Annual Report 2025

The BREIN Foundation provides collective protection of copyright and related rights for creators, performing artists and the creative media industry, including producers, publishers, broadcasters, distributors and platforms. Associated with BREIN are around thirty sector-specific and collective management organisations and their members, together representing thousands of companies and creators in the fields of music, films, series, books, written works, visual media and games.

With a track record spanning more than twenty-five years, over a hundred civil court judgments, thousands of websites taken offline and countless infringers held to account, BREIN plays a key role in the enforcement of anti-piracy measures in the Netherlands. This led in 2025 to BREIN being officially designated by the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) as a Trusted Flagger under the Digital Services Act (DSA). In the last quarter, BREIN began sending notices to platforms in this capacity.

BREIN shut down a record number of IPTV sellers and websites. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come to play an increasingly significant role within the organisation. BREIN conducted extensive research into infringing datasets used to train generative AI models and into unlawful AI models, and successfully completed its first AI investigations. BREIN assisted in one of the largest operations against illegal vinyl on Dutch soil ever.

BREIN obtained new blocking orders; on average, over 500 domain names were blocked in 2025 on the basis of civil court judgments against Dutch internet access providers (IAPs).

This report first provides an overview of the enforcement actions carried out in 2025, followed by a more in-depth discussion of certain topics that received particular attention during the past year.

N u m b e r s

In 2025, BREIN carried out the enforcement actions listed below. Unless otherwise stated, these actions relate to music, video (films and series), books, written works, images and games.

The numbers below also include ‘Trusted Flagger’ reports from the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2025. BREIN has previously reported on these specific reports to the ACM, and this report can be found here on the BREIN website.

• 861 cases completed

• 188 investigations completed

• 828 illegal sites/services/platforms shut down

• 303 unique domains, 13 platforms, 8 IP addresses dynamically blocked

• 402 illegal websites completely removed from search results by Google

• 673 proxies/mirrors shut down

• 50 illegal IPTV/VOD subscription traders shut down

• 42 streaming sites taken offline

• 3 major uploaders, administrators and/or scripters investigated and stopped

• 189,212 Google search results removed

• 5,126 interventions resulting in the removal of online advertisements for illegal offerings

• 58 settlements, including 26 ‘knock & talks’

• 2 ex parte court orders obtained

• 26 online cases relating to physical media resolved

• 7 inspections carried out at record fair

• 29 .nl domain names suspended