The Danish Ministry of Culture tabled a fairly muscular bill at the beginning of December. The official objective? Put an end to illegal streaming of content, particularly football matches broadcast via pirate IPTV services. So far, nothing very surprising. Except that the text goes much further. The Danish authorities believe that their legislative arsenal dates from another era. Current laws, designed in the 1990s and 2000s, target pirate decoders and modified smart cards. Technologies that are completely outdated today.
The government therefore wants to modernize all of this with a “ technologically neutral “. Translation, regardless of the tool used, if you circumvent an access restriction to content, you fall within the scope of the law. And that’s where things start to get serious.
The bill outright prohibits “manufacturing, importing, selling, acquiring, possessing, installing or using equipment, software or other technical solutions” allowing unauthorized access to protected content. The wording remains deliberately vague to encompass all technologies, present and future.
The problem? This definition really casts a very wide net. We are no longer only talking about illegal IPTV subscriptions purchased for 10 euros per month on Telegram. The text also targets access to geo-blocked content, even if you have already paid for your legal subscription to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney + or any other streaming service.
Concretely, a Dane who uses a VPN to watch a Netflix series available only in the United States could technically be illegal, even if he pays for his subscription every month.
The minister backtracks… without really changing much
Faced with the outcry, the Minister of Culture quickly tried to put out the fire. He claims not to have “ never proposed » to ban VPNs outright. He acknowledges that the wording of the text lacked precision and announces that he will remove explicit references to VPNs.
« I am not in favor of banning VPNs. The bill was not formulated precisely enough “, he said. He even describes the accusations of a total ban as “ fake news” and presents his text as “ a fairly modest bill that simply establishes that it is illegal to stream sports without paying ».
The problem is that removing the word “VPN” from the text doesn’t really change anything. The law remains designed to be “technologically neutral.” The draft explicitly states that the term “other technical solution” should be “understood broadly” to cover “any technical solution used to provide unauthorized access to content”.
In other words, it doesn’t matter whether the text mentions VPNs or not. As soon as a tool allows you to circumvent an access restriction, it falls into the sights of the law. VPNs, alternative DNS, browser extensions… everything can potentially be affected.
The text also plans to prohibit the promotion or advertising of these tools when they are used to unblock geo-restricted content.. How does the Danish government intend to differentiate between legitimate use of a VPN (security, confidentiality, teleworking) and use to circumvent restrictions? The text doesn’t really specify this. This gray area risks posing serious application problems if the law passes as it stands. Let’s hope that this kind of thinking does not reach the ears of the French government, which is also currently hunting for IPTV with L’Arcom as its spearhead.
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