4 ms·

Imagine Texas bans private VPNs next. Haha.

by zeroCalories 3y ago

btbuildem 3y ago
That's not even haha, that's like 6/10 likely.
- skissane 3y ago
  I doubt Texas will. How would they enforce it? And good chance the federal courts will rule it is pre-empted by federal law (the FCC). For historical (and arguably even political) reasons, federal courts give the states a bit more leeway when to adult content. But regulating general purpose content-neutral VPNs would really be stepping directly into the FCC’s domain, in a way which would directly impact interstate commerce, and I doubt the courts would let them do that
  - nunez 3y ago
    Great Firewall of Texas. I could legit see them investing insane dollars on this project. I don't think this is federally illegal either
    - owenmarshall 3y ago
      > The Congress shall have power to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.
    - skissane 3y ago
      > I don't think this is federally illegal either If the FCC wanted to overrule it, they could, and the Courts would likely be on the FCC's side. See https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46736 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46736 But I doubt it would ever get that far. It would be a huge burden on every large corporation operating in Texas, if interstate traffic had to go through some legally mandatory firewall or content filter. The Texas state legislature is generally pro-business, and if almost every major corporation in Texas would be lobbying them not to do something, I doubt they'll do it. And, in the very unlikely event the legislature ignored that lobbying and did it anyway, and the Governor didn't veto it – then those corporations would likely go straight to petitioning the FCC, and I think it is likely they'd succeed in convincing the FCC in overruling it.
paxys 3y ago
Passing a law and actually enforcing a ban are very different things. In the case of porn the big corporate sites have no choice but to comply. VPN providers don't really care. Unless the state of Texas can manage to find and block every IP address of every VPN server worldwide, people are going to get through.

Imagine Texas bans private VPNs next. Haha.

btbuildem 3y ago

That's not even haha, that's like 6/10 likely.

skissane 3y ago
I doubt Texas will. How would they enforce it? And good chance the federal courts will rule it is pre-empted by federal law (the FCC). For historical (and arguably even political) reasons, federal courts give the states a bit more leeway when to adult content. But regulating general purpose content-neutral VPNs would really be stepping directly into the FCC’s domain, in a way which would directly impact interstate commerce, and I doubt the courts would let them do that
- nunez 3y ago
  Great Firewall of Texas. I could legit see them investing insane dollars on this project. I don't think this is federally illegal either
  - owenmarshall 3y ago
    > The Congress shall have power to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.
  - skissane 3y ago
    > I don't think this is federally illegal either If the FCC wanted to overrule it, they could, and the Courts would likely be on the FCC's side. See https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46736 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46736 But I doubt it would ever get that far. It would be a huge burden on every large corporation operating in Texas, if interstate traffic had to go through some legally mandatory firewall or content filter. The Texas state legislature is generally pro-business, and if almost every major corporation in Texas would be lobbying them not to do something, I doubt they'll do it. And, in the very unlikely event the legislature ignored that lobbying and did it anyway, and the Governor didn't veto it – then those corporations would likely go straight to petitioning the FCC, and I think it is likely they'd succeed in convincing the FCC in overruling it.

paxys 3y ago

Passing a law and actually enforcing a ban are very different things. In the case of porn the big corporate sites have no choice but to comply. VPN providers don't really care. Unless the state of Texas can manage to find and block every IP address of every VPN server worldwide, people are going to get through.