Geo-blocking, VPNs, and copyright: The CJEU clarifies the boundaries of the communication to the public
10 Sep 2026
Court of Justice of the European Union, C-788/24, 9 July 2026
On July 9, 2026 the Court of Justice of the European Union issued a decision which addressed the sensitive issue of the territoriality of copyright and the global nature of the web, focusing on the effectiveness of geo-blocking and the possibility of bypassing it using a VPN.
The case arises from the on-line publication of Anne Frank’s manuscripts. Although these works have already entered into the public domain in most EU member States, in the Netherlands they are still protected by a transitional regime that extends their protection until 2037. For this reason, the Association for Scholarly Edition of the Anne Frank Manuscripts and the Anne Frank Stichting had made the manuscripts publicly available on their website, while simultaneously implementing a system to prevent access by users from the Netherlands.
The Anne Frank Fonds, the copyright holder in the Netherlands on the same manuscripts, however, challenged the adequacy of the abovementioned system. According to the Fund, since the block could be easily circumvented using a VPN, the publication constituted an unlawful act of communication to the public in the Netherlands. The dispute thus reached the Dutch Supreme Court, which suspended the proceedings to refer the question for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The European judges first noted that the concept of communication to the public presupposes a direct intention to address a specific audience. In this case, the website operator had clearly expressed its intention to make the work accessible only where it was no longer protected, and had effectively implemented this decision through technological protective measures.
The core of the decision lies in the assessment of the effectiveness of geo-blocking. The Court clarified that a protective measure cannot be expected to be technically unbreakable. Its adequacy must, in fact, be assessed in light of the principle of proportionality: it must be determined whether the measure is able, in normal circumstances, to deter or prevent an unauthorized access, considering the technological context, the implementation costs, and the possible alternative tools.
Consequently, the mere possibility of circumventing the geo-blocking via a VPN is not sufficient to render the measure ineffective. The Court further specified that, should a geo-blocking be proved to be inadequate, any act of communication to the public would still be attributable to subject who published the work and not to the VPN service provider.
The ruling thus establishes a fundamental principle: to respect the territoriality of online copyright, geo-blocking does not necessarily have to be an unbreachable barrier, but rather a measure that is effectively suitable and proportionate to define the target audience.
Edoardo Episcopo
