Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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How do VPNs operate legally? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 5 days ago by Star@sopuli.xyz to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

ISPs get legal notices from companies and are liable if it is found that their users are downloading illegal torrents and they don't take action against those users.

How are VPNs any different? By using a VPN, aren't you essentially transferring your accountability to the VPN provider? Wouldn't courts find that since this or that VPN service's exit server was used in ____ illegal online activity, they're responsible and must cease operations?

How do VPNs operate? Are laws different for them? If yes, then how does that benefit the state? Wouldn't the state benefit from treating VPNs the same as ISPs so they get more control?

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[–] refalo@programming.dev 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Even if Section 230 didn't require providers to terminate the user's service, providers further upstream could technically punish that ISP for breaking their own ToS depending on what it is.

People like Liz Fong-Jones and Keffals have successfully lobbied multiple Tier 1 ISPs to blackhole websites that have posted information about them that they didn't like based on this fact, behavior which the EFF has specifically called out as a threat to the free and open Internet. Even the CEO of Cloudflare has openly admitted to being personally involved in blocking sites without a really good reason.