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Copyright Industry Continues Its Efforts To Ban VPNs (www.techdirt.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 10 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

Russia has banned them, sort of.

Although I don't think their methods would work here, or rather, I don't think they could grab the kind of power necessary.

Russia now has regional internet blackouts, were they effectively only allow a small number of white listed sites to be accessible.

So if you you literally cannot reach the VPN servers because only a handful of Russian government websites, preferred businesses, and UK banks (oligarchs gotta oligarch) are whitelisted, well then you banned VPNs, again, sort of.

They did roll out a government approved VPN for specific approved individuals and use cases, to a get around those blackouts....so that's something.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Whitelists are the death of the Internet if they are implemented. We already have a massive issue with corporate centralization of the Internet, and if free and open competition isn't allowed to exist in the first place, then why even have an Internet?

    It also helps the government keep ultimate control over their populace, which I'm sure is what they want at the end of the day like any regime throughout history.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago*

    In the case of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc. they have control of the routes in and out of the country. In other words, if an individual is inside one of those countries and tries to connect to an outside resource, that connection passes through a government-controlled device and every request is ostensibly approved or denied. This would not work in most other countries. Those governments would have to wrangle many disparate entities to seize control at scale. Even then there are ways to disguise connections beyond using a VPN.

    (I feel like most people here are gonna say "duh, we know". This is for the people in the back.)

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