The Court of Justice of the European Union has clarified how copyright law should treat geo-blocking that determined visitors can bypass with a VPN. In its July 9, 2026 judgment in case C-788/24, the Court held that the mere possibility of VPN circumvention does not automatically make a state-of-the-art geo-block ineffective.
The judgment has been summarized in some headlines as a declaration that VPN use is legal. That is too broad. The case answers a narrower copyright question about online publication, territorial rights, effective technological measures, and who performs a “communication to the public.” It does not create a general right to bypass every regional restriction.
Why an Anne Frank copyright case involved VPNs
The dispute concerned a scholarly online edition of Anne Frank’s manuscripts. The works were in the public domain in some EU Member States but remained protected by copyright in the Netherlands. The organizations publishing the edition made it freely available where they believed they could lawfully do so and used geo-blocking to prevent access from the Netherlands.
A visitor could still route a connection through another country with a VPN or similar service. The legal question was therefore not whether a technical barrier was mathematically impossible to defeat. It was whether a current, properly implemented geo-block could still qualify as an effective technological measure when circumvention remained possible.
What the Court actually decided
The Court concluded that state-of-the-art geo-blocking can be effective even though a VPN can bypass it. Requiring a perfect barrier would give copyright protection in one Member State excessive reach into other Member States where the same work is already in the public domain. It would also restrict lawful, free access in those territories.
The decision focuses on whether the publisher used appropriate current measures to target its audience and exclude the protected territory. A determined user’s independent decision to circumvent that barrier does not by itself prove that the publisher addressed the work to the public in the blocked country.
The Court also addressed attribution if a geo-block is not effective. Its press release explains that responsibility for putting the work online lies with the person who published it, rather than automatically with the provider of the VPN or similar service used to get around the restriction. The reasoning treats a neutral VPN as a lawful technical tool that has legitimate uses beyond this particular dispute.
What the ruling does not say
- It does not say that every use of a VPN is lawful in every country or for every purpose.
- It does not grant users a universal right to access films, sport, software, or other material offered only in another territory.
- It does not erase copyright, contract terms, licensing rules, or national laws that may apply to a user’s conduct.
- It does not protect a publisher that intentionally targets a protected territory or relies on inadequate measures.
- It does not make a VPN provider immune from all possible legal claims unrelated to the specific act of communication considered here.
Those limits matter for readers of older guides about the legality of bypassing geo-blocking or where VPNs are legal. The new judgment is relevant evidence, but those broader questions still depend on location, purpose, service terms, and the material being accessed.
Why the decision matters to VPN providers
The ruling rejects an assumption that a general-purpose privacy or networking service becomes the publisher of whatever a customer reaches through it. That is significant because VPNs are used for many ordinary activities: securing remote work, protecting traffic on untrusted Wi-Fi, connecting offices, testing services from different networks, and reducing routine exposure of an IP address.
At the same time, the decision places the quality of geo-blocking under scrutiny. A publisher relying on territorial copyright cannot simply label any weak barrier “effective.” The measure must be state of the art in the relevant context. The judgment therefore gives publishers a workable standard, but not a free pass.
The practical takeaway for VPN users
For ordinary users, the safest reading is modest: the EU’s highest court recognizes that VPNs are legitimate technical tools and that their existence does not make every geo-block legally ineffective. It does not follow that everything reachable through a VPN is permitted.
Before bypassing a regional restriction, consider the law where you are located, the rights attached to the content, and the service’s terms. A VPN changes the route and apparent network location of a connection; it does not transfer legal rights to material or cancel an agreement. This article reports the judgment and is not legal advice.