this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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Utah first state to hold websites liable for users who mask their location with VPNs — law goes into effect, designed to prevent bypassing age checks (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 3 days ago by LuminousLuddite@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

If someone comes from Utah to my state and then I break one of Utah's laws against them, does that mean I'm subject to Utah's laws? They aren't doing business in Utah. People in Utah are doing business with them.

I don't have any way to prevent access to my site based on what laws you're subject to. Nor do I have any desire to learn 52 states worth of individual laws that may or may not apply to me. I didn't wire your computer up to the internet, you did that.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

They aren’t doing business in Utah. People in Utah are doing business with them.

In the law, those are mutually exclusive. If either end of the transaction is in Utah, it is under Utah jurisdiction.

I don’t have any way to prevent access to my site based on what laws you’re subject to.

If you're hosting an online business you do have the ability to block users based on location.

Nor do I have any desire to learn 52 states worth of individual laws that may or may not apply to me. I didn’t wire your computer up to the internet, you did that.

I would advise not running an online business then, because the law around jurisdiction and the Internet is well settled.

[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Geofencing is not trivial, cheap, or even reliable. Are there any cases of sites being legally required to geofence or do they all do it to preemptively avoid legal issues? I've only ever seen the latter.

I'm not trying to argue what is or isn't the current state of law around this; I'm pointing out the absurdity of enforcing it this way and the strange way it's being used to backdoor state laws into federal ones. This is extremely stupid from a technical, and legislative standpoint.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I agree that it is absurd.

The goal here is to force sites to do age verification.

Creating absurd laws where the only possible way to not be held liable is to implement the age verification requirements regardless of the apparent source of the traffic is the tactic that they've chosen.