EU Court Backs VPN Neutrality in the Anne Frank Copyright Battle, Marking a Win for Digital Rights

It's not every day that you see Anne Frank and IP addresses used in the same legal argument. But it seems that these days, anything is possible.

A Dutch foundation put up a scholarly edition of Anne Frank’s manuscripts online. The thing is, thanks to Europe’s tangled copyright rules, the diary is in the public domain in some countries and still locked up in others.

Of course, some were quite unhappy with the result, calling for stricter measures, and the whole fight didn't take long to climb all the way to the EU's top court. However, once there, things took a surprising turn when an Advocate General was quick to shush the opposition, saying that such geo-blocking is enough and that VPNs and similar services are not automatic accomplices every time someone hops a digital fence

In the day and age where pretty much every government is trying to rip digital privacy from our hands, this sure is a fresh breeze of air.

What the Anne Frank Case Really Changed About Geo-Blocking and Content Access

Inside the EU, much like in the rest of our world, rights are sliced up territory by territory, even though the internet is not supposed to care about borders. Your favorite show might be available to stream in one place but not another, and the same book can be free in one country and locked in the next. That is exactly what happened with Anne Frank’s manuscripts.

The Dutch foundation tried to live with that patchwork. It put the scholarly edition online, but anyone connecting from protected countries hit a wall. The official request in Case C‑788/24 explains that it relied on state‑of‑the‑art geo‑blocking and showed a notice that the annotated edition could not be made available everywhere for copyright reasons.

Of course, the Swiss Anne Frank Fonds took the most extreme view it could. It argued that because geo‑blocking can be bypassed with VPNs and similar tools, the measures could not be regarded as sufficient, and the work should not be online at all. Dutch courts pushed back, saying the foundation had used “state-of-the-art” measures, which is realistically as far as you can go on a network built to route around obstacles.

The court’s adviser, Rantos, went further. His opinion says that even if geo‑blocking can be circumvented and cannot exclude all unauthorized access, that alone does not mean the rightholder is communicating the work to the public where access is blocked, as long as state‑of‑the‑art measures are genuinely implemented.

If the EU had demanded unbreakable fences, platforms would likely respond by tightening digital borders, locking more content to fewer markets, or piling on intrusive identity checks. Geo-blocking is not going anywhere, but this view says it does not have to be perfect, and that really shapes how locked down your internet feels.

VPN Neutrality: Why the Court Adviser Called Geo-Blocking Fence-Hopping Tools “Just Tools”

The sharpest part of the opinion is about tools like VPNs. Rights holders wanted them treated as quasi-broadcasters, arguing that if someone uses a VPN to bypass a geo-block, the VPN is “communicating” the protected work to the public.

Fortunately, in the official opinion, Rantos was clear to say no, stressing that the mere fact that VPNs can be used to circumvent geo‑blocking does not by itself make providers liable, unless they actively promote or encourage unlawful uses of their tools. The road is neutral, and what matters is how you drive and whether the road builder hands out speed manuals or just asphalt.

That is why services that pitch themselves as “your piracy buddy” are a problem. That kind of marketing hands regulators exactly the excuse they need to lump all privacy and circumvention tools in with outright piracy, instead of separating bad actors from neutral infrastructure.

Neutrality is not a moral blank check, and it does not magically legalize piracy. You still have to follow the copyright and licensing rules in your country, even if your IP address says you are somewhere else. For example, Sweden plans to explicitly outlaw the consumption of pirate IPTV and fine subscribers, targeting what people do rather than banning encrypted tunnels or IP hopping.

What neutrality really does is strip away the lazy excuse to crush privacy tools just because “someone might misbehave with them,” and it keeps the door open for all the legitimate reasons people route around geo-blocking. That spans accessing blocked news, beating harsh price discrimination, watching streaming or sports you already pay for while abroad, and protecting yourself from tracking on shared or public networks.

For travelers, students abroad, or remote workers, that can be the difference between using what you pay for and staring at region-locked error screens, and it reminds lawmakers that not every hop over a digital fence is some grand act of piracy.

What This EU Ruling Means for Your Streaming, Safety, and Digital Rights

If the full EU court follows the adviser, platforms get a predictable rulebook: they can use geo-blocking without pretending it has to be unbreakable. That is boring for lawyers but good for you because it eases the push for extreme measures like biometric ID checks just to watch a movie.

For privacy and circumvention tools, the opinion says the tools are not the problem by default, legally. It is all about how they are pitched and how they are used. This gives more political and legal cover to build networks that route around censorship, throttling, tracking, and blunt VPN blocks.

At the same time, there is a darker trend. In many places, authorities are already happy to deploy deep packet inspection, targeted blocking of VPNs, and selective throttling of streaming, gaming, or video calls. There are regions where more aggressive censorship and network interference are getting harder to contest as global internet freedom norms weaken. A neutrality principle at the EU level makes those power grabs easier to challenge.

Look at Sweden as a preview. Authorities dismantled the “Nordicplay” IPTV operation, pulled more than 20,000 contacts, and tied 4,886 subscribers to payments via Swish, a mobile payment system linked directly to personal identity numbers. An anti-piracy group even floated the idea that police could email people to say, “Hi, your customer information is found in a criminal investigation,” just as a warning.

That is the direction a lot of governments are heading: your IP, your payment method, and your legal identity all stitched together to monitor content access and navigation patterns. As mandatory age checks spread to “adult” content, social media, and even gaming, geo-blocking becomes just one filter in a much taller stack of digital borders. The real fight is not only about where a show is licensed, but also whether you still control how visible and traceable you are when you cross those borders.

So accept that geo-blocking is here to stay, expect harsher enforcement against individuals in some countries, and use privacy tools as shields first, not as a free pass to ignore the law. If you care about internet freedom, you cannot just be a passive subscriber. You have to think about your routes, your tools, and who gets to see your traffic.

This opinion is a win, but the fight is far from over, and tools that let you hop geo-blocking fences and choose your own path are how a censored, throttled, ID-checked internet stays even a little bit open.