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An increasing number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) around the world have been blocking more and more access based on accusations of copyright infringement. Those demanding the blocking assert that high standards are followed when making the decision. However, those studying the situation are finding otherwise. Given the scope creep demonstrated by these activities there is legitimate concern for the future availability of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) on those providers.
TorrentFreak covers analysis from University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist on the topic via his personal blog:
A group of prominent Canadian ISPs and movie industry companies are determined to bring pirate site blocking efforts to North America. This plan has triggered a fair amount of opposition, including cautioning analyses from law professor Michael Geist, who warns of potential overblocking and fears that VPN services could become the next target.
Michael Geist's personal blog jumps right in with a discussion of likely expansions to the scope of blocking and other sources of blocking over-reach.
The Bell coalition website blocking proposal downplays concerns about over-blocking that often accompanies site blocking regimes by arguing that it will be limited to "websites and services that are blatantly, overwhelmingly, or structurally engaged in piracy." Having discussed piracy issues in Canada and how the absence of a court order makes the proposal an outlier with virtually every country that has permitted site blocking, the case against the website blocking plan now turns to the inevitability of over-blocking that comes from expanding the block list or from the technical realities of mandating site blocking across hundreds of ISPs for millions of subscribers. This post focuses on the likely expansion of the scope of piracy for the purposes of blocking and the forthcoming posts will discuss other sources of blocking over-reach.
Once a technology or practice is in place, it is usually extended and abused beyond its original purpose. Even in the short history of the World Wide Web as well as the Internet, scope creep has shown itself to be a real problem.
Sources :
Canadian Pirate Site Blocks Could Spread to VPNs, Professor Warns
The Case Against the Bell Coalition's Website Blocking Plan, Part 5: The Inevitable Expansion of the Block List Standard for "Piracy" Sites
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday February 21 2018, @12:21AM
Once, while setting up an ipsec vpn through an AT&T U-Verse connection, it didn't work; the negotiations kept timing out, but everything else was OK.
I called AT&T and the business service representative told me that "only pirates use VPNs". I said that ok fine, I am trying to connect this business service to VPN with enterprise grade hardware to the company headquarters hosted at an actual physical AT&T raised floor data center, and you're telling me that I am a pirate? Who's your boss?
Then it worked
I later learned that HTTPS VPNs are passed through unmolested because they couldn't be sure if it was legit or not -- but these site blocks are undoubtedly going to be applied to https based VPN destinations, and likely hose up a bunch of legit tunnels set up because IPSec was already blocked by the ISP because no one but pirates use VPNs.
This was before net neutrality was put into place, and was a great reason to enforce net neutrality. Now it sounds like an accepted business plan...
Comcast was blocking VPNs for a while, too, and their salespeople would say sometimes if you are not pirating, then you are working, and you can't work from home on a consumer/residential connection, you need a business connection to do business because you might have a server hidden behind the VPN and that's a theft of service!"
They completely twisted the "don't put a server on the internet on your residential connection because you need a static IP for it to reliably work without denying us money when you use dyndns or something" and turned it into a "that's no fair give us money because if you aren't pirating warez you are pirating service!"
If we had dumb pipes and net neutrality... not much of this would be an issue.