment of the Belgian Court of Cassation of 22 October 2013 in the Pirate Bay saga. In a criminal investigation for copyright infringement, an examining magistrate had ordered all Belgian internet service providers to block access to every domain name pointing to The Pirate Bay server. The Court confirmed the order, holding that it was not contrary to Article 52 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights or to the prohibition of general monitoring obligations in Article 15 of the E-Commerce Directive, and refused to refer questions to the CJEU. The article recalls the earlier civil proceedings and discusses the reach of such dynamic blocking orders.
Reference
H. Haouideg, "The Belgian Supreme Court confirms that ISPs may be ordered to block access to all domain names pointing to an infringing website", E-Commerce Law Reports, 2014, vol. 14, issue 1.