this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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Banning VPNs is on the list of braindead government restrictions up there with banning encryption. The latter is basically a ban on math, just like in that book where 2+2 is sometimes 3, sometimes 5.
As a person from the UK, I am fully expecting them to implement this in the next year or two, because ruining the internet seems to be the government's top priority rather than say, fixing the economy or preventing Reform from taking over for some fucking reason.
Aren't they both the same thing? A VPN is just applied encryption.
You're right though, banning encryption is a pipe dream. Encrypted data is not distinguishable from random noise. So you're not allowing me to send around random numbers now?
To me "banning VPNs" is more like banning packet routing. Because VPNs or just that. "Normies" think they are like some magical hacker trick when in reality they are just routing+encryption. (technically you could have VPNs without encryption so for me the routing ban is more accurate) I guess that depends on the way the ban is implemented, though.
You mean
book1.xls?haha
Though to be fair whenever I encountered an issue in Excel/Calc, it was a user (me) error.
Yes but they've done this before in countries like US. They went after the T Shirt producers printing the DeCSS on them and recently the whole tornado cash fiasco where they tried to make smart contracts illegal (although this was overturned).
Granted though I think DeCSS contained proprietary code so its a little different but unfortunately I view most governmental control and censorship to be braindead but I still fear they will do it.
They would have exemptions for corporate VPNs and encryption and for members of parliament and all that of course, but I could absolutely see them trying to fuck us all sooner rather than later.
I hope I'm just paranoid.
Off topic, but with DeCSS the problem wasn't that it was proprietary or a trade secret. Once the algorithm got out, it was out. Since it had been a trade secret, there was no patent protection on it.
However, some laws and treaties prohibit distributing code that circumvents copy protection schemes, and this is where they ran into trouble.
And that's why they were all those songs and t-shirts and other free speech items made with the DeCSS algorithm on them. Eventually the cases were dropped.