The Flemish Publishers’ director says, ‘You cannot steal publications and use them for your own gain and commercial purposes.’

By Jarosław Adamowksi | @JaroslawAdamows

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‘Deliberate Theft and Copyright Infringement’

In an ongoing battle with pirated content sites, a group of Belgian publishers’ and authors’ organizations have obtained an order from the Brussels Business Court ( the “Enterprise Court”) that blocks access to five such sites.

As was reported on August 1 by Ernesto Van der Sar at TorrentFreak, “The Business Court in Brussels has issued a broad site-blocking order that aims to restrict access to shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, LibGen, OceanofPDF, Z-Library, and the Internet Archive‘s Open Library. In addition to ISP blocks, the order also directs search engines, DNS resolvers, advertisers, domain name services, content delivery networks, and hosting companies to take action.”

The effort was initiated by seven organizations, including the Flemish Publishers Association—Groep Algemene Uitgevers (GAU), a full member-organization of the International Publishers Association (IPA)—as well as the Association of Belgian Publishers and the Association of Flemish Authors. The latter two organizations represent the Flanders region of Belgium, in which the majority of the country’s Flemish-Dutch speaking population is located.

Niels Famaey, since January the director of the Flemish Publishers Association, tells Publishing Perspectives that, as in many world markets, Belgian publishers are aggressively confronted with piracy. And the legal approach being used in Belgium targets the various Internet service providers, directing them to block access to known piracy sites.

“While it’s now well understood that major AI companies—from Microsoft to Google to OpenAI—have collected and used copies of copyright-protected content to train generative AI [large language models] without permission from the relevant rights holders,” Famaey says, “it has become clear that the majority of the content is sourced from pirate sites.”

He says the assistance of Big Tech companies in facilitating access to pirated works is a major headache for Belgium’s publishing industry players. He’s also very clear on the connection between generative AI copyright infringement and pirated content sites.

“That’s the real thorn in our side,” Famaey says, “because those companies operate on a much larger scale. Meta has even explicitly admitted that they train, or have trained, their AI systems with illegal piracy sites. That is simply deliberate theft and copyright infringement.

“These AI tools are gradually replacing the classic search engines,” he says, “and provide readymade answers trained on insights from experts who have made them public in books and other protected media.”

‘We Ask Three Things’

The publishers’ association’s position, aligned with sister media associations and copyright law organizations, is that they demand equal and just treatment from those who want to use, and potentially benefit from, Belgian literary works, Famaey says.

“Illegal sites are constantly moving and are elusive. But letting it take its course makes no sense. It’s like the war on drugs, you have to do something, but seeing the result is difficult.”Niels Famaey, Flemish Publishers Association

“We ask three things,” he says. One, that they obtain permission to use our publications. Two, transparency in the final use. And three, a fair and equitable remuneration for the use of copyrighted works.

“That’s also our position toward the European Union and the code of conduct for the European AI Act,” he says. “There’s no reason why tech companies should be allowed to use that content free of charge at the expense of media companies. The money is there. Is it greed or arrogance?”

Asked about the impact of the recent court order on the ongoing fight against pirated book sites, Famaey says it is mainly symbolic, but sends a strong signal to the Big Tech companies.

“You cannot steal publications unchallenged and use them for your own gain and commercial purposes,” he says. “Not even via privacy sites. It’s unethical and a crime. It’s good that that’s in black-and-white now. It’s our first, and late, building block in the fight against this type of crime.

“Illegal sites are constantly moving and are elusive. But letting it take its course makes no sense. It’s like the war on drugs, you have to do something, but seeing the result is difficult. In addition to condemning piracy sites, we therefore focus on the responsibility of the providers: We ask them to block access to those sites.”

A GfK report on the global book sales in 2024 indicates that, last year, Belgium’s printed book sales totaled some 29.8 million copies. Of these, some 16.4 million copies were sold in Flanders, which represented a 2.5-percent decrease year-on-year, and 13.4 million in the country’s French-speaking region of Wallonia, down 2.5 percent compared with a year earlier, according to data from the report. The study is based on physical point-of-sale data from 2024.

Based in Antwerp, the Flemish Publishers’ Association says the organization and its members are represented at Europe’s major book industry events, including Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 15 to 19), London Book Fair (March 10 to 12), and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair (April 13 to 16).

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More from Publishing Perspectives on the Belgian book industry and market is here, more on book piracy is here, and more publishing news from Europe is here.

Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.

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