There are countries where OpenAI does not provide its services but there are also countries where access to OpenAI has been blocked, as we have recently seen in Italy. This means that for Italians they have de facto blocked access to ChatGPT, its API and ChatGPT4.
And more worrying is that several European countries such as Germany or Spain have accused OpenAI of the same thing that the Italian state accused it of: not complying with EU data protection regulations.
Being OpenAI, chatGPT, GPT4, DALLE, etc. products. The most advanced products in their field, which represent an unprecedented revolution in productivity, it is not a good idea to leave your citizens and companies without access to this.
But the EU is famous for not contributing anything to technology and regulating and hindering its use, already with its GDPR law, the most ambitious data protection law on the planet of which they are so proud, despite the fact that it does not protect anyone’s information and exposes everyone’s information, from that mud these muds.
That said, what can we European citizens do to protect ourselves from state abuse and continue to take advantage of the latest technology so as not to fall behind in economic and social development?
In this case, the solution could be very simple…
How to connect to OpenAI when blocked 🔓
If tomorrow, Spain, Germany, France, etc. decided to block access to OpenAI, it would be enough to use a decent VPN that does not cause problems, with many locations, that has a good reputation, etc. Such as ProtonVPN, a Swiss VPN.
The fact is that no matter how much traffic is blocked in a country, as long as there are VPNs, we will be able to circumvent this blockade. Not even China, the most advanced country in the world in restricting access to the Internet while allowing its use, has achieved much, and even less so in Europe.
But there could be a second problem…
Yes, we skip the restriction of our particular country, but what if OpenAI collaborates as in the case of Italy?
In other words, not only the country blocks access but also OpenAI collaborates and stops providing services to citizens within the country, in that case, if you are for example Italian and you use ProtonVPN to connect to OpenAI from an IP in USA or UK, you could not enter either perhaps because OpenAI still determines that your credit card is in Italy and you reside there.
Then we will need a foreign bank account. Revolut could be a good option, based in Lithuania, being easy to register and free, plus it allows to generate temporary cards and many interesting functionalities.
But let’s hope that a VPN will be enough in case the blocking becomes widespread…
