Report from TechRadar
In Brief – Utah is implementing a new law imposing a 2% excise tax on online adult content sites with a controversial provision aimed at reducing the likelihood that Utah residents will employ Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or other digital location shielding technologies to circumvent the state’s online age limit of 18-years-old to access adult websites. Along with imposing the new tax duties on adult content sites for all users physically located in Utah, even in cases where the user employs a VPN or other tools to obscure their location, Section 78B-3-1002 also prohibits the adult sites from notifying or encouraging their users to use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or other location shielding services to circumvent online age verification requirements. Privacy advocates and VPN technology companies have argued that the measure, which they claim is the first state law to directly target legal VPN use, is technically unworkable and constitutionally questionable because it prohibits speech about lawful digital privacy tools.
Context – The explosion of age-based online content laws in countries around the world is drawing attention to how users often try to employ VPN technology services to circumvent local online content restrictions. Australia’s landmark 16-year-old threshold for social media accounts is the highest profile, but seemingly every week another government proclaims their commitment to protecting teens from social media, pornography and/or gaming sites. VPN usage reportedly spiked in the UK last summer as users responded to the Online Safety Act and in Australia when their social media age limit went into effect. Officials in the UK, France, and several US states are calling for legal restrictions on VPNs to stymie their use in online regulation work-arounds. VPN use is also at the heart of recent global content takedown orders X received from an Australian regulator and Canadian judge, both ruling that since local users could employ a VPN to circumvent a local online content restriction, X needed to block offending content globally.