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Wisconsin wants to force all adult sites to block VPNs – here's what we know (www.techradar.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/usa@midwest.social
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The bill has now landed in the Senate for consideration

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[–] 3 points 11 months ago (7 children)

If a website geoblocks a state, then that state no longer has any jurisdiction to that website. If the state doesnt want users accessing 'restricted' sites with vpns, they should be imposing their laws on the local isps to block vpns...

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  • [–] -3 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    If a website geoblocks a state, then that state no longer has any jurisdiction to that website.

    Yes, it would be more likely for a site that is geoblocking to be ok with clients using a VPN.

    If the state doesnt want users accessing ‘restricted’ sites with vpns, they should be imposing their laws on the local isps to block vpns…

    Sure. But my argument still stands that a site which is not geoblocking such states and has a lot of direct revenue to lose (meaning a commercial site like Fansly which makes all their money by taking a cut of the creators' revenue, using payment processing services like Visa and Mastercard, and is based in the US so they can be sued by multiple states) can detect that you're on a VPN (and by the same method that you're connecting from a cloud service provider like AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, etc) and subsequently make you ID yourself just to cover their own liability. They don't have to detect you're in Wisconsin or Texas or wherever, they can just blanket push the ID check on all known VPN and cloud provider IPs and be compliant with all country and states ID laws in one go. That's a much easier technical implementation for them in order to stay compliant everywhere.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (5 children)

    What liability? If they are on a vpn there is no indication where the user originates from. States can sue all they want, but they have no legal standing as they have to prove users from their states are accessing restricted sites. It is utterly ridiculous to uphold a website to a state laws they have no presence in.

    All website have to do is geoblock and reject payments from those states. If users bypass those restrictions, thats on the state to figure it out from.within their state.

    Or do you think retailers across state borders should stop a customers from buying products that are 'illegal' in their home state?

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  • [–] -3 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    What liability?

    The liability of some asshat like Ken Paxton suing them over Texas residents being able to access adult content without an ID by going through a VPN, and then Visa/Mastercard pulling out, and killing their revenue. Pornhub didn't really care about all the reported abuse content at first. They only cared when payment processors got involved and then Pornhub deleted all of the content uploaded by non-verified users and required users to be verified before they could upload. Look at what just happened with adult games on Steam and Itch because of pressure from payment processors.

    It is utterly ridiculous to uphold a website to a state laws they have no presence in.

    Then maybe you can convince Fansly to stop requiring an ID for connections from VPN providers (they are already doing this).

    All website have to do is geoblock and reject payments from those states.

    Why in the hell would a company that makes their money off of a percentage of the creators' revenue (sites that already have ID requirements and implementation for the content creators to keep the payment processors happy) rather than ad revenue do that? If the creators start losing huge chunks of revenue because either the platform is blocking a third of the country or the payment processors leave, then the site will lose the content that brings the customers to it.

    Or do you think retailers across state borders should stop a customers from buying products that are ‘illegal’ in their home state?

    No, I don't. And I don't think sites should be complying with these stupid ID laws either. But here we are, and here they are. So what does my opinion even matter?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I dont get your argument.

    Yes websites that want revenue from all states would have to adhere to all states laws...

    Whats with the circular logic?

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    In response to this initial statement

    Then if someone from Wisconsin accesses their content via a VPN, well, literally the point of doing that is that your traffic no longer appears to be coming from Wisconsin. So how would they know?

    My argument is that sites don't have to know if you are from a jurisdiction that requires an ID, if they want to take the "leave no chance" approach of instead ensuring you're not from such a jurisdiction. They will know you're on a VPN because they can reverse lookup an IP to see that it is owned by a VPN provider (or VPS provider), and the site can choose to either block you or ask you to age verify based on what they do know instead of what they don't know.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    I can make the argument that someone that lives in Wisconsin to drive over state border and access the website in another state... do websites block neighboring states? What if they are on business trip and cross country. Ban that state too? Hell they might be on vacation in germany, better ban germany too.

    Your arguement is beyond ridiculous. Once a website geoblocks a region, thats it. States can sue all they want, but they have zero jurisdiction.

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago

    Sites are already directing VPN-connected visitors to prove age with an ID. I'm not just hypothesizing, it's already happening. I agree it's ridiculous, but again, they're already doing it.

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