The Court of Justice of the European Union has officially recognized VPNs as "lawful technical tools which users may legitimately use" in a significant ruling tied to a copyright dispute concerning The Diary of Anne Frank. This decision establishes a precedent that VPNs are legitimate tools and pushes back against the notion that they are exclusively used for illicit activities.
The case involved a dispute over the online publication of parts of The Diary of Anne Frank, where copyright holders, the Anne Frank Fund, retain rights until at least 2037 for certain manuscripts. However, in some EU member states, these works have entered the public domain. The core issue arose when a Dutch translation of the diaries was offered online for free to users in EU countries where the works were in the public domain. A VPN can bypass geographical restrictions that might otherwise limit access.
The EU court had to determine the liability of the online publisher and host for copyright infringement when users accessed the content via a VPN. The court ruled that the publisher was not liable, effectively stating that the possibility of circumventing geo-blocking measures through VPNs does not render those measures inadequate or ineffective. This ruling clarifies that the responsibility for copyright infringement lies with the individual publishing the work, not the VPN provider.
Furthermore, the judgment provides clarity for VPN providers themselves. It states that VPN providers are not directly facilitating access to protected works. Even if a provider is aware that its service might be used to access copyrighted material without permission, the provider is not considered to be actively intervening in the access itself. The court concluded that the copyright-infringing communication is attributable to the person who published the work on the site, not the VPN service that enabled the user to circumvent geo-blocking.
This EU ruling comes at a time when VPN usage and regulation are frequently debated globally. In the UK, the Online Safety Act of 2023 introduced measures like age verification for accessing certain content, with VPNs being a potential method to bypass such checks. Although the UK government briefly considered banning VPNs, it ultimately decided against restricting their use. Similarly, in the US, while some states like Utah have explored VPN bans, others, such as Wisconsin, have reversed such decisions. Organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have criticized state-level crackdowns, arguing they threaten broader internet access. The EU court's affirmation of VPN legality may influence future regulatory discussions worldwide.