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>If Ofcom doesn't think this will be enough to prevent significant harm, it can even ask that ISPs be ordered to block UK access. Well again I guess the UK nev
by jmclnx 1y ago
>If Ofcom doesn't think this will be enough to prevent significant harm, it can even ask that ISPs be ordered to block UK access.
Well again I guess the UK never heard of VPNs, but they are trying to ban them still, it is like these pols have no clue how the internet works. They never learn these actions are like playing wack-a-mole.
- pitched 1y agoIt feels more like a modern version of Luddites where they probably do understand very well how it works and they fear what that means for their own success.
- jeroenhd 1y agoVPNs are next: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn438z3ejxyo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn438z3ejxyo
- Joker_vD 1y agoSo they're lagging about 3-4 years behind the Russian practices, but steadily catching up. Quite impressive!
- sunaookami 1y agoPar for the course for European countries.
- sunrunner 1y agoI’m curious about what the plan is to differentiate between legitimate business use and personal use of any kind. Age verification obviously won’t work for self-hosted, so does age verification then get pushed to VPS providers? And at that point, so what? I’m already paying with legitimate bank details for legitimate personal use.
- morkalork 1y agoA VPN license of course! Just need a corporation number, a list of registered employees, and mandatory logging to get one! /s
- GeoAtreides 1y agodo you think the public at large knows what VPS are? How to set up a VPN? the public at large barely understands the concept of files nowadays, if it's not app they're lost banning selling VPN and VPN apps will solve 90% of the problem and that's enough
- sunrunner 1y ago> do you think the public at large knows what VPS are Fair point. As you say regarding files, it's easy to vastly overestimate the familiarity with computing concepts when you're writing anything in the orange bar website.
- orlp 1y ago> will solve 90% of the problem Remind me again, what the problem they're trying to solve is?
- GeoAtreides 1y agopeople using VPNs to circumvent banned or restricted content
- xoa 1y ago>do you think the public at large knows what VPS are? How to set up a VPN? Do you think the general public NEEDS to know those things right now? Because that's what actually mostly drives what people put in the time to learn. This smug elitist "everyone is dumb except me the tech wizard" sort of comment shows up every such thread and it's deeply irksome. Most people are plenty intelligent and can easily learn things as trivial as setting up a VPN. For most that would just amount to "sign up for one of many turnkey services, install this app, scan this QR code" or even more commonly "ask one of the kids or techie person in circle of friends/neighbors to take care of it". All sorts of people working in a vast array of businesses use VPNs all the frickin' time, it's no big deal. But there are endless such things in our lives and only so much time, so most people very reasonably triage and only put effort into things they enjoy personally or things they are forced to care about due to being important. Up until now, most people haven't needed to care in their personal lives, because they're satisfied enough with the fairly open internet experience we've had. If that changes, and it matters to them, the tools exist to easily deal with it and people will easily learn it.
- jofla_net 1y agoHah, yes 'children' stealing a 'credit card' to get a VPN to watch porn. Well stop that!
- daveoc64 1y agoNote that the children's commissioner is only an advisor to government. The government itself has said it doesn't believe VPNs should be outlawed - that's even stated in the article.
- DaiPlusPlus 1y ago> it doesn't believe VPNs should be outlawed That still leaves space for a lot of unpleasant, but plausible, alternatives: * Banning under-18s from using VPNs; enforced by ordering Visa+Mastercard to deny UK-originating payments to VPN operators that don't verify their users' identity. * Introducing a "VPN license"; initially only granted to large corporate users. All encrypted VPN traffic will be required to periodically broadcast their VPN license-number in cleartext so that ISP-based traffic monitoring will let it pass, otherwise the connection will be reset.
- Joker_vD 1y ago> I guess the UK never heard of VPNs Wanna bet that when they finally hear of them, they'll try to ban them (and mentions of VPNs, too)?
- Klaster_1 1y agoIt doesn't matter if naive blocking means can be trivially circumvented. This creates a chilling effect, less technically proficient people will just move to other sites. When circumvention becomes an offence, now government has one more point of leverage over you - they manufacture law under which almost everyone is guilty.
- firesteelrain 1y agoWhat about Onion networks?
- fruitworks 1y agoThey need bridges. I think the question we should be asking is "What about SSHing into a VPS?" and "What about seedboxes". You can disguise a VPS as any server outside of your country, it could serve up an HTTPS page and no one snooping the connection would be any wiser.
- 1gn15 1y agoRelated: https://snowflake.torproject.org/ https://snowflake.torproject.org/ Help run a Snowflake proxy! You can do it from your browser.