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Comment by TZubiri | Hacker News Reader

Ironically, I can't access the cited bills, possibly because I', not within the States: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2025/proposals/reg/asm/bill...

I wanted to double check that the bill "demands that websites block VPN users from Wisconsin", as opposed to "demand that adult sites hosted in Wisconsin block VPN users in general" or "demand that Wisconsin VPN providers or Wisconsin/US compliant providers block websites according to the registered user's location rather than their proxy location".

The details are important, and I don't trust that either "the lawmakers are idiots", or that treating the opposition as idiots is productive in general. Laymen, and legally trained laymen have just as much say in technical matters as technical folk. Lest we setup the feared technocracy...

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The wording of the bill is as follows:

    (c) A business entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or
    distributes material harmful to minors on the Internet from a website that contains
    a substantial portion of such material shall prevent persons from accessing the
    website from an internet protocol address or internet protocol address range that is
    linked to or known to be a virtual private network system or virtual private network
    provider.

In effect, Wisconsin is demanding that no publisher of obscene materials (porn, basically) allow anyone to access their content via VPN. The wording of the bill doesn't care whether or not either the person viewing the content or the data center that publishes the content is in Wisconsin. With that said, Wisconsin won't be able to bring charges, and the civil liability portion won't trigger, unless one or the other does happen to be in Wisconsin.

Where the bill gets its teeth on the VPN side of things is in section (4) of the assembly bill, which is probably intended for parents of children to sue publishers:

    (4) Civil liability. (a) A person alleging a violation of sub. (2) or (3) may
    bring an action seeking actual and punitive damages, court costs, and reasonable
    attorney fees notwithstanding s. 814.04 (1). A person bringing an action under this
    paragraph is not required to first exhaust any relevant administrative remedies.

In short, if my child uses a VPN to circumvent the age verification rules or some other safeguard to access the obscene materials, I can sue any site that operates in or employs people in Wisconsin for damages in a civil lawsuit for punitive damages. Alternatively, if my child accessed the material from a computer in Wisconsin, that would also be grounds for such a lawsuit. I'm not a lawyer, don't take this as legal advice.

So it seems that the article is factually incorrect and is quite obtuse in interpreting that the lawmakers are idiots.

The bill demands that porn distributors OR VPN providers that deliver content to Wisconsin residents, must block traffic from virtual private networks.

"In short, if my child uses a VPN to circumvent the age verification rules or some other safeguard to access the obscene materials, I can sue any site that operates in or employs people in Wisconsin for damages in a civil lawsuit for punitive damages."

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I believe that any company that operates outside of the State but serves residents of the Wisconsin state would still be in violation and the State of Wisconsin and its laws would still have jurisdiction. If your website serves users from Wisconsin, it must abide by Wisconsin laws and both Wisconsin jurisdiction and venue is proper, absent any other agreement (which would be null anyways if the Wisconsin resident is a minor).

I think it's more that the author of this article is being obtuse AND "has no idea" about law.

What does it mean for an IP range to be "known" to be a VPN? Where are web site owners supposed to get this data?

(also it only affects web sites, so gopher is still good my friends)

Serve it over FTP under the user imover18 with no password.

Don't know if that counts as age verification, but it's not a website!

I am throwing out a wild guess here, but some services already block ranges of IP addresses on the basis that they have VPN servers running.

Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video all do something along these lines to protect geographically restricted licenses.

Presumably, the authors of the bills were aware that these services were already doing it and want that same behavior to be legally required for obscene material.

It's not the first time that word appears on the bill, itspecifies that the publisher needs to "knowingly and intentionally..." do the deed.

So there is no responsibility created to actively discern (IANAL) traffic, but if you already have that info, you would be compelled to act upon it.

Again IANAL, but this could create responsibilities to avoid estoppel, for example if you filter users from VPNs for purposes like reducing spam, then you receive the benefit of identifying VPNs, and you might be compelled to bear the responsibility of it.

Another nuance is that the vpn identification might be provided by a 3rd party (see cloudflare) in which case the provider would not KNOW, but then again CF might bear the responsibility considering that they would be the distributors with knowledge of the VPN lists.

I think the law plays out very sensibly.

Btw the wording says publishers or distributors, so it applies to both porn websites, vpn operators and ISPs, which could technically block vpn ips from connecting to porn ips. I'm not sure of the implications of "knowingly or intentionally though", I'm just saying they could do that.

The nuances and legal theory are a very deep discussion that the original article ignores completely by focusing on a political agenda.

ISPs and search sites are specifically exempted at the end of the assembly version of the bill. I haven't looked at the Senate version but I imagine it's in there too.

Oh cool. Shame that I can't access the bill, but that's for the better, it's after all a domestic issue that you guys want to keep domestic.

The US network policies were so open that it sometimes felt voyeuristic, in my country we are also implementing national firewalls organically due to malicious traffic, so it seems the world is converging on closing the networks a bit, thanks Russia and China.

best of lucks!

I don't get it - doesn't this only apply to content hosted in Wisconsin? I doubt they have any jurisdiction outside, especially outside the US

It'll apply to any business that does business in Wisconsin. For example: collecting sales tax on membership subscriptions, or hires remote workers who reside in WI.

From the bill summary:

> The bill also requires a business entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the Internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material to prevent persons from accessing the website from an internet protocol address or internet protocol address range that is linked to or known to be a virtual private network system or provider.

Later:

> A business entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the Internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall prevent persons from accessing the website from an internet protocol address or internet protocol address range that is linked to or known to be a virtual private network system or virtual private network provider.

No mention is given to where the business is located.

Thank you!

It looks like the interpretation of the article is quite incorrect, there is no part of the law that demands that porn websites "block VPN users from wisconsin".

Rather that:

1- Porn websites must block underage users from wisconsin. 2- VPN websites must block underage users from wisconsin from accessing . 3- Porn websites must block vpn users in general.

And this is not strictly laid out in the law, the law specifies the functional requirements, and we are estimating how the technical implementation will play out, the author strawmanned a stupid hypothetical technical implementation to paint lawmakers as technical troglodytes.

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