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Pornhub, YouPorn, Redtube, and other content sharing platforms will block new users in the UK starting next week(February 2) (www.aylo.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 67 points 9 months ago (19 children)

House of Lords voted for age verification on VPNs. Not for them of course.....

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  • [–] 30 points 9 months ago (11 children)

    So rent a VPS abroad and run your own VPN from it. Comercial VPNs have a business to maintain so they've got to comply to keep operating and public advertising, but a privately run VPN just for yourself is just another TLS connection in a sea of other traffic.

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    Give it a bit of time and you'll need a license to use a VPN. Without a license, your ISP can snitch in you. Unless you use starlink.

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  • [–] 11 points 9 months ago* (5 children)

    This is the UK. You need a licence for a TV. I almost would guarantee that this is happening

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    You need a TV licence because that's the funding model for the BBC (and wider broadcasting infrastructure), not because the government want to keep tabs on who has a TV.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)

    You don't think they are using that data to see who doesn't have a licence to go sniffing around for violators?

    Besides £174.50/year is ridiculous ($241.06). I've watched the BBC, it ain't worth that much.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Given how you translated the cost into $, am I correct in assuming that you're not British?

    Because I am, and honestly, £14.50 a month for what the BBC actually offers is, if anything, not enough. Because it's not just TV.

    The income from the licence fee covers TV, radio, broadcasting infrastructure, and R&D into said infrastructure. It also covers a broad range of community initiatives (several orchestras receive much of their funding from the BBC). And let's not forget the iPlayer. It may have since been surpassed in utility by some of the other streaming companies, but it was one of the first to offer that kind of service, and for a long time, pretty much the gold standard.

    On top of that is the intangible benefits of having a state broadcaster that is, according to the rules by which it is bound, absolutely not allowed to run advertising for commercial products. Other broadcasters in the UK are held up in comparison to the BBC, which means that they have yet to fall to the diabolical levels that commercial broadcasters in places like the US have. If they did, people would switch off.

    BBC News can piss up a rope though. Sometimes stories don't need balance.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    The part that is most offensive is the lack of choice if you don't want to fund things that really don't need to be funded by the public at large anymore. The price also really isn't justifiable when a year of amazon prime and monthly Netflix is still cheaper. Even if paying for the infra was the most important thing, it isn't needed anymore with broadband internet access available everywhere now. It's like saying we need the pony express to deliver mail in the age of planes trains and automobiles.

    Besides here in the US I don't want the government running a public broadcast/propaganda machine. It isn't getting better over there either. The same government that will arrest you for a social media post for being deemed offensive by an unelected beaurocrat is the same government I don't want running any kind of propaganda arm. Which gets back to choice. If I wanted to watch any alternative, I'd still have to fund the BBC.

    people would switch off.

    They are. Subs to traditional pay TV here in the states have been dwindling for years. With how broadcast television is dying anyway I wouldn't be surprised if the UK would soon require a license to watch any live streams on the internet even without owning a TV just to make up the lost revenue. Governments are diabolical when it comes to protecting their revenue especially when they have a monopoly on violence.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Even if paying for the infra was the most important thing, it isn't needed anymore with broadband internet access available everywhere now.

    Not everyone has fast internet. And in a world where internet access is not a public utility, but people can still receive TV and radio over the air, there is still a need for broadcasting infrastructure. The BBC was founded on the promise to educate, entertain, and inform, and has a mandate to be available to as many people as possible. As such, the maintenance of that infrastructure means that people in the most remote areas of the UK can still receive education, entertainment, and information over the airwaves, regardless of the profit motives of private companies.

    I will grant that the BBC is not in the best of health currently, after 15 years of Tory misrule, and the positioning of conservative sympathisers in the highest positions. However, suggesting that private organisations would perform any better denies the existence of Fox News, for example. Private organisations are led by private ideals, and will almost always bend towards the greatest income. Which is understandable. The BBC is still able to speak truth to power. Currently.

    The same government that will arrest you for a social media post for being deemed offensive by an unelected beaurocrat

    I admit that I don't know the context to this, but I will say that almost every example I can think of of people being arrested for social media posts is because they posted something inflammatory. The one exception off the top of my head was Paul Chambers, who was arrested for posting a joke about blowing up an airport. He was eventually found not guilty, but taken at face value even that could be (and was) considered inflammatory.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the UK would soon require a license to watch any live streams on the internet even without owning a TV just to make up the lost revenue.

    This is pure speculation. There is no evidence to support this concern. That said, you do technically need a TV licence to watch programs on the iPlayer. But that's all BBC content anyway, so it's functionally no different than watching it via broadcast.

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago*

    Your ISP could snitch on you for tons of 'illegal' traffic, but they don't because that would require deep packet inspection on an absurd amount of traffic and they gain nothing for it. Instead they pass on notices when they receive them from third parties, and take enforcement actions (like cutting off their service to you) only when they're directed to. They want your money after all.

    Torrenting for example; only gets flagged when copyright holders join torrent trackers, then send letters to ISPs that control the IPs found in those groups. That's not the ISP hunting you down, they're just passing on a legal notice they've been given and thus are obligated to pass it to you.

    From and ISPs perspective; a VPN connection doesn't look any different than any other TLS connection, ie https. There's nothing for them to snitch because a) they can't tell the difference without significant investment to capture and perform deep analysis on traffic at an absurd scale and b) they have no desire to even look and then snitch on customers, that just costs them paying customers.

    The ONLY reason this can be enforced at all, is because comercial VPN companies want to advertise and sell their services to customers; so lawmakers can directly view and monitor those services.

    Lawmakers have no way of even knowing about, let alone inspecting an individuals private VPN that's either running from private systems or from a foreign VPS.

    All that's not even touching things like SSH tunneling - in a sense, creating a VPN from an SSH connection; one of the most ubiquitous protocols for controlling server infrastructure around the globe. Even if traffic was inspected to find SSH connections, you CAN'T block this or you disrupt IT infrastructure at such an alarming scale there'd be riots.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    What does age verification mean for VPNs?

    Because if I'm using a VPN using a UK server and I get any issues, I can switch to Spain, or Italy, or Zimbabwe or whatever. Is that not the case?

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    The government can decree that ISPs have to block the IP addresses of known VPN endpoints. That's perfectly possible. They did something similar with piracy sites before (e.g. if you go visit piratebay on virgin media you'll get an error page). It's a game of cat-and-mouse because if it's done with DNS then aliases pop up immediately, and if it's by IP then other proxies pop up, but the fact is they could make is so difficult for average users that people give up.

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