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by afiori 152 days ago
then you are not using any vpn service marketed or provided in the UK. if you were to sell access to your VPS to others then you would have to do age verifications on them maybe.

maybe it is still illegal, IDK, bu likely due to other laws (eg a generic "it is illegal to use workaround for X")
2 comments
afiori 152 days ago
then you are not using any vpn service marketed or provided in the UK[0]. if you were to sell access to your VPS to others then you would have to do age verifications on them maybe.

[0] maybe it is still illegal, IDK, bu likely due to other laws (eg a generic "it is illegal to use workaround for X")

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chrisjj 152 days ago
> then you are not using any vpn service marketed or provided in the UK.

Irrelevent. See:

must apply the child VPN prohibition to the provider of any relevant VPN service which is, or is likely to be—

(i) offered or marketed to *persons in the* United Kingdom;

(ii) provided to a significant number of persons

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melevittfl 152 days ago
The definition section of the amendment defines a "relevant VPN service":

>“relevant VPN service” means a service of providing, in the course of a business, to a consumer, a virtual private network for accessing the internet;

I think it would be a significant stretch to say that a provider that provisions a VPS instance is a "business providing a virtual private network".

Just because you could run a VPN, it's not the VPS provider that is offering a VPN service.

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chrisjj 152 days ago
I think it will successfully strech that far (especially after VPN provders move into VPS to avoid) not least because no-one but the provider could be held responsible.
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melevittfl 151 days ago
I don't understand what "VPN providers move onto VPS to avoid" means? Can you clarify?

I can't see how they could apply it to VPS providers without meaning AWS, GCP, Digital Ocean, etc would all start having to do age verification checks. Can't imagine here would not be a massive push back against that.

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chrisjj 151 days ago
I meant VPN providers offer VPS as a substitute.

I think they would include AWS and the pushback would be ineffective. Many AWS users could be immediately age-verified by existing payment card info.

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melevittfl 151 days ago
By VPS, I mean a generic compute instance that can run whatever you want. Like a Linux instance. I'm not sure what you mean by "VPN providers offer VPS as a substitute" in that context.

Paying by card isn't enough to verify age. They'd have to specifically verify via passport or other ID.

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