> Accessing material that has been deemed illegal enough to be the subject of a country-wide block is generally going to be a criminal offense.
That’s not the issue discussed here, I think. We’re not talking about someone circumventing censorship in their own country (which is obviously illegal in your own country).
What we’re talking about here are IP-based country filters imposed by websites such as Netflix or BBC iPlayer, restricting visitors from certain countries to access all or certain content. Circumventing that filter by using a VPN (thereby masquerading as someone in a “permitted visitor country”) is obviously going to be a breach of the terms & conditions of that website and/or license conditions of content made available. But the argument apparently raised by LinkedIn in this case is that this is also a criminal offence of gaining unauthorised access to systems (I.e. legalspeak for what’s colloquially referred to as “hacking”), which would likely lead to (more severe) prosecution and punishment.
That’s not the issue discussed here, I think. We’re not talking about someone circumventing censorship in their own country (which is obviously illegal in your own country).
What we’re talking about here are IP-based country filters imposed by websites such as Netflix or BBC iPlayer, restricting visitors from certain countries to access all or certain content. Circumventing that filter by using a VPN (thereby masquerading as someone in a “permitted visitor country”) is obviously going to be a breach of the terms & conditions of that website and/or license conditions of content made available. But the argument apparently raised by LinkedIn in this case is that this is also a criminal offence of gaining unauthorised access to systems (I.e. legalspeak for what’s colloquially referred to as “hacking”), which would likely lead to (more severe) prosecution and punishment.