Copyright in the European Union and geo-blocking: a work that is in the public domain can be published online free of charge in a Member State even if it remains protected in another Member State [pdf]
It seems like the article title was inspired by this sentence "By contrast, the provider of a VPN or similar services that are used in order to circumvent an ineffective geo-blocking measure and are lawful technical tools which users may legitimately use cannot be regarded as also having communicated the work to the public." I.e. if a VPN is a lawful technical tool, then the VPN provider isn't liable as the publisher of works accessible through it. That leaves open the possibility for VPNs that are not lawful or not mere technical tools to be liable.
> Now, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands must determine whether the geo-blocking used by the website was state of the art and effective in practice. If so, the intended audience would not have included Dutch users, and no communication would have been made to the public in the Netherlands.
This seems extremely problematic, depending on what "state of the art and effective" means. It seems like blocking VPN users is unfortunately still on the table, as are other invasive enforcement methods.
> depending on what "state of the art and effective" means
This isn't codified into law for good reasons. Technology shifts and you don't want to have to update laws every time someone invents a new cipher or protocol.
The website is defending itself from having to pay a fine because they're blocking VPN users. They require blocking VPN users to skirt around the extreme terms in Dutch copyright law. If they didn't block VPNs, they would've lost already.
This boils down to "did they try hard enough not to violate copyright in the place(s) where copyright was still applicable".
I find these are often very readable and interesting.