> Now, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands must determine whether the geo-blocking used by the website was state of the art and effective in practice. If so, the intended audience would not have included Dutch users, and no communication would have been made to the public in the Netherlands.
replyThis seems extremely problematic, depending on what "state of the art and effective" means. It seems like blocking VPN users is unfortunately still on the table, as are other invasive enforcement methods.
And the actual judgment: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62...
replyI find these are often very readable and interesting.
It seems like the article title was inspired by this sentence "By contrast, the provider of a VPN or similar services that are used in order to circumvent an ineffective geo-blocking measure and are lawful technical tools which users may legitimately use cannot be regarded as also having communicated the work to the public." I.e. if a VPN is a lawful technical tool, then the VPN provider isn't liable as the publisher of works accessible through it. That leaves open the possibility for VPNs that are not lawful or not mere technical tools to be liable.
reply