In a brief statement citing a court order in Belgium but providing no other details, Cisco says that its OpenDNS service is no longer available to users in Belgium. Cisco’s withdrawal is almost certainly linked to an IPTV piracy blocking order obtained by DAZN; itt requires OpenDNS, Cloudflare and Google to block over 100 pirate sites or face fines of €100,000 euros per day. Just recently, Cisco withdrew from France over a similar order.
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.
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Source: OpenDNS Quits Belgium Under Threat of Piracy Blocks or Fines of €100K Per Day * TorrentFreak
Yup the copyrights holders are again blocking human progress on a massive scale and corrupt politicians are creating rules that allow them to pillage whilst holding us back.
Robin Edgar
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