'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/vpns-are-lawful-technical-tools-says-eu-court-in-landmark-anne-frank-copyright-ruling

by healsdata • 1 day ago

677 134 1 day ago

techradar.com

sebastiennight• 1 day ago

For those who (like me) missed the essential key word in the OP's title:

This ruling is about copyright, and seems mostly unrelated to recent conversations about escaping censorship and surveilance, and the overall final throes of the open web.

It's still pretty important since the lawsuit filed by the Anne Frank Fonds could be caricatured as "if this content is illegal in our country, it should not be on the Internet in other countries, because our citizens can still circumvent the publisher's geofence and access it" which would have wild consequences if that line of thought was applied.

But, still:

At its core, the case forced Europe's top judges to answer a highly technical question: if a publisher actively tries to block visitors from a specific country, are they still breaking the law if a user sneaks past the digital border using circumvention software?
According to the CJEU, the answer is no.

Could be conceived to have a tenuous link to the current debate on censorship, surveilance, etc.

petcat3• 1 day ago

Somewhat related to this same debate on censorship:

French regulators order block of Polymarket's website [0]

The French gambling regulator said the site's continued availability constituted advertising. A ban on financial transactions to the site was already in place.

After failing to compel Polymarket to geoblock France, it's crazy that French "regulators" can just order ISPs to block a website without any judicial review just because the mere existence of it on the internet constitutes "advertising" to French people.

It seems like the EU in general is struggling badly with how to control internet access. Whether it's blocking VPNs, requiring access to private chats, or just blocking websites completely.

[0] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/07/17/france-b...

spiderfarmer3• 1 day ago

I don’t think it’s crazy to enforce laws, especially given the leeway the government gave that predatory website.

Sleaker• 24 hours ago

Devils advocate question: Isn't registering an ip to name essentially advertising? You're paying a registrar to return your Internet address location when searched for.

dgellow2• 24 hours ago

Are you aware it’s the case in the US too? I don’t see what is supposed to be bad or terrifying here. French regulators (why the scare quotes?) entire reason d‘être is what you frame as suspicious, but it’s pretty standard, the state governs the infrastructure in its territory

coldtea4• 15 hours ago

It seems like the EU in general is struggling badly with how to control internet access.

It struggles badly with how to control everything more and more. What was an economic union of markets has become an uber-government that gives more and more power to itself.

Not that the US or the rest is far behind, but in this case it's accompanied with even more incompetence and disconnected to the real problems.

____mr____• 11 hours ago

it's crazy that French "regulators" can just order ISPs to block a website without any judicial review just because the mere existence of it on the internet constitutes "advertising" to French people.

This is entirely normal if you subscribe to any form of current/past neoliberal ideology surrounding trade, borders and embargos. If you believe that an embargo towards a certain country or business is valid because you believe they are a threat to national/public security, I see little difference between that and ISPs being forbidden from working with certain companies/websites/ip ranges

ryandrake• 1 day ago

The irony of trying to block content/visitors based on country, while publishing on a platform called the "World Wide" web. IP address blocks that roughly correspond with geographic regions is kind of a design flaw.

skinfaxi• 1 day ago

Is it a design or implementation flaw?

embedding-shape2• 1 day ago

That's what happens when you have idealistic nerds implementing a vision of what they want , rather than the typical software that is designed and built almost like an representation of the organization that built it, i.e Conway's Law.

lostmsu• 21 hours ago

This comment sounds differently when you remember the Internet is from DARPA.

ragall• 1 day ago

There's no irony. A given name does not constitute a mandate to use it any particular way.

layer8• 13 hours ago

“Web” implies a structure. And the internet traffic travels physically from country to country. Not being bound to geographical regions is an illusion.

Havoc• 1 day ago

Now watch the octogenarian UK lawmakers outlaw them anyway...right after they print the proposed law out because they don't do so well with computer stuff

bbg2401• 1 day ago

The UK government has officially scrapped the idea of restricting virtual private networks (VPNs) to enforce its impending social media bans, delivering a massive victory for digital privacy advocates.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast today, the government confirmed a major U-turn on the subject, with Online Safety Minister Kanishka Narayan stating: "We decided not to limit VPNs."
This was further cemented in a written parliamentary statement by Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, who clarified that the government will not age-gate or ban the best VPN software because "VPNs have legitimate privacy and security uses."

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/we-decide...

protocolture3• 1 day ago

British Parliament only has to be lucky once. VPNs have to be lucky every time.

gbuk2013• 1 day ago

Leaving aside the fact that there are not enough octogenarians in the Commons to pass any legislation, there’s no need to for ageist statements like that.

EmbarrassedHelp3• 1 day ago

Hopefully this ruling adds to some precedent in favour of VPNs to future court battles attacking VPNs for circumventing age verification.

shevy-java2• 1 day ago

Well, the EU courts will just follow suit the moment the legislation is changed. Today France did so - young people are disallowed from accessing antisocial media. The next step will be verification. Any parent not sniffing on their children will be put in jail. King Macron decreed this today. (He is such a small man though - all the small french, such as Napoleon, have a compensation-problem with regards to their rather insignificant height.)

Here is a copy/pasteable snippet for lazy lobbyists so someone pass this to the lobby-judges at the EU courts:

"In light of recent changes to legislation and the deadly effect of social media on babies and unborn ones, VPNs are agents of terrorism, attempting to circumvent healthy restrictions pertaining to protecting such young folk from the vile dangers of antisocial media consumption. Anyone attempting to browse the web for information without presenting a valid unique ID including biometric data is guilty of terrorism, facing a minimum penalty of 25 years and 1.000.000€ fine."

This fight is, by the way, not just against VPNs. Age sniffing has never ever only been about children or VPNs. Some people still think it is about "protecting children". It's interesting.

hdgvhicv• 1 day ago

Well, the EU courts will just follow suit the moment the legislation is changed.

That’s the whole point. The courts uphold the law. Change the law, and the courts change what they do.

inigyou10• 11 hours ago

There isn't precedent in the civil-law system in Europe. Every case is decided individually. However, this will probably influence whether someone decides to attack VPNs.

ChrisArchitect• 1 day ago

EU posts about it:

Copyright in the European Union and geo-blocking: a work that is in the public domain can be published online free of charge in a Member State even if it remains protected in another Member State [pdf]

https://curia.europa.eu/site/upload/docs/application/pdf/202...

Other blog post:

CJEU clarifies when geo-blocking limits online copyright liability

https://intellectual-property-helpdesk.ec.europa.eu/news-eve...

derdi• 1 day ago

And the actual judgment: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62...

I find these are often very readable and interesting.

yorwba• 1 day ago

It seems like the article title was inspired by this sentence "By contrast, the provider of a VPN or similar services that are used in order to circumvent an ineffective geo-blocking measure and are lawful technical tools which users may legitimately use cannot be regarded as also having communicated the work to the public." I.e. if a VPN is a lawful technical tool, then the VPN provider isn't liable as the publisher of works accessible through it. That leaves open the possibility for VPNs that are not lawful or not mere technical tools to be liable.

EmbarrassedHelp3• 1 day ago

Now, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands must determine whether the geo-blocking used by the website was state of the art and effective in practice. If so, the intended audience would not have included Dutch users, and no communication would have been made to the public in the Netherlands.

This seems extremely problematic, depending on what "state of the art and effective" means. It seems like blocking VPN users is unfortunately still on the table, as are other invasive enforcement methods.

jeroenhd3• 12 hours ago

depending on what "state of the art and effective" means

This isn't codified into law for good reasons. Technology shifts and you don't want to have to update laws every time someone invents a new cipher or protocol.

The website is defending itself from having to pay a fine because they're blocking VPN users. They require blocking VPN users to skirt around the extreme terms in Dutch copyright law. If they didn't block VPNs, they would've lost already.

This boils down to "did they try hard enough not to violate copyright in the place(s) where copyright was still applicable".

shevy-java2• 1 day ago

That's good, but the lobbyists in the EU will continue to try to destroy VPN. The "we must protect children" is the ruse they are using right now. Everyone will have a unique ID in the future, otherwise you will be unable to browse (at the least for commercial systems such as Microsoft-based computer systems; I can not yet predict how it will work for Linux but systemd already has that field for your age: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954 - Poettering forbid further discussion about that issue too)

merb• 1 day ago

Btw this also could come with negative consequences, like that they want to force id checks to access copyrighted material

kps• 1 day ago

Without robust copyright protection, what will incentivize Anne Frank to write more diary entries?

Retric3• 1 day ago

People do care about income streams for their descendants or charitable organizations etc. So it’s not completely ineffective.

What’s broken is extending copyright after a work was already created. But that’s true even if the creator was still alive.

eikenberry• 1 day ago

I think the OP was pointing out that writers will write even without monetary recompense.

gs17• 1 day ago

But that’s true even if the creator was still alive.

The foundation even tried to double dip on this by claiming Otto Frank as a co-author right before copyright expiration, three decades after his passing.

ekianjo• 1 day ago

People do care about income streams for their descendants

Maybe worth reading more about Anne Frank. She did not write to make a buck

AnthonyMouse4• 21 hours ago

People do care about income streams for their descendants or charitable organizations etc. So it’s not completely ineffective.

It is once you make it to the other side of the marginal utility of a dollar.

Suppose you write a popular work in your 20s. You make plenty from it, and then people keep buying it. As long as they do, why spend your time creating new works when you can drink whiskey or play video games or live in a cabana on a beach? As long as the copyright doesn't expire, you have all the money you need and thereby value having more time over having more money. When it doesn't expire for 70 years after your death, so do your kids.

Whereas if it would expire after 14 years and you want to provide for your kids (never mind that they should maybe make a contribution of their own) then to do it you would have to keep making new works.

semiquaver• 9 hours ago

  > People do care about income streams for their descendants or charitable organizations

Society created the concept of copyright and intellectual property for a reason and it is emphatically not the protection of income streams after you are dead. Whether a person exists who cares about a thing is not a reason to preserve it.

theodric• 1 day ago

[flagged]

tomhow2• 1 day ago

Please don't post tasteless comments like this on HN.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48998094 and marked it off topic.

tjwebbnorfolk2• 1 day ago

ok but is it correct or incorrect?

phendrenad2• 1 day ago

Yes, they may say that NOW, because the case is related to a silly copyright duration dispute between Belgium and the Netherlands. I wouldn't be surprised if they go against this in future cases where a VPN is used to download FIFA matches in 8k or something.

hahahaa• 1 day ago

Yeah silly if ruled otherwise. It would mean copyright defaults to the laggiest country since someone could throw a paper plane with the material over a border.

dzonga• 1 day ago

Age verification + plus some states trying to ban VPNs - what states miss - yeah they will destroy the so called big social networks or media providers like porn aggregation sites.

what will simply happen - due to the following - HDDs are cheap, Torrents, Open source / cheap community software like Discord

- communities will move to be mostly private and small. era of large social media is done.

for media - download content via torrent - store in cheap HDDs. you can probably get an 8TB spinning metal for $250. cheap enough and good enough.

payments - these already moved to crypto. for criminals monero.

the internet as gated by bureaucrats will be left to the dweebs.

movedx• 23 hours ago

This is hard to read, but I think you're saying the Internet will see a shift to "Sneaker Net" like tactics where people torrent stuff, store it on HDDs, and just move those HDDs around? Like they do in Cuba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTTno8D-b2E

For the most part, I agree.

inigyou10• 11 hours ago

Usenet and email were also designed to work like this. The underlying transport layer was called UUCP.

throw7• 21 hours ago

Utah was the one I remember... have more states passed laws?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/utahs-new-law-regulati...

yodsanklai• 23 hours ago

So much energy to prevent resourceful teenagers from watching porn?

rglover• 23 hours ago

This is about porn's cousin, money.

cougarbytes• 23 hours ago

If they ever make VPNs illegal first they need to add ivanti to the list. For amount of crimes it has committed against IT Security personnel.

rubysprite• 22 hours ago

If they can target us by IP for surveillance pricing etc. then we need VPN as a basic survival tool.

You can’t shop around someone changing prices around you knowing your income etc.

Similarly you cannot meaningfully use social media, Reddit or even HN if your IP is on their lists.

Unfortunately many online organizations have gone to war with their users so we need VPN and other tools to mitigate the abuse.

jen_h• 12 hours ago

This--and also, if you're a US resident traveling abroad, you can't access most health data without a US-based VPN.

Everything's "in the portal" -- you're effectively helpless without a VPN if, for example, a loved one is hospitalized or you need to access to your own data/records. (You can try phone calls, but expect the old, "Well, I can't help you, that's in the portal.")

moezd• 21 hours ago

VPN is a legit technology with real applications, not a toy you spin when lawmakers hurt you. And it's for Anne Frank's diaries out of all disputes?

EU lawmakers follow tech trends by a lag of at least a decade and lay waste as they move along. Imagine what they will require once they understand how tech people no longer use chatbots and how much we can control AI agents.

wickedsight• 16 hours ago

It feels weird/wrong that the Anne Frank Foundation of all things would fight against a free internet and battle companies that allow people to fight oppressive regimes.

jeroenhd3• 13 hours ago

They didn't like that the Dutch copyright law didn't apply outside of the Netherlands and tried to take back the documents with the "anyone visiting this page can be Dutch and therefore Dutch law still applies" argument.

It's not about a free internet, it's plain old copyright and control.

inigyou10• 11 hours ago

This is very typical. An organisation will always name itself something that sounds good, especially if it plans to do bad things.

coldtea4• 15 hours ago

Just means they'll likely target the VPNs to give them data directly instead of forcing users not to use them.

miki123211• 14 hours ago

The case centered on the copyright battle involving Anne Frank's diary

If there's a copyright dispute somewhere, you can bet it's either Anne Frank's estate, Tolkien's estate, or the Beatles's old record label.

It's never the authors who actually made the work. It's always their heirs.

saidnooneever• 14 hours ago

how do u expect Anne to claim copyright -_-. this is how it works, copyright. people have it and then make claims...

inigyou10• 11 hours ago

For more like this, see the list of banned authors on MAM. I believe JK Rowling is one.

cloudie78• 14 hours ago

Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.

The way to fight piracy is to offer a better service than the pirates. Simple as.

kleiba2• 12 hours ago

High prices might be an incentive for piracy but it cannot be a justification.

It's a bit like saying it's okay to sneak into a movie theater because the prices for movie tickets are too high.

To me, I feel it's an integral part of a democracy that if there is a law you don't like, you have means to get it changed, but it always involves convincing others that your viewpoint is the one everyone should adhere to. Likewise, it is a part of this system that you accept and adhere to the laws as they are until they have been changed. I don't system a society can work where everybody takes laws and regulations as mere suggestions and picks the ones they like to follow.

When a providers offer something at a certain price and you don't like the price, but you would still really like the thing they're offering, you have two options: you either suck it up and pay the price they're asking or you simply move on and do without that thing. I find the idea of "these prices are outrageous, so I'm entitled to getting this thing without paying at all!" not ethically justifiable.

vv_• 12 hours ago

It's a reference from an old interview with Gabe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQweFurRz4g

It's a bit like saying it's okay to sneak into a movie theater because the prices for movie tickets are too high.

It is not just the price, though. In some regions, for some media, the movie theater doesn't exist or the movies are not localized (no subtitles / dubbing).

Nowadays you need several subscriptions to watch all of the content you would normally watch. There are also different tiers now for video quality.

Essentially it is a lot more attractive to go to your local tracker and download the movie / anime / tv-show which will be of better quality and will be localized.

On the other hand, I haven't pirated a single game for over 10 years.

People will continue to consume content. But they aren't going to pay for what feels like a complete ripoff and manage 10+ subscriptions just to do it. If that is the way the industry is going then piracy will simply continue to thrive.

inigyou10• 11 hours ago

Convincing others to get a law changed from scratch has never really worked. What has to happen is that people have to be fed up with working around the law.

mherdelight• 13 hours ago

I figured that was common sense, but it's quite strange that the EU agrees with it.

jeroenhd3• 13 hours ago

However, in the Netherlands, parts of the text remain protected by copyright until 2037.

I'm not for complete copyright abolishment but this is absolutely insane. In this case, the copyright term is so long because the original copyright lasted 50 years after publication (rather than the author's death), but a change in copyright law changed that to 70 years and moved the counting date.

Regardless of legalities, taking action against distribution of Anne Frank's diary seems like the exact logical opposite of what this fund should be doing.

moomin• 10 hours ago

It is wild that, 80 years after a girl was murdered, she’s relevant to a court case involving technology it would have taken over an hour to explain in 1945.

rsynnott• 10 hours ago

Explaining the ECJ, the venue of the court case, would also likely have been, ah, a challenge.

jcarrano• 9 hours ago

You could jump on a train from NL and be in Belgium in 15 minutes, get a "bootleg" physical copy of the diary and head back to NL. No one is suing for that.

SahAssar• 8 hours ago

In Baarle-Nassau you can walk a few hundred meters and cross the border multiple times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Nassau. Or even walk within a house and cross the border.

'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

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