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Arthur T Knackerbracket [soylentnews.org] writes:

EDITORS: THIS HAS BEEN PRODUCED BY SOFTWARE UNDER DEVELOPMENT - THE CONTENT MAY REQUIRE EXTENSIVE EDITING

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/utah-will-ban-vpn-use-to-circumvent-age-verification/ [cnet.com]

The legislation follows similar proposed bills from Wisconsin and Michigan [soylentnews.org] and is seen as the first major US step toward regulating VPN use to avoid age verification. 

However, privacy advocates warn that the legislation could lead to a blanket ban of all VPN addresses in a "technical whack-a-mole that likely no company can win". The Electronic Frontiers Federation wrote that [eff.org] "if a website cannot reliably detect a VPN user's true location and the law requires it to do so for all users in a particular state, then the legal risk could push the site to either ban all known VPN IPs, or to mandate age verification for every visitor globally."

In the past year, both Australia [soylentnews.org] and the UK [soylentnews.org] have enacted age-verification measures [soylentnews.org] to restrict access to "harmful content." While Australia's legislation has been called an "unmitigated disaster" [theguardian.com] by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, it's been reported that children in the UK have been drawing on mustaches [soylentnews.org] to get past age barriers.

Representatives for the EFF and the Utah Senate didn't respond immediately to CNET's request for more information.

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