The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has delivered a ruling that serves as a powerful legal argument in defense of the legitimacy of VPN services. In a July judgment regarding a high-profile copyright case involving "The Diary of Anne Frank," the court explicitly classified virtual private networks as "lawful technical tools" that users are entitled to use for legitimate purposes.

This ruling not only clarifies the status of cryptographic protocols within the legal framework but also absolves providers of liability for the actions of end-users who utilize their services to bypass geo-blocking.

The "Anne Frank Diary" Case and Geo-blocking

The core of the dispute lies in a complex copyright situation surrounding historical manuscripts. The Anne Frank Foundation retains rights to parts of the diaries until 2037. However, the legislation of several EU countries, particularly Belgium, has already placed these materials in the public domain.

At the center of the conflict was a Dutch translation of the diaries. One publisher made it available to residents of those states where copyright protection had expired. The problem arose when users from countries where the manuscripts were still protected ("closed" jurisdictions) began using VPNs to access these materials, bypassing geographical restrictions.

The court had to decide whether the publisher bore responsibility for copyright infringement if their content became accessible through circumvention methods. The answer was negative.

Legal Precedent: The Impossibility of Foreseeing Circumvention

A key point in the court's formulation was the recognition that the technical possibility of bypassing protection does not make the protection itself ineffective. The court ruled that "the possibility of such circumvention cannot be a decisive factor in deeming such measures inadequate".

In other words, a publisher that has legitimately established access restrictions in accordance with the law is not obliged to foresee and block all possible methods of circumventing them. This creates an important precedent for the digital market: the existence of VPNs does not make the legal distribution of content illegal.

Removing Liability from VPN Providers

The CJEU ruling also served as a protective shield for VPN service operators themselves. The court explicitly pointed out the lack of a direct link between the provider's operation and copyright infringement:

  • VPN providers do not provide end-users with "direct access to the protected work".
  • Even if the provider is aware that its service may be used to access protected content without the authors' consent, it "does not itself intervene in the process of such access".

According to the verdict, responsibility for the distribution of protected content lies exclusively with the party that originally published the material, not with the technical intermediary through which the user bypassed restrictions.

Global Context: Pressure on VPNs Worldwide

This verdict comes against the backdrop of increasing political pressure on VPN services in several countries. In the UK, for example, the Online Safety Act adopted in 2023 required certain websites to implement age verification to restrict access to "harmful" content for children.

Since VPNs became an obvious way to bypass these checks, the British government briefly considered the possibility of banning them, but subsequently "decided not to restrict" the use of these tools.

In the US, the debate is taking place at the state level. Utah was promoting its own initiative to block VPNs, while Wisconsin managed to reverse an already passed decision to ban them. Against this backdrop, the CJEU ruling adds a significant legal counter-argument to all legislators planning to introduce restrictions on such tools.