“VPNs are legitimate technical tools”

Some Belgian academics published for free on the Internet the Anne Frank manuscripts. In Belgium these manuscripts were in the public domain, but in the Netherlands they remained under copyright until 2037. To comply with the law, the Belgians They blocked access to Dutch IPsand that made the copyright management entity sue them because with a VPN they could bypass that geoblocking. And here came the EU with a Solomonic decision: “VPNs are legitimate technical tools.”

what has happened. The litigation, which started from something as particular as the aforementioned diary of Anne Frank, has led to a sentence that will bring a long tail. The Anne Frank Foundation, owner of these rights in the Netherlands, sued the institutions that published the manuscripts, alleging that any user could bypass the block with a regular VPN. Or what is the same: the academics were distributing the protected work to the Dutch public even though they tried to block the IPs, and that was according to them a violation of copyright.

Solomonic sentence. The CJEU answered that Foundation no: as long as a website uses “state-of-the-art” geoblocking technology, the publisher cannot be responsible for copyright infringement just because a user manages to circumvent that barrier with a VPN. The court explicitly states that publishing a work in the public domain in one country but protected in another does not constitute a “communication to the public” in the protected country, provided that an “effective” geoblocking measure is in place.

VPNs are legitimate tools. The ruling sets a precedent that shields VPNs from the roots. Rights holders can no longer claim that the mere existence of these tools overrides a website’s security measures, and the court has explicitly qualified VPNs as “legitimate technical tools”, reinforcing their legal status across the EU. The task of managing a technical barrier falls to the publisher, not the VPN provider or the user using it.

This is where LaLiga comes in. The entity chaired by Javier Tebas has been fighting a very different judicial battle for more than a year, but with the same background actor: VPNs. In February 2026, a Commercial Court of Córdoba granted LaLiga and Telefónica injunctions against NordVPN and ProtonVPN. They were forced to block specific IP addresses linked to illegal broadcasts of First and Second Division matches, and recognizing these providers as responsible “technological intermediaries” under the European Digital Services Regulation (DSA).

The offense had already had problems. NordVPN resisted with technical tests, and on May 19 the same Córdoba court rejected LaLiga’s request to impose fines on the company for (allegedly) failing to comply with the blocking order. NordVPN technicians demonstrated two key things: that the IPs hosting illegal broadcasts change constantly, making any list obsolete in a matter of hours, and that applying a block at the IP level would have left thousands of completely legal websites and services inaccessible inside and outside of Spain, since many share the same CDN (Content Delivery Network) infrastructure.

What changes now. Although the Anne Frank diary case is not the same litigation that pits LaLiga against VPN providers, the ruling reinforces precisely the argument that has already worked for NordVPN before the Spanish courts. Furthermore, it complicates any future attempt by LaLiga to shift the responsibility for illicitly distributing content to VPN providers rather than to those who broadcast that content without the right to do so.

What hasn’t changed. NordVPN already warned that its May victory was “a preliminary procedural decision, not a definitive ruling on the merits (of the issue).” The IP blocks ordered in February still technically stand. LaLiga, for its part, has not stopped scoring victories through other means, and for now the underlying problem persists: LaLiga will continue to block IPs indiscriminately, and will leave millions of Internet users without access to specific (and legitimate) parts of the Internet.

In Xataka | Congress has taken the first step to put a limit on LaLiga blockades: a respite for the affected services