With the UK blocking porn sites en masse by the end of the year, does AirVPN have any plans to either continue or remove UK servers?

[DarkSpace-Harbinger 11]

The Digital Economy Bill has an included proposition that forces all pornography sites to use an age verification system, presumably blocking anyone who is unwilling to verify government ID from viewing mature content. It has also been stated that "It will block any site that doesn't comply with strict UK content rules".

 

What does AirVPN/@Staff plan to do to retain AirVPN's mission of a free open internet on UK servers? While the censorship is currently targeted towards mature content, it seems that the law allows for broader censorship of non-pornographic content than any other nation.

 

If the law takes effect in this manner, what does AirVPN plan to do with it's current lineup of UK based servers in Manchester and London?

[Staff 9762]

Hello!

 

Can you please point us to the draft law you mention, in the part where it would force datacenter operators to apply blocks at datacenter level? That would significantly help our legal advisors because just a few months ago we were re-assured that no mandatory filtering tool will exist for transit providers etc., but only for "residential" ISPs.

 

That for the legal part.

 

About the technical part, we faced an identical problem in Singapore some years ago (censorship enforced in datacenters too). You should have never noticed any block to sites from Singapore servers since according to our mission we did our best to bypass any censorship and preserve end to end principle, keeping our infrastructure content agnostic. We are not saying that this will be always technically possible anyway, only that we will do our best to fulfill the mission. https://airvpn.org/mission

 

Kind regards

[DarkSpace-Harbinger 11]

Hello!

 

Can you please point us to the draft law you mention, in the part where it would force datacenter operators to apply blocks at datacenter level? That would significantly help our legal advisors because just a few months ago we were re-assured that no mandatory filtering tool will exist for transit providers etc., but only for "residential" ISPs.

 

That for the legal part.

 

About the technical part, we faced an identical problem in Singapore some years ago (censorship enforced in datacenters too). You should have never noticed any block to sites from Singapore servers since according to our mission we did our best to bypass any censorship and preserve end to end principle, keeping our infrastructure content agnostic. We are not saying that this will be always technically possible anyway, only that we will do our best to fulfill the mission. https://airvpn.org/mission

 

Kind regards

 

While language specifically applying the legislation to datacenters specifically is not used, it could in my opinion be used in a court of law as such.

 

This section here of the Digital Economy Bill lays out the powers the government has to force internet service providers to enforce the blocks.

 

The interpretation section of the Digital Economy Bill defines an Internet Service Provider as:

 

“internet service provider” means a provider of an internet access service within the meaning given in Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015;

 

Which upon further inspection is:

 

For the purposes of this Regulation, the definitions set out in Article 2 of Directive 2002/21/EC apply.

The following definitions also apply:

(1)

‘provider of electronic communications to the public’ means an undertaking providing public communications networks or publicly available electronic communications services;

(2)

‘internet access service’ means a publicly available electronic communications service that provides access to the internet, and thereby connectivity to virtually all end points of the internet, irrespective of the network technology and terminal equipment used.

 

A datacenter does not in fact provide electronic communications to the public (Or any ISP for that matter except for public hotspots etc.), but rather exclusively to paying customers, yet this is the definition they used so we have to assume they mean public availability in a more vague understanding to include exclusive access.

 

If we stretch the definition of publicly available electronic communications to mean exclusive access to paying customers, the definition of "internet access service" could be applicable, as a datacenter: provides access to the internet, and thereby connectivity to virtually all end points of the internet, irrespective of the network technology and terminal equipment used.

 

If i am wrong on any part of this please feel free to correct me.

 

If true, this legislation could effect every server in the UK, as well as all servers operated abroad by M247 or any other UK based corporation.

 

If you can find a section anywhere in this legislation that limits the application of this law to residential ISP's, I'd be happy to see it.

[serenacat 83]

provides access to the internet, and thereby connectivity to virtually all end points of the internet, irrespective of the network technology and terminal equipment used.

It may be counterproductive to venture into legal  interpretations if more an "engineer", but this scope issue of access provider vs "carrier" has some history, which I have not followed with a legal mind.

But I could argue that an AirVPN server is an internal processing node of the internet, that inputs say 1Gps streams of bits on fibre, and outputs 1Gps streams of bits, with some translation. Streams are broken down to the IP packet level for processing, but this is similar to a router or interface to say satellite with different maximum transmission units. Such is the view of the technicals. Smells similar to a "carrier" or wholesale data distributor.

An exception might be providing DNS lookup to sites with content such as reports of the death of a London callgirl found bobbing up and down under a pier/peer who was too friendly with a UK Defense Minister. These things happen with a Christine and Mandy.

[DarkSpace-Harbinger 11]

@staff what's your take on it?

[Staff 9762]

@staff what's your take on it?

 

We thank you very much for your links and interpretations. Our policy in general does not change, not even for UK.

 

Kind regards