zlacker

>>mmaria+(OP)
What's stopping lawmakers to require VPN providers to verify the age of their users?

>>Fraaaa+7i4
Enforcement, one countries laws don’t apply in another. Which is kind of why the age verification thing won’t work… There will always be some jurisdiction that’ll ignore things for profit.

>>mtnGoa+6l4
Well, what’s preventing the UK to ban the websites/VPN services that don’t comply at the ISP level?

This is what Russia is (semi-successfully) doing.

>>reliab+Fl4
That's a forever lasting game of whack-a-mole.

You either need to firewall the nation (which I imagine would be pretty unpopular) or it's just a waste of resources.

>>qualee+Ur4
Many areas of law enforcement are whack-a-mole. There's no online gambling regulation so strict that it will stop unlicensed sites from existing entirely; that doesn't mean the rules are pointless or resources dedicated to enforcing them are wasted.

>>SpicyL+6t4
Sure. However, the effort spent vs. what is gained has to be considered. Not all games of whack-a-mole are created equal.

VPNs are incredibly easy to spin up, gambling groups are not. Within a week I could probably spin up a dozen or more semi-legitimate VPN companies. Multiply that by however many hundreds of people are willing to do the same. Add a few thousand more people willing to spin up completely shady 'free' VPNs.

The scale quickly exceeds what you can possibly block, unless you firewall the nation.

>>qualee+Bw4
Sure. But majority of the people (as seen with China, or Russia) do not care about VPN and won’t care. So, it seems to me that this way it will be easier for law enforcement to achieve what they want just because the target pool is already smaller.

>>reliab+NK4
>But majority of the people (as seen with China, or Russia) do not care about VPN and won’t care

The article that our comments are under are about an 18x increase in sign-ups from the UK for one provider, a 2.5x increase for another provider, a 10x increase for yet another provider, etc. in just days.

I'm curious about your stats for China/Russia, though. Where/how do you find out how many internet users in those countries have a subscription to and/or use a VPN? Would those stats continue to hold true if there was not a great firewall in China, and just rudimentary IP-blocking of VPN providers?