Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs–and They Have No Idea What They're Doing

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/01/lawmakers-want-to-ban-vpns-and-they-have-no-idea-what-theyre-doing/

by speckx • 8 months ago

101 21 8 months ago

[dupe] This is a syndication of original EFF article with lots of discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45924483

TZubiri6• 8 months ago

Ironically, I can't access the cited bills, possibly because I', not within the States: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2025/proposals/reg/asm/bill...

I wanted to double check that the bill "demands that websites block VPN users from Wisconsin", as opposed to "demand that adult sites hosted in Wisconsin block VPN users in general" or "demand that Wisconsin VPN providers or Wisconsin/US compliant providers block websites according to the registered user's location rather than their proxy location".

The details are important, and I don't trust that either "the lawmakers are idiots", or that treating the opposition as idiots is productive in general. Laymen, and legally trained laymen have just as much say in technical matters as technical folk. Lest we setup the feared technocracy...

sudobash1• 8 months ago

From the bill summary:

The bill also requires a business entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the Internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material to prevent persons from accessing the website from an internet protocol address or internet protocol address range that is linked to or known to be a virtual private network system or provider.

Later:

A business entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the Internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall prevent persons from accessing the website from an internet protocol address or internet protocol address range that is linked to or known to be a virtual private network system or virtual private network provider.

No mention is given to where the business is located.

TZubiri6• 8 months ago

Thank you!

It looks like the interpretation of the article is quite incorrect, there is no part of the law that demands that porn websites "block VPN users from wisconsin".

Rather that:

1- Porn websites must block underage users from wisconsin. 2- VPN websites must block underage users from wisconsin from accessing . 3- Porn websites must block vpn users in general.

And this is not strictly laid out in the law, the law specifies the functional requirements, and we are estimating how the technical implementation will play out, the author strawmanned a stupid hypothetical technical implementation to paint lawmakers as technical troglodytes.

zdragnar4• 8 months ago

The wording of the bill is as follows:

    (c) A business entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or
    distributes material harmful to minors on the Internet from a website that contains
    a substantial portion of such material shall prevent persons from accessing the
    website from an internet protocol address or internet protocol address range that is
    linked to or known to be a virtual private network system or virtual private network
    provider.

In effect, Wisconsin is demanding that no publisher of obscene materials (porn, basically) allow anyone to access their content via VPN. The wording of the bill doesn't care whether or not either the person viewing the content or the data center that publishes the content is in Wisconsin. With that said, Wisconsin won't be able to bring charges, and the civil liability portion won't trigger, unless one or the other does happen to be in Wisconsin.

Where the bill gets its teeth on the VPN side of things is in section (4) of the assembly bill, which is probably intended for parents of children to sue publishers:

    (4) Civil liability. (a) A person alleging a violation of sub. (2) or (3) may
    bring an action seeking actual and punitive damages, court costs, and reasonable
    attorney fees notwithstanding s. 814.04 (1). A person bringing an action under this
    paragraph is not required to first exhaust any relevant administrative remedies.

In short, if my child uses a VPN to circumvent the age verification rules or some other safeguard to access the obscene materials, I can sue any site that operates in or employs people in Wisconsin for damages in a civil lawsuit for punitive damages. Alternatively, if my child accessed the material from a computer in Wisconsin, that would also be grounds for such a lawsuit. I'm not a lawyer, don't take this as legal advice.

TZubiri6• 8 months ago

So it seems that the article is factually incorrect and is quite obtuse in interpreting that the lawmakers are idiots.

The bill demands that porn distributors OR VPN providers that deliver content to Wisconsin residents, must block traffic from virtual private networks.

"In short, if my child uses a VPN to circumvent the age verification rules or some other safeguard to access the obscene materials, I can sue any site that operates in or employs people in Wisconsin for damages in a civil lawsuit for punitive damages."

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I believe that any company that operates outside of the State but serves residents of the Wisconsin state would still be in violation and the State of Wisconsin and its laws would still have jurisdiction. If your website serves users from Wisconsin, it must abide by Wisconsin laws and both Wisconsin jurisdiction and venue is proper, absent any other agreement (which would be null anyways if the Wisconsin resident is a minor).

I think it's more that the author of this article is being obtuse AND "has no idea" about law.

qingcharles• 8 months ago

What does it mean for an IP range to be "known" to be a VPN? Where are web site owners supposed to get this data?

(also it only affects web sites, so gopher is still good my friends)

TZubiri6• 8 months ago

Btw the wording says publishers or distributors, so it applies to both porn websites, vpn operators and ISPs, which could technically block vpn ips from connecting to porn ips. I'm not sure of the implications of "knowingly or intentionally though", I'm just saying they could do that.

The nuances and legal theory are a very deep discussion that the original article ignores completely by focusing on a political agenda.

torginus• 8 months ago

I don't get it - doesn't this only apply to content hosted in Wisconsin? I doubt they have any jurisdiction outside, especially outside the US

observationist• 8 months ago

Content of sites should be 1000% irrelevant wrt a state or municipality blocking it. It's like phone numbers- they don't get a say in what gets transmitted, period, full stop, and any access of the content requires a well worn and battle tested legal process. This sort of arbitrary, whiny, "we dont like it so we're going to pretend things like freedom of communication and association don't exist" and other perspectives don't survive the technical reality, let alone the principled legal framework.

It's 100% legal for me to read off the zeroes and ones of a file I own that exists on my computer over the phone talking to anyone I want. Even if it's horribly offensive. Even if it's hateful, or makes people feel bad. I can even mock the deceased mothers of congress people, and there's nothing they can (or should) do about it.

Internet regulation should begin and end there. If you're wiretapping, getting a warrant, etc, then there has to be justification and law in support of your actions, otherwise, the communication should not even exist as a concept in your mind, at the governmental level. They should consider any and all network traffic to be completely meaningless, illusory babble from which no conclusions can be drawn, absent underlying due process.

Somehow we've gotten to a state where it's now being debated as to not only who you are allowed to connect to, but under what conditions, and what may be communicated once the network is connected. That sort of default surveillance and censorship is 100% never used for the good of a society, historically 100% of the time used to the detriment of society, and it's only in those cases where substantial protections of due process exist and are robustly followed where any sort of surveillance and censorship actually does any good.

These actions are power grabs. Any attempts to extend and expand state surveillance and control over communications should be vehemently condemned, up to and including running the authors out of any community they're in if they don't drop it.

fooey• 8 months ago

imagine Cloudflare saying, okie dokie then, guess we don't serve Wisconsin anymore

SunshineTheCat• 8 months ago

I love how government's gut reaction to literally anything they don't like is to "ban" it without having the slightest understanding what that means or involves.

That's right guys, ban hunger and poverty next.

jimt1234• 8 months ago

If hunger and poverty was somehow impacting corporate profits, then yeah, they would ban it.

RajT88• 8 months ago

And we would probably really not love how they enforce it!

cyanydeez• 8 months ago

The US government, rather than ban these things, declares they either dont exist, are criminal activities, or are mental illness problems.

There's far more than "banning" that happens when a government gets eaten by libertarian and religious fascists.

While the propaganda around the european laws are certainly against the free expression of information, you certainly shouldn't ignore how a lot of technology is being use to turn the rest of the world of democracy into a pre-Trump era country.

If you think America is a blueprint for Europe, then keep whole-hog buying the "free" expression argument that lets the far right nazis flourish.

Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs–and They Have No Idea What They're Doing

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