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.
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
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...
What’s broken is extending copyright after a work was already created. But that’s true even if the creator was still alive.
sebastiennight•44m ago
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.
petcat•16m ago
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...