New bill aims to block both online adult content and VPNs | Hacker News Reader

New bill aims to block both online adult content and VPNs

cnet.com

43 pointsheavyset_go32 comments

> That could spell trouble for VPN owners and other internet users who leverage these tools to improve their privacy, protect their identities online, prevent ISPs from gathering data about them or increase their device safety when browsing on public Wi-Fi.

Everyone who connects to corporate networks while traveling for business will be thrilled. In fact, my ability to wfh, as I'm doing right now, would end. What a great idea for all the people in my org who appreciate saving on commuting, parking (our building is downtown), taking care of kids at home, etc. Let's be so afraid of porn that we completely destroy lots of unrelated businesses.

I don't understand prudish politicians, but I sure dislike them and their ideas.

Unfortunately most politicians don't understand tech nor do they understand their lack of knowledge.

On a related note can TLS be considered "encrypted tunneling methods"? If so, good luck doing anything online in Michigan.

How do they do it in other authoritarian societies? I know that China exercises significant control over access to the internet, but I don't know how well it works.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roskomnadzor

First thing that came on my mind - I am using VPN extensively when I am out of office, because I am connecting through it back to the office...

Well time to learn how to mask VPN traffic like Chinese and x-stan people in Asia already do.

> The Anticorruption of Public Morals Act has not passed the Michigan House of Representatives committee nor been voted on by the Michigan Senate, and it's not clear how much support the bill currently has beyond the six Republican representatives who have proposed it.

Good call out. It's important to point out that at this point it's a small handful of prudish deviant weirdos being prudish deviant weirdos.

It's still a policy they are promoting and voters need to be aware of who they are and what party they are members of

Absolutely. But the sky isn't falling just yet.

A few sky pieces have fallen in other states according to chicken little

I quite agree the cracks have formed

> (B) Is a depiction, description, or simulation, whether real, animated, digitally generated, written, or auditory, that includes a disconnection between biology and gender by an individual of one biological sex imitating, depicting, or representing himself or herself to be of the other biological sex by means of a combination of attire, cosmetology, or prosthetics, or as having a reproductive nature contrary to the individual’s biological sex.

> an individual or entity that violates this subsection is guilty of a felony. Punishable by imprisonment for not more than 20 years or a fine of not more than $100,000.00, or both.

Am I reading this right, possibly a $100k fine and up to 20 years in prison for a biological man posting a picture of themself dressing in clothing considered "female"?

> (ii) Prohibited material does not include any of the following:

> (A) Material to be used for scientific and medical research or instruction.

> (B) Peer-reviewed academic content.

The bar to publish a paper seems extremely low these days anyway so maybe that's a viable workaround for those folks to protect themselves, just publish it as a paper.

crazy how much coercion goes into maintaining the "natural" state of gender relations

> Am I reading this right, possibly a $100k fine and up to 20 years in prison for a biological man posting a picture of themself dressing in clothing considered "female"?

yep, i believe you are. i wonder how they'll deal with men wearing scottish kilts? or women wearing pants?

this is insane and i can't see how this would even come close to passing in to law...

I'm glad they picked an appropriately Christo-Facist name for their bill, really tells it like it is.

I feel like 9 out of 10 bills submitted these days are just rage bait for the likes.

We should be refunded our taxes for time spent on obviously unconstitutional garbage.

Republicans submitted a bill, but dont the democrats control the senate and therefore it's very unlikely to pass?

and even if it did pass, it's going to very unlikely be all that enforceable?

Correct, this bill won’t pass. But the weirdos keep introducing these kinds of bills, and they’ve already won in a bunch of states. I consider it to merely be a matter of time before it happens at the federal level.

And once it becomes law, it’s very difficult to get those rights back. Politicians don’t want to be on the record fighting for anonymous access to obscene materials.

Does this bill also block all corporate VPNs? How would that work?

The way that would work is probably the legislators hastily adding an exemption for corporations once the corporate lobbyists ask them for it.

I doubt any of this will go anywhere though, it's mostly just pandering to local christians and for them the nominal attempt counts nearly as much as actually getting it done.

No WFH in Michigan!

The bill specifically addresses circumvention tools "designed to bypass internet filtering mechanisms or content restrictions," so unless your corporate VPN is designed to do that (as opposed to granting remote access to the company network) I don't think it would be covered.

All VPNs do the same thing: give remote access to another network. Plenty of companies use full tunnels so access to the general internet goes through the company network. That happens to bypass content restrictions using exactly the same mechanism. Is it “designed” to do it?

FWIW some corporations do configure their VPN in a split tunnel config so that things like Youtube do not traverse the VPN and so that pizza delivery remains local. They instead have inclusive lists of domains and IP's that will traverse the VPN.

Either way I think its a moot point. If the bill could include corporations they would band together and kill the bill along with having the politician censured or expelled. Corporations have a lot of influence, lawyers and money. Threaten their money and they make things happen.

Not much if any critical thinking went into this proposal. It's likely just a virtue-signal to win favor.

Absolutely. It’s a sore point for me because I spent a couple of years with all the traffic from my computer in Seattle being routed through Bentonville. :) The tradeoff is split tunnel setups usually mean you also need an endpoint firewall and/or DLP installed on your laptop.

Anyway, yeah, I was responding to the comment, not the politicians. We can only hope it’s a moot point.

My guess is they will get IP lists from all major VPN providers and block them at the ISP level.

One such bill could eventually pass somewhere, and so the tech industry must prepare in advance to be able to cordon off entire states.

Since various US states, both red and blue, have no longer been respecting the Constitution, I am starting to think that the US would be better off being separate countries by clustering their states, with audited electronic gold as their currency, but all still a part of NATO. The point is for there to exist significantly more competition between the "states", and for one's states absurd restrictions to not harm the freedoms of the citizens of other states.

"Since various US red states have no longer been respecting the Constitution"

Blue states have been trampling on the constitution for the past decade. Would you say they need to be part of this same group? Or is it only states that differ from your personal opinions?

So much for freedom of expression!

There will continue to be freedom of expression.

The politicians, in this case Republicans, will continue to attempt to chip away at it, but will find little success in the long run. The First is clear on this matter and only a new Amendment can change it at this point. (Which new Amendment would be certain to fail in the current political environment.)

Now please, everyone, take note, Freedom of Expression doesn't mean freedom from people, companies, or organizations disassociating themselves from you. In fact, Freedom of Expression implies Freedom of Association. So cancel culture will be with us for the long term as well.

> The politicians, in this case Republicans, will continue to attempt to chip away at it, but will find little success in the long run. The First is clear on this matter and only a new Amendment can change it at this point.

Law is not self-executing, it is enforced by humans, and if you make the law very hard to change on paper, it just becomes easier to change the people enforcing it than the law on paper. All it takes is a single faction controlling the Senate and White House with sufficient commitment to an issue to make it a judicial litmus test for long enough to get a compliant majority on the Supreme Court to make the Constitution do anything they want, regardless of what it says.

In Michigan, USA*

Republicans becoming anti-capitalist was not on my 2025 bingo card.

Republicans are not a homogeneous group. There are many different types. This bill did not come from the capitalist type.

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