Unintended Consequences

Unintended Consequences

One of the unintended consequences of the GDPR is that some US websites have decided that the easiest way to comply is simply to ban all European IP addresses. Now, IANAL, nor do I even play one on the Internet, but my understanding is that this does not shield them from liability, should a European citizen browse one of these sites while travelling in the US. 

Regardless of the legal niceties, these restrictions get annoying when I want to browse one of these sites. Most of the time, the correct response to a site that does not want my business is to take said business elsewhere, but it does happen on occasion – and possibly by accident – that something interesting is published on one of these sites. For instance, Mike Godwin, of the eponymous Law, wrote a piece in the LA Times, clarifying how Godwin’s Law should be applied in our day and age. 

The LA Times is owned by the company until recently known as Tronc, all of whose web sites block European browsers. Yeah, their policy is about as silly as their name. Normally I can ignore their entire stable of papers without missing anything, but on this instance I did actually want to read the article. 

My solution involves the TunnelBear, a VPN service with a cute bear theme and, more importantly for my purposes, a useful free tier. 500 MB per month is a perfectly usable amount for the sort of usage I have, which is mostly text and the very occasional YouTube video which is inexplicably “unavailable in your country”. 

If you’re interested, check out the TunnelBear here. By using that link, we both get free data – pretty cool!