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Lawyer Claims Using a VPN or Proxy to Bypass Internet Region Locking is Illegal

Posted: 09th Dec, 2011 By: MarkJ
pirate.pngDavid McLaughlin, a New Zealand copyright lawyer for the McLaughlin Law firm, has bizarrely claimed that any broadband ISP customer who uses a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or Proxy server to mask their IP address and thus bypass regional internet access restrictions for online video streaming services in another country, such as Hulu or Netflix, would "fly pretty close to copyright infringement" and could be "illegal".

David McLaughlin said (PC World NZ):

"What you’re really talking about here is more direct individual access to a service that they may or may not be allowed. It comes down to whether it’s a technological protection measure [TPM] and whether what someone is doing is actually circumventing it.

If someone can get around it, if it is a TPM, that would arguably fly pretty close to copyright infringement."

Good luck enforcing that one. VPN and Proxy servers aren't illegal and are generally used for legitimate purposes, such as remote working/support and IP routing to gain web access. Satellite ISPs often use IPs that originate in different countries because the service is deployed from space and thus geography is largely irrelevant.

Identification of either region or individual by IP has and always will be highly unreliable, not to mention that people who sit behind a good VPN or Proxy are often almost impossible to identify. The fact that they would most likely come from a different country with different laws, which would make pursuing them very difficult, also appears to have escaped McLaughlin.

On top of all that the terms (contract) of a website do not generally constitute law, although the site would be within its rights to limit your accounts access. McLaughlin does at least admit the content being accessed could otherwise be non-infringing.

Indeed if the individual is still paying to view the content then surely that's a good thing? The site could hardly sue somebody for damages without being able to show an economic loss.
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