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this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
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Nobody's reading tfa. They aren't banning VPNs, they're banning websites that allow access to users using a VPN. Which is stupid, of course, but it isn't going to get in the way of your piracy. 1337x does not care about Wisconsin state law.
If anything, they're effectively going to build a Great Firewall around Wisconsin. Much easier to just not serve the approximately 10 users from that state than it is to implement the measures they're demanding
This is just step one of them trying to absolutely ban VPNs.
A website can't determine VPN use very effectively, won't be long until they "need the governments help" for compliance.
Edited to add: they aren't going to ban business VPNs people use your critical thinking skills here.
China outlaws VPN use and has an exemption for businesses. It would be easy to follow the same guidelines anywhere else.
Yeah, they'll absolutely ban VPNs and then literally every business that uses them will move out of the state. Do you think VPNs exist only for piracy and bypassing region restrictions??? Like literally every business uses them
You know how the FOIA isn't applied to Congress?
It'll be just like that, but with exemptions for businesses using VPNs.
China literally does this already. There is already a precedent set.
Everyone is always so obtuse when it comes to this discussion like they wouldn't absolutely protect economic interests while fucking over the ability for the common man to use VPNs and similar technology.
lol. Good luck catching random VPSes running a wireguard server container.
I read tfa and banning use of VPNs is, in fact, a possibility to be compliant. Because how exactly do you determine a visitor to Pornhub is actually a VPN user from Wisconsin? The website can't, presumably, trace the user's location (defeating the entire purpose of the VPN), so that leaves VPN providers as the next responsible party.
Nothing in this bill would lead to the use of VPNs being banned. Any given website could hypothetically ban the use of VPNs to access it, but that's not a ban on VPNs the way the headline makes it out to be.
It's impossible, which means that in order to be compliant, websites would have to simply stop serving Wisconsin, like they already have with several other US states. There is nothing preventing either you or Pornhub from sending whatever 1s and 0s you want to some random Mullvad server in Canada. They can't even punish Mullvad for this, as the text of the bill explicitly "prohibits business entities from knowingly and intentionally publishing or distributing material harmful to minors on the Internet," and any good VPN has no idea what material you're accessing via their servers.
You're making a very technical, logical interpretation of the bill. The problem is that the bill was written by illogical, naive people. This brand of government has already proven they want to hold VPNs accountable and have tried to force tracking into them. Having a bulletproof defense doesn't mean governments can't try to drag them through court anyway, especially when VPNs have already been publicly vilified as something only bad people use.
Once it happens there they will start copying it to every state they can.
The mythical "they." I can't wait for Kansas lawmakers to see Wisconsin's complete isolation from the rest of the world and think "this will be popular among our constituents"
That's the neat part, they don't give a fuck what the constituents want.
*lawmakers is the they btw.
The "they" in these circumstances are lobbyists, not lawmakers.