copyright
What is legal and what is illegal when accessing a virtual machine in another geographic area?
<p>I've been looking for what is considered illegal if you have a vm in different geographical area.</p>

<p>For example, if there is a blocked website in my geographical area, can I access it from the vm in another geographical area?</p>

<p>If I created a website and wanted to test it in different geographical area, would that be legal?</p>

<p>Streaming a free service provided in a certain geographic area from another geographic area would that be legal? </p>

<p>When it comes to geoblocking, it depends on who blocks the site and why.</p>

<p>For example, a media streaming service might have paid for a license for the rights to publish a movie online to people from Arstotzka or Kolechia, but not to people from Obristan or Antegria. In order to fulfill their contractual obligations, they have to employ geoblocking to prevent people from Obristan and Antegria from viewing the movie on their website. If the people find ways to circumvent that block and the streaming service doesn't do anything about it, then the streaming service is in violation of their contractual obligations and might get sued by the one they licensed the movie from. So it's not your problem, it's their problem. The worst that could happen is that the streaming service terminates your contract with them for violating their terms of service.</p>

<p>On the other hand, there might be a law in your country which says that <strong>consuming</strong> certain content is illegal. Not for licensing reasons, but for censorship reasons. For example, let's say that the government of Arstotzka really hates pineapples*. They think they are the fruit of the devil and the mere act of looking at them might turn people evil. So they make a law which says that viewing or distributing pictures of pineapples is illegal in Arstotzka. </p>

<p>In response to that law, foreign websites might censor their pineapple-related content for visitors from Arstotzka. Not because they are legally obligated to, but to protect the Arstotzkan users from themselves or to maintain good relations with the government of Arstotzka. The Arstotzkan government might force local ISPs to censor any pineapple-related content as a crime prevention measure. If an Arstotzkan resident uses technical means to view pineapple pictures anyway, they are committing a crime. And if these citizens find themselves in a criminal court, it might be difficult for them to explain that they just saw the pictures accidentally when they took special technical measures to access them.</p>

<p>OK, but what if you believe that pineapples are healthy and delicious and Arstotzkan citizens should see pineapples whenever they want? So you create a website which is hosted in Kolechia, but targets an Arstotzkan audience and does everything possible so they can easily access it despite the censorship efforts. Well, then you better don't travel to Arstotzka, because you will likely get arrested at the border checkpoint. But as long as you stay in pineapple-friendly countries, you have nothing to fear. Even if there is a criminal extradition agreements between the country and Arstotzka, those agreements usually only apply to allegations which are a crime in <em>both</em> countries.</p>

<p><sub>* Pineapples might or might not be a metaphor for certain kinds of pornography or political propaganda.</sub></p>
