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...
> 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.
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.
(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.
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.
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.
(also it only affects web sites, so gopher is still good my friends)
Don't know if that counts as age verification, but it's not a website!
Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video all do something along these lines to protect geographically restricted licenses.
Presumably, the authors of the bills were aware that these services were already doing it and want that same behavior to be legally required for obscene material.
So there is no responsibility created to actively discern (IANAL) traffic, but if you already have that info, you would be compelled to act upon it.
Again IANAL, but this could create responsibilities to avoid estoppel, for example if you filter users from VPNs for purposes like reducing spam, then you receive the benefit of identifying VPNs, and you might be compelled to bear the responsibility of it.
Another nuance is that the vpn identification might be provided by a 3rd party (see cloudflare) in which case the provider would not KNOW, but then again CF might bear the responsibility considering that they would be the distributors with knowledge of the VPN lists.
I think the law plays out very sensibly.
The nuances and legal theory are a very deep discussion that the original article ignores completely by focusing on a political agenda.
The US network policies were so open that it sometimes felt voyeuristic, in my country we are also implementing national firewalls organically due to malicious traffic, so it seems the world is converging on closing the networks a bit, thanks Russia and China.
best of lucks!
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.
That's right guys, ban hunger and poverty next.
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.
ChrisArchitect•2mo ago