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VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

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Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#791

The VPN trick potentially won’t last long. We’ve seen it go stale already in the world of intellectual property rights. For at least the last ten years Netflix et al have been well aware of which AS numbers / IP netblocks correspond to people sat at home in front of the TV, and which correspond to servers in a rack somewhere (including those hosting VPN endpoints.) One tweak to the rules and all of a sudden not only…

"All VPN services must also perform age verification." Done.

All this will do is put UK-based VPN businesses, if that's not already an oxymoron, out of business.

The UK can't tell a company in Cyprus or Switzerland to do anything unless they're ready to tell the SAS to put their boots on.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#792

This is one of the times where law is outrunning technology. Apple and Google are both working on anonymous attestation but they're pulling the trigger before it's ready. But that's not what laws like these are about. In the US at least these laws are driven by Christian Nationalists are setting up a situation where PII of porn users is able to be leaked. That's what they're counting on. They also want to have politi…

>This is one of the times where law is outrunning technology. Not really. China's great firewall has been doing that a long time before these laws. It was only a matter of time till our leaders ask Big Tech "do for us what you did for China, except add a coat of paint over it so it doesn't look evil".

[deleted]

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#793

It sounds like it is time to create a new internet and not invite these people. I wonder how difficult it would be to create an entirely new internet infrastructure that doesn't rely on anything that currently exists and doesn't or can't connect to the existing network.

If you want to make a new internet and take all the trash that is on the current one with you to the new one, please do! It will make the current one much more tolerable for the rest of us.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#794

Our ability to filter and modify the content of the web constantly improves, and itchy trigger fingers might hover over many nation's "Great Walls", ready at the next galvanizing event to overnight change our relationship with this interchange we exist upon. My current guess is that if things really went to hell with censorship and disjointedness, that we'd re-establish an ancient pattern - magazines. I recall as a c…

I'm under the assumption that the global, unfilitered Internet is on an irreversible course to lockdown and won't exist at all in its current form in 10 years or less. It's sad, and defeatist, but the forces on the lockdown side are too strong and will get what they want eventually, so I can either hit my head against a brick wall or do something productive for myself.

I've decided to deal with it by reevaluating the role of tech and Internet in my life. I certainly don't care about improvements to my residental Internet speed any more, or what the next wireless tech after 5G will be, or what protocols the IETF is working on, or net neutrality, because none of it matters to me any more. It's exciting what's going on with AI but it's all going to behemoths who will be able to tell the rest of us what we can and can't do with it. So... I don't care anymore. I can see myself honestly just not having a wired home Internet connection anymore in a few years and I would get rid of my cell phone if it wasn't necessary for day-to-day life. I don't need symmetric 1gbps fiber to stream the occasional show, text, and do normal-life things on apps.

But when you brought up magazines - it reminded me of that brief period of time of the late 80's/early 90's during the "multimedia" and "interactive" crazes; when BBSes were a thing--there were a lot of interesting CD-ROMs on diverse subjects.

I'm glad optical media hasn't completely died yet. Most new PCs don't come with one installed, but USB ones cheap and easy to find. PCs have come a long way since the early 90's. Fun fact, if your Android phone supports USB OTG I do believe a USB optical drive will totally work with it.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#795
post #759

Phishing for material for sextortion has never been more trivial. The implementation of this is going to lead to mass fraud. Walk into parliament, ask who is willing to go to jail in defense of the act if and when the first lot of randy pensioners are bankrupted, or kid commits suicide out of shame - and if no one raises their hand, repeal it.

It seems that your argument is more about the way the verification is implemented and not about the idea of verification by itself.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#796

What's stopping lawmakers to require VPN providers to verify the age of their users?

Enforcement, one countries laws don’t apply in another. Which is kind of why the age verification thing won’t work… There will always be some jurisdiction that’ll ignore things for profit.

Well, what’s preventing the UK to ban the websites/VPN services that don’t comply at the ISP level?

This is what Russia is (semi-successfully) doing.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#798

What's stopping lawmakers to require VPN providers to verify the age of their users?

I'm guessing this is technically challenging. There are VPN protocols designed to be difficult to differentiate from other encrypted traffic. As a result, VPN providers based outside the UK know that they can just ignore the UK law and probably won't be successfully blocked in the UK.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#799

This is one of the times where law is outrunning technology. Apple and Google are both working on anonymous attestation but they're pulling the trigger before it's ready. But that's not what laws like these are about. In the US at least these laws are driven by Christian Nationalists are setting up a situation where PII of porn users is able to be leaked. That's what they're counting on. They also want to have politi…

Not just porn, but in the US they target abortion clinics and discussion.

Not just porn and abortion, but the US is also targeting political speech now. The moral nuts are overlapping with the corporate and government interests such that the public loses.

Several examples: government employees are being vetted for loyalty instead of qualification; public corps like CBS are not only self censoring political speech but they also have a "bias monitor" to appease the government; normal people are being denied entry to the country for various wrongspeak on socials.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#800

This is one of the times where law is outrunning technology. Apple and Google are both working on anonymous attestation but they're pulling the trigger before it's ready. But that's not what laws like these are about. In the US at least these laws are driven by Christian Nationalists are setting up a situation where PII of porn users is able to be leaked. That's what they're counting on. They also want to have politi…

Like clockwork as well, the attempts to shift the Overton window on the use of VPNs have now begun, using all the same arguments.
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