'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

The big news is surprisingly simple: Europe’s top court has said a VPN — a service people use to hide their location and browsing from trackers — is a lawful tool, and the blame for region locks and copyright workarounds sits with the copyright owner, not the VPN company. That alone would have been a major privacy story. But online? The real spectacle was the comment section, where readers treated it like the latest episode of Privacy Wars.

One camp came in blazing with the classic accusation that VPNs are basically the internet’s trench coat: something only “sketchy people” use for “sketchy means.” That instantly triggered the other side, who sounded personally offended at the idea. One reader flatly declared they don’t even go online without a VPN anymore because tracking has gotten so intense. In other words: one side sees a criminal’s gadget, the other sees digital deodorant.

Then the mood got even juicier. Some commenters called the ruling a rare moment of “sanity” after a long run of internet crackdowns, while the tinfoil-hat wing showed up with extra seasoning, warning that paid VPNs may still be easy for governments to monitor because money leaves a trail. Even the meta-commentary had drama: people were already linking to the earlier Hacker News discussion like this was a hit sequel everyone needed to revisit. The running joke underneath it all? Governments may hate privacy tools in public while quietly loving services that keep everyone neatly subscribed, logged, and billable.