Denmark takes a Viking swing at VPN-enabled piracy The Danish government wants the public to weigh in on its proposed laws restricting use of VPNs to access certain corners of the internet. Proposed amendments to the country's laws on copyright and broadcasting would see VPNs limited for common uses under changes to combat access to illegal streaming services. As per the …
Because every politician and minister always checks for Reddit posts, don't you know.
Sadly, an ant farting in the breeze. I'm sure that hurts many Redditor's feelings of importance though.
Do something more than post your complaints on Reddit, even if they ignore that too.
"However, it stated that in whatever form the provision is made, it should be tech-neutral to account for future developments, and said the broad wording of the proposal was intentional so that objectionable technology in the future could also be dealt with under the same legislative amendments."
Soooo. Using a device, of any sort, using technology more advanced than unmodified sticks, for any purpose the government or it's commercial sponsors does not approve of shall be made illegal.
UK politicians are watching with interest and wondering if stick use might be subject to some sort of licence fee and national register.
Also, we already have a tech-neutral law, the one that makes copyright and therefore makes violations of copyright illegal. That someone chooses to break that law using a VPN doesn't need to add to the pile of laws broken to be illegal. Otherwise, we would need to pass a law for every item to indicate that you are also not allowed to break the law using it. The Tennis Ball Abuse Regulation is written to make sure that, should you deliberately hit someone with a tennis ball, that would be illegal, something assault laws evidently don't cover.
The only point of having a new law is if they intend to mandate that VPN providers do something actively about this. Any statement that this won't involve those active measures either indicates that the speaker is lying or the speaker has no idea what they're talking about.
In most countries, merely receiving an unauthorized copy is not an infringement of copyright and therefore isn't illegal.
It's only if rather than leeching, you decide to share the generally useful public information with your neighbors, that it may be illegal.
It seems the new law is about making it illegal for VPN providers to not actively prevent unauthorized copying.
This is almost entirely wrong. The good news is that enforcement of copyright law is lax so that people following this advice are unlikely to face the full consequences they theoretically could. Anyone who finds themselves trying this argument in court will find that it's not very representative of most countries' laws. However, since the discussion was about the intentions, purposes, and effects of a law regulating VPNs, I don't see a benefit in debating someone's incorrect understanding of penalties under copyright law in lots of different countries and will suggest that people intending to push the limits research what the law looks like in their own country with a special attention to case law from similar situations.
At college I discovered a branded COBOL compiler on 5.25" floppy - about two terms worth of my grant money. Looking at the original on the shelf, I mentioned to one of my CS lecturers that I was getting into the nuts and bolts of it at home. "Where did you get a copy of that?", I was asked. I explained the miraculous circumstances. A nearby lightening strike had, beyond all probability, coincidentally aligned all the bits on a blank disk in a perfect match to that compiler. He turned his back and walked away, saying nothing, but wearing one of the cheesiest grins I've seen to this day :)
I was entirely correct.
For example in the UK, if you actually read the UK law; https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/107 receiving unauthorized copies for private use is not an offense.
In the UK, distribution that infringes copyright is only considered a offense if it is part of a business, or is for financial gain, or it is imagined that the copyright holder would make a financial gain if the distribution had not occurred (such claims are ludicrous).
The same is true for most other countries - name whatever country and I'll link to what the copyright law says.
It would be regarded as a legal overstep for copyright to apply to receiving copies, thus it seems businesses have lobbied to try to prevent access to unauthorized copies instead.
"They will ask China how to build the lesser wall of Denmark"
Given the Danish Alps top out at 171m and the mean altitude of the nation is ~31m, I would imagine their efforts might be better directed towards building (unencrypted) sea walls.
The idea that the UK would require sticks (as in twigs) to be licensed would be laughable but for the fact it wouldn't be the silliest thing the govt has sought to enact. I imagine the Chancellor is beside herself imagining the absolute fortune to be reaped from aficionados of the childhood pastime of Poohsticks. (Which one imagines is banned in the PRC.)
> The document outlining the proposals did not mention how the government plans to implement this.
Because it's not possible, AFAICS. Suppose a Brit was trying to access the BBC (for some bizarre reason) from Denmark. The end point's in UK, so no control by DK there. The access is acceptable by the BBC as they're a TV Licence holder and BBC said years ago that's legit usage. And the Beep couldn't know the origin anyway. How would that be discernible (by the Danish powers that be) from a non-licence holder doing the same?
It's clearly a case of "Look how much I care!" while not giving a toss about spending the Danish public's money fawning over it.
Utter shash.
They don't ask because we Brits are so honest and civil that we'd never use _any_ services without appropriate permission. *cough* The BBC streaming services ask if you're licensed, and one says "Yup!" Or possibly they're just pleased someone's still interested! You might be their last hope AC :D
I don't know if it's changed, but quite a while ago, I wanted to access some BBC material (I am not a UK citizen or resident) and they just don't have any mechanism for people to pay them for it. They had some programs with access to some news content, but nothing for the rest of it. I understand why that would be the case for things they licensed from others for a UK audience, but what I wanted was a BBC production and I couldn't find any way to give them money for it. I wonder how many people would have paid if they had, and my decision would have depended a lot on whatever price they chose, but it still could be an opportunity for them.
60% of German public TV (almost anything except movies and big name/imported series) is available to UK viewers on a phone or stick app without even a user account, never mind a VPN. Strict enforcement of a Danish VPN law would mean online access to German TV from Denmark but not UK TV. So much for British cultural 'soft power'. Anyway such a 'VPN bill' would be made out of pure unenforceum.
Get the feeling like there will be an industry funded anti-piracy push. No doubt greased by anonymous bribes, ahem, donations to reelection campaigns.
This is just a test the waters, in a small, well regulated market to see how well tighter anti-piracy regulations would be received.
Perhaps upcoming World Cup and the streamers want this to wield a big stick?
If copyright wasn’t broken, this wouldn’t be an issue.
When Adobe sold physical media, it was cheaper to fly AUS-US, just to buy Adobe products, than to buy locally in Australia. Stupid shit like this
Can't remember which book it's in, could be Night Watch, but Vimes notes in passing that the banning of weapons rarely interests criminals, who are by definition breaking the law…
The use of VPNs is often required for certain tasks and, if the VPNs are doing their job properly, what happens in them can't be observed from outside, including how the traffic is regulated. Trying to make some uses illegal is both unworkable and nonsensical.
You know, it's interesting to see meanings change. VPN stands for, and always has stood for 'Virtual Private Network'.
The original use case is providing access to one's internal network for yourself and others from the 'outside' I.e. road warriors or remote workers.
Another recent use case is the circumvention of geo-blocks, although service providers are getting better at blocking access from known VPN services/address ranges that are 'in territory'.
A third recent case is for the enhancement of privacy..."Hey, buy our privacy-enhancing VPN service...stick it to the people who want to spy on you!"...which is just plain bollocks!
VPNs get in the way of surveillance, and in the way of policing things geographically. Those with an interest in surveillance or geo-blocked content will of course be in favour of suppressing the use of VPNs......but don't seem to have cottened onto the TOR network yet. I wouldn't mind betting they'll be after that next!
Actually, I'm surprised they haven't gone after TOR first...it's way better at counter-surveilance etc. than a plain VPN with predictable egress points. AFAIK TOR is still 'best in class' for obfuscation etc., not to mentions the hidden services it provides!
TOR would be a much tougher nut to crack. VPNs with their single point of attack in the provider and traffic is merely encrypted not routed in a way to prevent sender and receiver from being identified.
The only successful way to attack TOR so far has something like China did with the great firewall. Thankfully politicians haven't been willing yet to even propose going that far. Not that I'm ruling it out. Any nation dumb enough to reelect the orange turf gobbler, and vote for the oligarch party he represents nothing is truly off the table.
By the way, it was never "TOR" - it's Tor for the network and tor for the C implementation.
Tor is mostly useless of online streaming, as it only does TCP (it does not do UDP, which pretty much all streaming uses) and all the IP addresses of exits are published (some of the genius streaming hosts even block guards and middles, despite how those exit nothing and how the video streaming uses UDP regardless).
The GFW mostly uses IP blocking of all relays to prevent access to Tor, which has been implemented in many other countries, although the GFW also uses heuristic detection to detect and block obfs4 and snowflake connections.
The USA is in fact attacking Tor - the NSA is constantly attacking Tor and trying to deanonymize its users, but they've admitted that "tor stinks", as it stops them from spying on everything, all the time.
Several people have been predicting this for a while. I think it'll be a different excuse in each country, but there's going to be an avalanche of restrictions on VPNs worldwide. The Lords hsve tacked on an amendment to the Childs Wellbeing & Schools Bill banning u18s from using VPNs. Even Wisconsin & Michigan are looking at banning them. Also watch for a crackdown against other circumvention tech & encryption, e.g. Tor & client side scanning.
One report is that age verification will be needed to download the VPN software.
However, that doesn't stop a child using a VPN on a computer if it's already installed, or is installed by an adult.
So the next step would be to require VPN's to require age verification on each use.
Oh, and there's another amendment been proposed for that child safety act: To require all phone manufacturers to add image scanning to their devices to report if an image, either taken by that device or downloaded to the device, might be of a child, and to then notify the police. No chain of custody: Just your device spying on you along with the opportunities it offers criminals to scam/extort people.
Also goes to show how quickly mission creep occurs... and how little those in power care about the privacy of the public.
"One report is that age verification will be needed to download the VPN software."
Which effectively raises the spectre of being forced to age verify to
* Own a phone with a VPN client
* Download an app package.
* Download VPN source code.
* Download a Linux distro with VPN modules/packages etc
* Download Windows
* Download MacOS
* Deployment a cloud-based VM or container, whether manually or automated
Popcorn time.
Last I checked, VPNs are typically encrypted and then on top of that, the data stream is usually TLS encrypted as well. How will they block only the "bad" content but not all other content since they are indistinguishable from each other?
Frankly, if you're watching shit like Netflix you've likely paid them, so who gives a fuck? In the immortal words of Phillip J. Fry, shut up and take my money.
Just be glad I didn't yo-ho-ho your content, because I absolutely could have. (And will, if you stop me from accessing it legally.)
Quote: "...attempts to break open encrypted messaging apps...."
Why do governments RELY ON HUGE INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS in order to "break open encrypted messaging"? Like Meta or Signal.
Personally, I use private encryption BEFORE sending messages over Signal. So would any other sensible person who wanted privacy.
Remember Jamal Khashoggi!
The reason why people are using VPN's to access illegal IPTV streams is because of the enshitifcation of the legitimate streaming services.
Remember how piracy was at an all time low when Netflix came along and made the legal route the most friction-less and easy, well those days are gone now due to every media company wanting their own streaming service so content is now divided up over several platforms, requiring multiple subscriptions which keep going up in price and often with ads thrown into the mix now so they can double dip charging you a subscription and make you watch adverts.
It no better for sports fans you need several different subscriptions to watch all the premiership matches due to the rights being split up across multiple providers, and some matches are blacked out entirely.
Even Youtube is barely usable in 2025 unless you pay for YT premium or use an adblock due to the sheer number of ads, often which are unskippable now.
So banning VPNs is not the solution to stop people pirating content, actually making the legitimate services better than the pirate experience is the way to stop all be the most full on freetards from using the illegal streaming apps and websites.
Pretty much. Also streaming services will remove content which you have paid for and remove all content if you stop paying. The torrented movie is a far better product - you can back it up to other storage, watch it on whatever device, there's no crappy region restrictions. A lot of people would pay for a product like that. But they choose not to sell it.
What will happen when whistle blowers are unable to securely communicate issues happening within a government electronically to your free press without being spied on by that same government (and stopped)
...not that it is close to perfect now, but why offer help to the corruption side of the scale.
We know that if streaming services are priced at a certain point and have a compelling content offering, piracy rates drop.
But the streaming offerings have been en-shit-ified over the years. Less content, higher prices, more ads, fractured content availability.
Corporate greed can't help itself from screwing up eventually.
Piracy is on the rise as streaming giants get too big for their own good.
Look at Netflix wrangling with Paramount to buy Warner Brothers.
I've never pirated anything.
But if I did, in earlier years it would've been very prevalent - I would've been downloading loads of stuff in the early naughty's right into the tennie's.
I would've been doing a bit of cheeky usb-stick swapping at the office or maybe have access to a sneaky little office file store.
I may have been dabbling with a bit of torrenting.
In earlier years, I would probably have been compressing rented DVD's to fit onto CD's and used my good old CD burner to do so.
Later, a DVD burner.
Later still, no point burning - a media server.
And VPN's ?
If I was going to pirate anything, not that I would, I'd certainly pay a monthly or yearly fee for a reputable VPN service.
In this modern world, I'd be paying for 2 streaming services, somewhat reluctantly as they enshitify themselves and grabbing whatever else I want from "services" like YIFY.
I wouldn't be a hardcore pirate - I'd just be like "Damn, that's a good series, but it's on HBO and I don't have that and screw paying another 15 bucks a month for one show"
What would I be prepared to pay for a streaming service that has EVERYTHING ever released and going to be released, with a back catalogue going back to the start of cinema?
£30 a month, no problem.
I'd even entertain a fair use policy that limits access to X amount of hours a month - a tiered system.
Somewhat like a mobile phone data service contract.
The important thing is that shows don't vanish, that ALL shows are available, that historical shows are available with more added over time.
No adverts, ever, except for limited recommendations of new content.
This will never happen, obviously.
To add to your points, for £30 a month one can buy an entire box set of various TV shows. And, own it for ever. For example, DVD set (not Bluray) of (for example) Friends. If that floats your boat. There's comfort viewing. 1 year's worth of subscriptions can buy a lot of physical media.
If you can run your own media server, then you can take care of multi-device questions. If not, then a paid for streaming service is for you.
However, If you can run Kodi/Plex/Jellyfish/etc, then streaming services only advantage is discoverability. Costwise, streaming is renting entertainment. I'm happy to pay, but gimme phyiscal media so i can watching how and when I want. Also, no privacy endangering, but sell-able profile building activity with the streaming provider.
Outside of the UK, how does one watch old or new Who? The answer was different 3 years ago to what it is today. And it will be different again in 3 years time. Me? I keep watching my disks (albeit shifted to my media server).
"Subscribe to a streaming service and you're entertained for a day, buy physical media and you're entertained for the rest of your life"
Another nation following the bonkers UK government.
Will they do things to promote censorship - yes.
Will they do things to help large US corporations who are not happy unless financially raping the whole world - yes.
Will they do anything to prevent the endless online and email scams, scam phone messages and all the other shite that annoys and cons it's electorate - no fucking chance.
I had a virtual server with a relatively small company whose name I can't recall right now.
It had (or has?) small datacentres *everywhere*.
You could create a VM in one country but move it somewhere else in half an hour (think similar to VMware VMotion).
I'm a Brit but the server usually resideded in Amsterdam.
It was very useful for accessing region-blocked websites.
Something not accessible from Europe? Just move it to NA for the day. ;-)
Having an IP address in the "right" region is no longer enough for many sites. The BBC, for example, blocks UK IP addresses associated with hosting providers of this type that are known to host VPN termination points. Channel 4 seems less fussy. There's a constant game of whack-a-mole between streamers and VPN services and any access that's available today may well be denied tomorrow.
The minister is already running like a scared chicken.
The Danish Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt says:
“I do not support making VPNs illegal, and I have never proposed that either. However, I must acknowledge that the bill has not been formulated precisely enough when some people can see so many ghosts in the current wording. Therefore, I am removing the part about VPNs from the bill, so there can no longer be any doubt that I in no way wish to ban the use of VPNs.”
https://kum.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/kulturministeren-justerer-lovforslag-og-fjerner-afsnit-om-vpn
VPNs will eventually be banned - Business lobbies politicians pretend it is to save the kids when it is really to protect Netflix / Disney etc and make them more money so they can feed on users until they have every penny. Once business went online it was the beginning of the end greed corrupts everything alas so back to drinking down the pub with your mates... oh they are closed.
No they won't. If you work from home for any of the large corporations you will use a VPN into their private network. If you work on a customer site you will use the same technology to do the same thing. They are ubiquitous. They are essential. They will never disappear. Just like encryption people can wish for what they want, but you crack encryption and all of a sudden e-business disappears. No one will bank online if encryption is not trusted.
Encryption and VPNs are core Internet technologies that we can't do without.
If I set up a SSH session and use it to set up a VNC session on another computer in X country, then that would be considered a VPN ?
If so... how the hell do you incept and block such traffic, especially if I switch it to a random port away from the regular one of 22 ?
If I set up a SSH session and use it to set up a VNC session on another computer in X country, then that would be considered a VPN ?If so... how the hell do you incept and block such traffic, especially if I switch it to a random port away from the regular one of 22 ?
You don't even have to ffaf around with the bits of ssh and vnc. Nomachine software pretty much does this out of the box.
Setting up a wireguard vpn between two boxes takes a matter of mere minutes or a service like Tailscale if scale is required.
As someone noted: pure Unenforcium—an element whose hazardous emissions notoriously liquify politicians' brains.
I'd love to see a politician's face when having the difference between VPN and SSH tunnels explained. It'd be more glazed than one of Homer's donuts[1]! In fact, that gives me an idea. Politicians can't legislate on this unless they _can_ describe the difference, and not just by rote.
[1] Respecting Homer's Murkin heritage. But it's a doughnut, jeez! Does the recipe say "Start by making some do..." C'mon!
[Icon: nearly all politicians and the do(ugh)nut thing!]
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/uk-to-encourage-apple-and-google-to-put-nudity-blocking-systems-on-phones/
This moral panic is ridiculous. It's not illegal for people of any age to look at pictures of nudes.
Nudity is "explicit" now, is it? Why do Anglophone countries always associate nudity with sex?
I look forward to them explaining how nudity is "harmful".
.......why do governments think that relying on HUGE CORPORATIONS to implement PRIVACY-DEFEATING laws will actually work?
You know.....Signal, Google, Apple, Meta.........
Any group of informed folk can implement private encryption!
E.G. I use private encryption BEFORE sending messages across Signal.
E.G. If Google or Apple try to install client-side scanning, there's plenty that informed citizens can do to defeat (or delete) the attempt.
Citizens have the ability to defend their own privacy! Pehaps more citizens should try!
Remember Jamal Khashoggi!
Thanks for that link. It really underlines the total carelessness of these twats when they're spewing their holier-than-thou rhetoric.
> "Child sex offenders would be required to keep such blockers enabled.”
That's an entirely different class of images, and involves an entirely different set of (established) laws. "Better stop showing images of sheep/tractors/sofas, you know what those perverts are like. Now _our_ perversions... *titter titter*" I'd say they're fucking donkey's, which they are, and probably are. "Led By Donkeys" were right all long.
There's never any actual intent to do anything meaningful with these policies. The goal is to generate headlines, and to fool technically illiterate people into believing government is "doing something". The Online Safety Act was a case in point. They must have read it, recognised it was a steaming pile of crap, and then shrugged and said to themselves: "Why not let it generate publicity for us instead of the Tories?"
>As per the current draft, the restriction would extend to all media content that would otherwise not be available in Denmark
Oh look, censorship. Government censorship. This time pretending to be about ... errr... piracy or something. Normally it's children.
"Pass this legislation, and then we can simply hide awkward facts: it becomes illegal to look at it."
Same as Australia, UK, EU (but without Denmark-specific powers), Japan... it's almost like something global's going on.
Rather "amusingly", it is Denmark which sells all Euro-transitted IP traffic to USA's NSA, via tapping the cables in their sea territory.
Governments are running scared as people are now waking up and not believing the censored narrative put out and they don't like that, we kid ourselves live in a democracy but every country is a dictatorship, just power is shared between a select few. The truth is now being believed and become widespread and so governments revert to tried and tested control policies.
"It is similar to the UK's long-held ambition to break end-to-end encryption (E2EE), packaged using similar themes – disrupting child sexual abuse, tackling terrorism, and so on."
As long as you're not a Muslim! The, it's culturally fine to rape young girls! God forbid anyone in the government be accused of being racist!
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