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

Instead of backward I would say it's looking in from a different window. Both your dilemma and the one I described can both be true. I am not suggesting to not use a VPN but rather load-balance and cycle through a mesh of user-provided VPN's that do not have a money trail so that neither your local ISP nor a big juicy centralized provider have your data.

As for disclosure of people being busted I would expect gag orders, the violation and prosecution of which can in some cases be worse than whatever the crime may have been. In the USA judges can hold people for contempt.

It is a sort of LAN network over the Internet. That way, you can connect to devices as if you were in the local network, but having them exposed to the internet.

Traffic is encrypted so there is noone knowing what you are sending, they can still trace that is coming to/from a specific node.

I use a VPN to have access to my HomeAssistant instance at home, where I can control every aspect of the house. Without this, I would have to pay for a domain name, manage the certificates, and exposing myself to external attacks. So, for me, a VPN reduces massively the attack surface.

There is this law, where if you don't see the purpose of something, is probably because you never needed it. Which is fine, but don't gatekeep others wanting to use them.

Edit: OP forgot to format text, so my anger should be directed to however said the quote...

> I have actually heard otherwise intelligent people say things just like that, including site operators who run nontrivial websites.

First of all: thank you for using the word say, rather than think or believe or anything of that ilk. Too many of these discussions reduce to attributing or misattributing motivations to people.

That said, I still have issues with that statement. Let's assume that you are talking about an intelligent person who works in tech. Chances are something was taken out of context because they probably know what VPNs are for and that they have legitimate uses. Sometimes they miss context because they are not expressing their ideas clearly. Sometimes we miss context because we hear something we violently oppose to, and ignore the rest.

Another issue is that categorizing and vilifying people genuinely doesn't help the cause. At best, people will ignore the counter points. At worse, it will push people further away. We have to listen and educate based upon issues that are relevant to the audience.

Simplistic responses like, "freedom of speech" won't solve anything because those words have lost meaning. Too many people scream "freedom of speech" to excuse what they are saying, while they are active in suppressing the freedom of speech of others. Too many people use the freedom of speech as a tool to intimidate others, to restrict the speech or legal actions of others, because they are more interested in imposing their values on others rather than challenging the values of others. We should be illustrating ways that freedom of speech are relevant using examples that are relevant to the people we are speaking to. In the case of framing freedom of speech for people who are concerned with abortion: pro-life people may respond better to presenting freedom of speech as a safe stage to promote the sacredness of life, while pro-choice people may respond better to framing the freedom of speech as a safe way to seek out information relating to getting an abortion.

Likewise, people can see through simplistic attacks like accusing others of using children for leverage in an argument. Most of the people who say "think of the children" are trying to dismiss people who are trying, legitimately, to protect a vulnerable class. There are plenty of good reasons why the policy mechanisms to protect a vulnerable class may be objectionable, yet framing one's opposition with a reductionist interpretation of intent pushes people apart when they ought to be seeking out better solutions. For example: two people may agree that underage access to porn has to be dealt with, but disagree on the role that VPNs play in circumventing restrictions. So talk about how VPNs are not an age-based access control mechanism. Talk about the misclassification of information about gender and sexuality as pornography, assuming it is relevant to who you are talking to. Talk about the other benefits that VPNs offer in maintaining a free society. In other words, get them on your side and start seeking out better solutions.

The writer is a relatively prominent UK developer; he certainly hasn't missed that the UK isn't in the EU.

You're likely referring to the line "Hopefully this draws a simple line in the sand for the UK government, ..."; the strictest interpretation of the metaphor is certainly muddled, but it is common in the UK to look to EU rulings and policy discussions for comparison to our own - politicians will be aware of them and will use them to help decide whether or not to test things in our own courts.