Brussels Court Upholds DAZN's DNS Blocking Order Against Google, Cloudflare, Cisco
The ruling extends Belgium's pirate-site blocking regime from internet service providers to the public DNS resolvers that sit underneath them, and three of the largest resolver operators have now been told that blocking domains on their systems is technically feasible and not disproportionately costly.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco lost their appeal against a Belgian court order requiring them to block pirate sports streaming domains. The president of the Brussels Dutch-speaking Commercial Court dismissed the core parts of the appeals on August 20, 2026, while revoking part of the 2025 order. The DNS blocking obligation stands, and the court found the companies could not prove the costs were disproportionate.
The order dates to April 2025, when DAZN and the soccer broadcaster 12th Player ran a campaign with Belgian internet service providers against more than 100 illegal streaming services and IPTV providers. That blocking order required Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco to make over 130 domains unreachable, with a fine of 100,000 euros per day for non-compliance.
The three companies complied in different ways. Cisco withdrew OpenDNS from Belgium entirely. Google refused DNS queries for the targeted domains. Cloudflare redirected users in countries with blocking orders to an error page. All three objected, and the court dismissed the core parts of those appeals.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.