Limited Time Only: Nord VPN

Look, I get it: you’ve probably been watching YouTube and also get NordVPN crammed down your throat 100x a day (along with Raycons, maybe).

So, if you’ve made it this far and haven’t gotten a Nord subscription, then let’s give it a shot (together).

I canceled my photoshop subscription and I’m still learning affinity photo 2. so…

Instead, I’m going to appeal to why I think you actually need it, especially in 2024.

The Age Of “Big” Small Government

It seems rather odd that we see a continual trend of wanting small government while, at the same time, expanding its reach with regulation.

This sort of highly regarded activity I would expect from certain people, such as my home boy Kim Jong-Un.

However, this is definitely not what I would expect from a US territory, but I suppose Ken Paxton has other ideas, as he is now suing pornography companies about a law that would require people to submit their ID before viewing adult content.

There are a few paths companies could take here, none of which are great options:

1. They collect your ID and somehow manage to verify your identity and also immediately throw it out and maybe use a cookie(?) or account(?) to verify that you are “of age”
2. They collect your ID and store the result in their system, putting them at risk of storing random peoples PII and other important information
3. They require a credit card to view any content
4. They buy a geo-location service, or use cloudflare to block the region entirely

Look, this seems like a lot of work for 30 seconds, doesn’t it? Which is also an important issue: if local governments are going to be requiring such an excessive amount of work and overhead, then who is footing the bill? Validating identities is not cheap – at all.

Companies like Pornhub took the only route that really made sense: they just blocked the region. As a result, VPN searches from those regions skyrocketed 1500%.

But more important is the mere fact that individual territories are beginning to take swings at the open internet as we know it.

The European Union

This wouldn’t be a talk about the state of the internet without the EU involved – considering they also are a trailblazer in fucking things up for everyone (I’m looking at you, Cookie Policies).

On the EU in particular, though, I wanted to highlight the ridiculous copyright law from a few years ago and touch on a few key points.

Internet Services Must:

1. First, they are required to make “best efforts” to obtain licenses from rightsholders for content appearing on their sites, including when that content is posted by their users
2. All but the newest, smallest internet services to use “best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works” identified by rightsholders.
3. All but the newest, smallest internet services, requires those services to make “best efforts” to block future uploads of content that has previously been removed pursuant to a takedown notice.

As of 26 July 2021, only 4 out of 27 member states have implemented this garbage – including Germany (I’m calling our Germany because fuck you Comeso GMBH). If this were to be more wide-spread, it could result in many services simply opting to block the EU rather than deal with the headache. Why would they block it? Probably to get ahead of downstream issues.

How Nord Plays Into Things

When I think of geo-restrictions, I typically think of region-locking games. But in this new found era of dinosaurs attempting to regulate the free internet, I think it’s important to consider that some fossil wearing depends could nuke your waifus off the planet as a primary or secondary side effect of some poorly written legislation. I’m not just talking about this site either, I’m talking about other websites (the ones with 6 digit codes), forums you frequent, discord servers you frequent, and so on.

907 year olds (not the loli dragon kind) will pass a bill that imposes significant restrictions on the internet, then drive home to their mansions while we’re forced to deal with all the bullshit.

I get money when you purchase via my link, but I also really do think that Nord has a spot as a *must have* subscription moving into the future. So, click the banner and throw a few bucks their way as we head into more life-changing events.