Notices by Jesper Lund (je5perl@eupolicy.social)

The Commission stands with Big Tech in an utterly wild letter that puts pressure on the democratically elected European Parliament to abandon their rights respecting vote on #ChatControl 1.0 just two weeks ago, and instead give Big Tech two-more-years of mass surveillance of our private communications without any safeguards.

I have since learned that the Danish proposal was inspired by this Swedish expert report (Utretning SOU 2025:100) https://www.regeringen.se/rattsliga-dokument/statens-offentliga-utredningar/2025/09/sou-2025100/ about measures against IPTV, save for the bad drafting on the Danish side which brought VPNs into the game (maybe unintentional).

People in Sweden should be concerned about this attempt of #Copyright maximalism (see next post). The Swedish expert report is currently in consultation until 22 January 2026 https://www.regeringen.se/remisser/2025/10/remiss-av-betankandet-atgarder-mot-illegal-ip-tv-sou-2025100/

RE: https://eupolicy.social/@je5perl/115696467286859905

Some good news from Denmark! The government has withdrawn the #VPN proposal after just five days, claiming that the proposal was misunderstood and that banning VPN use was never the intention. In that case, the drafting was exceptionally bad, and withdrawing the proposal is clearly the right thing to do.

(source: press release yesterday from the Ministry of Culture https://kum.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/kulturministeren-justerer-lovforslag-og-fjerner-afsnit-om-vpn).

#Copyright

The Danish government is using the upcoming Christmas break to slip through a public consultation for a draft law that would make it an OFFENCE to use a #VPN to access content that would otherwise not be available in Denmark, or to circumvent the blocking of "illegal" websites. https://hoeringsportalen.dk/Hearing/Details/70858

This is done under the guise of ensuring a technologically neutral implementation of Directive 98/84 on pay-TV decoders (hint: the IP address is NOT a conditional access device).

#Copyright

@jmaris This sub-sentence struck me "[..] less than a year into your presidency [..]"

I know it feels like a year or more, but #Trump in power has actually only been a month. 😱

@glynmoody Client-side scanning under a new name: "user interactions are reviewed in real-time by automated safety checkers that are designed to ensure compliance with Usage Policies and have the ability to issue warnings or blocks for prohibited activities."

The EU Commission might be thrilled, but no thanks!

@whvholst If "certain platforms" means TikTok, I am seeing posts mentioning that a VPN does not circumvent the blocking for US TikTok accounts (TikTok blocking the user access, not the ISPs which are not covered by the US law). This makes sense because US users get special treatment of having their personal data stored in the US (Oracle cloud), and the US law applies to hosting services as well as app stores.

@whvholst a VPN would work for accessing TikTok videos in a web browser without logging in (depending on what precisely is blocked by TikTok and its US CDNs today).

@frebelt @netzpolitik_feed In addition to the point about democratic legitimacy, the sheer ignorance of the HLG is alarming. I have never seen a set of policy recommendations so divorced from reality. Everything is based on an imaginary premise that all devices and services can be backdoored for law enforcement access without creating any cybersecurity vulnerabilities or risks of abuse. Based on this fallacy, we get the worst ideas of the e-Evidence Regulation and Chat Control combined.

The Going Dark High-Level Group is suggesting that the EU should be more like China/Iran and block access to communications services which do not comply with (also suggested) EU law on lawful interception for all types of communications services ("level playing field"), including of course secure #E2EE OTT services.

Source: background document for HLG plenary on 1 March https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/document/download/26f7710a-ae4b-4616-a062-99fc93680bed_en?filename=HLG-background-document-01032024_en.pdf #encryption