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Court agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN law demands a technical impossibility

802 points · 405 comments · hn_acker

  1. SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
    > platforms are left with an impossible choice: completely block all VPN traffic nationwide or withdraw access from Utah entirely

    Is it even possible to reliably know that a connection is from a VPN? Anyone can proxy through a random hosting provider.

    1. happyPersonR · · focus · HN ↗
      Requires the vpn provider to snitch and possible tag the ip frames or http frames lol

      Folks would just host their own vpns various places and this would be pointless ….

      1. unglaublich · · focus · HN ↗
        It's all just an effort to control the 90%.
        1. pkilgore · · focus · HN ↗
          It lawfare against porn. They don't want these companies to exist. They want it to be impossible to comply with the law to shut them down.
          1. pimeys · · focus · HN ↗
            Why are people so upset about porn? It's probably still the biggest portion of internet traffic. Kind of like human nature, don't you think?
            1. lokar · · focus · HN ↗
              Assuming you are really asking, the two largest objections:

              - religious/cultural. My beliefs forbid this, it makes people bad/worse in some hard-to-define way, so no one should be allowed to do it. Sometimes with an emphasis that the sellers are luring good people into sin/ruin.

              - it harms women. Many of the participants are trafficked or coerced in some way (and further abused). The profits from the industry encourage more of this. It “warps” the mind of men who use it, leading them to mistreat and abuse women.

              I see elements of truth in all these, but IMO they are ultimately not compelling, prohibition is unworkable and unduly infringes on willing participants and consumers.

              1. UltraSane · · focus · HN ↗
                The "porn harms women" argument really seems to infantilize women and assumes that women can never want or enjoy sex for the sake of sex.
                1. germandiago · · focus · HN ↗
                  Any intervention to protect adults with laws infantilize.

                  The cause is clear in my mind: the world outside is what it is. If you cannot take good decisions (whatever that is for you) and you need someone to get protrcted and you soend your day whining about your own problems bc the world is not perfect, then you did not become an adult, ever.

                  There are extreme cases: for example you cannot say aperson in a country with no weapons is infantilized bc the complain for being abused by an armed gang. Something like that is legit.

                  But for many things I see around I just see people complaining instead of changing strategy, solve a problem, change their choice or just plain skip things they do not want. Instrad of that they demand some kind of protection.

                  For a very narrow set of exceptions I would agree. For the rest, we sre just adults, we should know what to do.

                  1. popdu · · focus · HN ↗
                    > For the rest, we sre just adults, we should know what to do.

                    We should. Yet a significant portion of mental health issues would be solved if psychiatry provided mother as a service: Teach interpersonal skills and to take care of yourself. They don't teach that stuff in school and parenting is a hit-or-miss.

                    The world indeed is what it is and your diagnosis is spot on: Most people didn't become adults as defined by being able to make consistently good decisions without support. Can either let them hang themselves or infantilize just a bit to let most dodge the worst pitfalls.

                    Don't really have a strong personal opinion on where the pragmatic optimum is, but surely a long way before banning porn. Tangentially it'd be far more ideal if that pragmatic optimum could cater to the ideal adult without catastrophic social consequences, but that'd literally be a generational effort.

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