Belgian authorities have stepped up their efforts to combat digital piracy by issuing broad demands to European domain registrars, compelling them to provide financial reports, cryptocurrency wallet data, and technical logs related to alleged operators of pirate websites.
According to a local report, these directives were issued by the Belgian Department for Online Infringements on the orders of the French-language Brussels Enterprise Court. Unlike standard enforcement measures aimed at blocking websites at the domain level, the new orders require domain registrars and registries to disclose comprehensive identification data of the site operators.
The requested information includes full names, physical addresses, phone numbers, financial documentation—such as full IBAN details and credit card data—as well as cryptocurrency wallet addresses along with transaction hashes.
Registrars are also required to provide connection logs for up to 12 months, device information, and IP addresses associated with the target users' accounts. The documents published by the department conceal the identity of the rightsholders who made the requests, as well as the names of the targeted websites. However, the court's reasoning, which mentions the need to protect the 'sports economy,' suggests that the investigation is focused on illegal sports streaming networks.
While the names of most intermediaries were redacted, three EU-based registrars were named in the text of the published rulings: Hosting Concepts, Hostinger, and Key Systems.
Non-Disclosure Prohibitions
Under the terms stipulated in the court order, the registrars subject to the rulings are bound by a strict non-disclosure prohibition, forbidding them from notifying account holders, third parties, or the public about the ongoing proceedings. Officials cited provisions of the European Union's Digital Services Act, which allow for exceptions to standard user notification requirements in the case of criminal investigations.
The authorities stated that the scope of the legal measures applies to any service provider available in Belgian territory, although legal experts note that cross-border enforcement against entities based outside of Belgium under this legislative framework has not yet been tested in practice.
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