Utah tells porn sites to take the P out of VPNs, and it's their fault that they can't

"The discovery that imposing age access controls on websites has pushed users to VPNs has come as a huge surprise to legislators in the UK, the EU, Canada, and Australia. Nobody here knows how old VPN users are, be they kids unwilling to lose access or adults unwilling to disgorge personally identifying data to who knows what. As they recover from this shocking discovery, these fine people are looking at ways to control VPNs, whether by adding age verification here too or by some magical "digital age of consent" technology that somehow evades the paradox that demanding more personal information in the name of safety itself reduces safety."

"This law makes it compulsory for any site that the state says needs age verification - porn, basically - to impose those checks on anyone physically in Utah whether or not they are using any VPN. Those would be the same VPNs whose sole purpose is to prevent the geolocation of their users. Which would seem, and is, another paradox. The only way to comply is to impose global age checks, effectively giving Utah worldwide regulatory powers. As there is no global standard for this, it's not a practical option."

"But then, there are no practical options to control VPNs, short of cutting off all internet access à la North Korea. Even China, the world's most effective cyber-authoritarian state and one which very much enjoys telling its citizens what to think, has to be very wary of putting the VPN screws on too harshly. The ground truth ab"

Age verification requirements for websites have driven users toward VPNs, since VPNs prevent geolocation and hide user details. Legislators in multiple countries face uncertainty about users’ ages and about how to enforce controls without collecting more personal information, which can reduce safety. Attempts to regulate VPNs, including adding age checks or creating a “digital age of consent,” encounter practical and logical contradictions. Utah’s anti-VPN law requires age verification for certain sites for anyone physically in Utah, even when VPNs are used. Compliance would effectively require global age checks, granting worldwide regulatory power, but no global standard exists. Controlling VPNs further would likely require cutting off internet access, which is not feasible.

Read at theregister