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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. jonahx · · focus · HN ↗
                  This is not the claim. The claim is that, empirically, many (or enough) of the women who end up in porn are underage, trafficked, or psychologically coerced (due to poverty, drug addiction, abuse, etc) such that the choice is not really the free choice of willing participant.

                  I am all for individual freedoms, but I've read enough about this issue, and seen enough documentaries, that I think the claim is very well-founded. Of course, some porn stars are just willing adults doing something they want to do, but there are many who are not.

                  1. serf · · focus · HN ↗
                    but you can apply this argument to almost any product or good on the market and get a similar ratio of 'willing participant' and 'pseudo-slavery' involvement. Across the board.

                    in other words I wouldn't ban oranges because some of the farmers have been found to have been enslaved; instead i'd investigate and penalize the enslavement and crimes taking place.

                    Similarly : I wouldn't ban pornography on some false pretense that it's to save someone, because quite honestly if I began that boulder rolling it shouldn't stop , every industry victimizes someone; it's a question of stopping and penalizing abuses and preventing victimization, not about regulating broad industries ( a move that worsens human rights violations by moving them into a highly lucrative black market, into the shadows ) .

                    1. jonahx · · focus · HN ↗
                      I never argued to ban pornography, and I'm not in favor of that.

                      That said, no, it's not like other industries. The amount of well-documented abuse is much higher. Degree matters.

                      1. rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
                        How about phone battery manufacturing? Shall we do an accounting of abuses there? Phones warp minds, and have extensive slavery overseas in the supply chain. Societies love to claim the moral high ground by externalizing bad behavior, and importing the result. The US does this extensively with climate and labor laws, and Europe does it with pesticides. The difference with porn is its pretty girls, and its all on camera. I see some parallels with Missing White Woman Syndrome.

                        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Missing_white_woman_syndrome" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Missing_white_woman_syndrome

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