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Upholding the request of issuing a permanent blocking order for the primary domain name “thepiratebay.org” and other domain names redirecting to this primary domain name. This criminal proceeding was initiated by a public prosecutor after additional domain names directing to ThePirateBay website, other than those blocked under the civil ruling of September 26, 2011, were registered and put back online. The Court of Appeal upheld the decision issued by the court of first instance. The district court decision upheld a preliminary injunction ordering that all the Belgian Internet operators and distributors must block access to the content hosted by servers linked to the primary domain name "thepiratebay.org" and their IP address 194.71.107.50 and 194.71.107.15, in particular "by employing all possible technical means at...

(1) SABAM, the largest Belgian collective management organisation (CMO), sought to obtain the payment of a copyright levy from Belgian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for communicating to the public its repertoire. SABAM claimed that ISPs communicate to the public its repertoire without authorisation. SABAM demanded 3.4 percent of the ISPs' annual user subscription fees as a compensation for piracy committed by the ISPs' users. (2) As requested by law, SABAM informed the Economic Federal Public Service (SPF Economie), the administrative authority in charge of overseeing CMOs' activities, about its request to the ISPs. The SPF Economie issued a negative opinion regarding SABAM's proposed levy. After some inconclusive negotiations and an initial action started by SABAM against the ISPs but rejected on procedural...

TheCourt found that Facebook’s practice of tracking non-users of Facebook’s surfing history through social plugins, even when the user was not accessing Facebook, violated the Belgian Data Protection Law. The proceeding follows a formal recommendation from the Belgian Privacy Commission requesting Facebook to cease the tracking of non-users. The court imposed a penalty of EUR 250,000 per day for non-compliance. See also Columbia GFE and here

The Supreme Court reviewed the application of the exemptions from liability established in the e-commerce Directive, as implemented by Article 20 of Law of March, 11 2003 related to certain aspects of services of the information society. The exemptions would cover over only cases where the activity of the information society service provider is (i) limited to the technical process of operating and giving access to a communication network (ii) over which information made available by third parties is transmitted or temporarily stored, (iii) for the sole purpose of making the transmission more efficient. (iv) This activity must be of a mere technical, automatic and passive nature, which implies that the information society service provider has neither knowledge of nor control over the information which is transmitted or...

The Belgian Supreme Court upheld an appelate decision holding that it is not possible for rightsholders or any other interested party to obtain from an hosting provider certain information to identify alleged copyright infringers on the basis of Article 21, § 2 of the Law of March 11, 2003 on certain services of the information society. This provision only allows judicial or administrative authorities to obtain these information (name of the client, his geographical situation, etc.) from a hosting provider in order to look for possible violation of the Law.