Yahoo Geographically Targeting Users

minna writes: "[The] SF Examiner reports that Yahoo! is now working on separating its content based on the location of its user. In a recent court case in France in which it was sentenced to block access to auctions of Nazi memorabilia for French Internet users, Yahoo! claimed this was impossible. Now in order to gain the rights to netcast the next Olympics, Yahoo says that while it's not 100% successful, it can essentially be done. There are already any number of services, for example infosplit.com that specialize on locating Internet users."

Comments

IP Lookup problems

[Wog]

"..an address that begins with "24.92" is likely from a Time Warner cable system in the United States. Addresses starting with "161.23" are assigned to the London Hospital Medical College."

What happens when a user accesses a proxy in another IP range?

Re:IP Lookup problems

[garcia]

it would be like users in China using proxies to get around their firewalls there. Yahoo said it isn't 100% possible but they are going to *try*. There is almost always a way around things. You just have to attempt to keep the majority out.

Re:IP Lookup problems

[djrogers]

Actually, there are currently 14 AOL mega-proxies that serve all AOL content. It would probably be trivial for AOL to set up geographically distinct proxies, but I don't see it happening. It is to AOL's advantage that they be the only people who know where their surfers are, why would they give that info out for free?

So what?

[generic-man]

When I'm at school, advertisers from many companies including Yahoo! see that I'm on a .edu domain, and send me ads for things like textbooks and music. Seeing that I'm 19, when I use Yahoo! chat rooms I'm constantly pitched ads for Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears web sites and merchandise. (Fortunately, they can be moved off-screen for want of Junkbuster.) Seeing that I'm from New York (and I've said so in my Yahoo! profile), I often see ads for local businesses or web sites.

Targeted advertising isn't all bad, as long as it's targeted correctly. I, for one, am NOT interested in boy-bands or crappy fucked textbook companies.

Can Slashdot do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hide posts based on geographics locations?

I feel kind of guilty somedays talking about my big old luxury car, my big old house, my home computer network and my big breasted honey knowing there are UKians who can barely afford a 1.0 liter Festiva, living in a poorly heated 500 sf flat, and having to share a scrawny, emaciated girlfriend.

Maybe we can hide those posts so the UKians don't realize what a socialist purgatory they live in.

Re:Can Slashdot do this?

[DrXym]

Yes I know you're a troll...

But as a 'UKian' who visits the US on frequent extended trips let me state with certainty what a load of bollocks you're spouting.

Re:It used to be impossible to download music

[RareHeintz]

I think perhaps that the point was that when the geographic targetting was a cost/liability, they claimed not to know how, but now that they stand to make a buck, a solution magically presents itself.

I'll agree with you, though, that this isn't necessarily earth-shattering news.

OK,
- B
--

(Digital) Divide and Conquer...

[Interrobang]

The socioinformatic ramifications of this kind of action are quite disturbing. Imagine this sort of thing taken the other way...dictatorial regimes refusing to let anyone from outside nations access anything but shiny, happy government propaganda; entire nations being blocked from seeing certain information because it's "not useful to them," or "they don't need to know." The problem is, who decides? Who gets to censor the Net based on regional ghettoization? Based on some of the more paranoid scenaria I can think of in my cute little delusion, I can hear the howls of outrage now. (How dare X nation block YCorp's e-commerce site! and so on.)

Call me an extremist, call me a conspiracy theorist, call me a crank...

...but don't call me collect, unless you're "Knute" Kennedy from Cleveland.

Interrobang

Re:(Digital) Divide and Conquer...

[TwP]

The socioinformatic ramifications of this kind of action are quite disturbing. Imagine this sort of thing taken the other way...dictatorial regimes refusing to let anyone from outside nations access anything but shiny, happy government propaganda; entire nations being blocked from seeing certain information because it's "not useful to them," or "they don't need to know." The problem is, who decides?

The american government decides all the time what information it's citizens get to see/not see in the media. Haven't you ever heard of censors? That is why nudity is not allowed on TV nor swearing on radio and why pornographic magazines cannot be sold withing 500 yards of a public school - porno and cigarettes.

If a governemnt chooses to extend this power of censorship to the internet, why should we complain. Again, the US is already doing this with child porn; try downloading some and see how many FBI agents bust in your door the next day.

Remember, it was DARPA and Al Gore that brought you the internet <grin>! Don't complain if they want to regulate it.

-----------------

Don't see how it could be impossible

[Rurik]

besides the anonymous users, mobile users, and unresolveable IPs. But VisualRoute has been out for awhile, and has been able to trace a map across the world to find out where the IP is located. Works pretty well too.

Re:Don't see how it could be impossible

[Xerithane]

Also, don't forget about ARIN databases and other international databases to find out the general location.

Each IP address is allocated to a certain ISP or individual, if you can find that IP from an ISP you generally have a good idea as to where they are logging in from.

Personal IP blocks (for example, if I lease a T1 line and rent out a class C) also must have your address associated to them.

The major problem with this solution (Which VisualRoute solves, I use it at work all the time to solve this) is that with companies like AOL and other megacorps most of their IP addresses are based in a central location (Virginia in this case) - and then you have to default to a traceroute via VisualRoute or something else.

Yeah, right . . .

[AntiFreeze]

This would only stop people who have no interest in circumventing the restrictions. If you really don't want someone to know where your email is coming from, use a remailer intelligently. If you don't want someone to know where you are surfing from, use a service like the Anonymizer intelligently.

I really don't see how you can regulate people from different geographic location when there is an abundance of ways to make it look like you're coming from somewhere else. XHost is a wonderful thing, be in France and run netscape off a machine with an American IP address. Damn that's hard.

But then again, I don't really know what techniques are being used to determine where a person is located, but I am truly very sceptical about the prospect of geographic tenderred material being close to 100% effective. I just don't buy it.

Olympics, evil?

[SmokeSerpent]

Are the Olympics becoming the center of all things evil?

Long the playground of the megamedia establishment, the Olympics represent the theft and repackaging of what should be in the public domain that is occuring in all aspects of society. During the past Olympics, internet coverage was not allowed in any real fashion for fear that it would cut into the "profits" of the old media fat cats, for the next Olympics we are now told that only by dividing the internet along national borders can a new media company enter the good graces of the IOC. Yes my friends, the Olympics are a way for all peoples of the world to come together in peaceful celebration of what is best in humanity. Unfortunately, what humans seem to be best at is greed, graft, and division.

Re:Olympics, evil?

[kootch]

and market realities shall catch up to the IOC and the Olympics.

this year was the worst year of ratings that the Olympics have had yet.

if it continues, most large media companies will not pay the millions and billions of dollars to gain the distribution rights to the Games. By not watching the Olympics, you are standing up for your rights and for what you believe in.

Will ABC, NBC, etc. pay tons of money next year after such a disappointing year this year? Doubtful. Will the IOC have to deal with market realities like everyone else does? I'm sure they will.

Don't like what the IOC is doing? Don't watch. Read about it the next day.

Re:Olympics, evil?

[Hard_Code]

What I find sad and ironic, is the enforcement that athletes wear clothing with sanctioned logos, or face disqualification from the olympics. Some of these athletes are from the very countries in which western and global corporations exploit the populace in sweatshops to make these goods.

Re:Olympics, evil?

[Goonie]

Are the Olympics becoming the center of all things evil?

The Olympics have been the center of quite a lot of less-than-savoury human behaviour over the years. Aside from the Berlin Olympics (everybody knows the story of Jesse Owens. What doesn't get told is the story of the two Jewish runners removed from the US 400 metre relay team at the order of the IOC president to mollify Hitler. While the athletes may have not liked the Nazis, the officials were playing right along), there is the systematic doping systems of the East Germans of the 1970's, the corruption and greed of the IOC itself, the ludicrous "shamateur" status of most of the athletes over the years, and so on. Andrew Jennings' books on the Olympic movement, tabloid in style they may be, are most enlightening.

Sounds both interesting and useful...

[Rombuu]

...which means the black-helicopter types on /. will hate it.

One Reason Why -- Perhaps

[doon]

This comes from the broadcast televion side of things. Especially when dealing with the IOC(International Olympic Committee). They make tons of money off of selling rights to people in certain locations. So they are trying to enforce those rights. Meaning They don't want people paying money for the rights in the US, and then streaming it to Canada over the net. It is all about money (isn't it always)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Slightly OT - why are they picking on Yahoo!?

[ch-chuck]

Can't our fellow (from US) freedom lovers in France access ebay.com??

3426 items found for "nazi". Showing items 1 to 50.

German nazi pilot observer badge
German nazi assault badge nice
German Nazi Button Hole Ribbons Hitler Youth

So the French courts want $13 grand for each Yahoo! violation - that's like fining WalMart for selling cigarettes when you can go to any one of dozens of quickie marts and get the same damn thing. This is the very heart of injustice.

Logical extension of Yahoo!'s business plan

[djrogers]

There was a great article in the latest Forbes about Yahoo!'s seemingly incomprehensible ability to turn a profit based solely on web advertising. What it boild down to is that Yahoo! can charge 10x - 20x what other portals can charge, because they can target their ads with great precision. Most of this ability comes from the 75 million users of Yahoo!'s various services that have volunteered information such as age, location, and interests. This will simply allow Yahoo to target those who haven't volunteered info, or bock cookies etc.

The article is well worth a read anyway, they talk about such interesting concepts as predicting trends such as movie success (based on who's searching for info about it, the actors, etc.) apparently they've been quite accurate so far...

Re:Logical extension of Yahoo!'s business plan

[Orbital Sander]

(...) Yahoo! can charge 10x - 20x what other portals can charge, because they can target their ads with great precision.

Believe you me, if my online business offered service in California, Nevada and Arizona, and I were to choose between

• Pay $X for 50,000 views of my banner ad by users all over the world, or
• Pay $2X for 10,000 views of my banner ad by users from those three states,

the second option would win hands down. This was the great promise of the Internet, remember? Advertising would be targeted so narrowly that we users only get to see stuff that is interesting to us. If Yahoo can offer that and others can't, they win.

Microsoft already do this.

[[AD]Defenestrator]

MSN redirects you automatically to either the American or British one based on your IP. I'm in Northern Ireland, so if I try to reach MSN.com, I am shown msn.co.uk. However, if I go in through an American proxy, I am able to see the American version of MSN.com, with completely different news and stories.
(I just know this'll be modded down for admitting that I've ever gone to msn.com...)

Capability (theoretically) already exists...

[RapaNui]

There is (theoretically, at least), already the capability to do some of this stuff, as outlined in

RFC1712-DNS Encoding of Geographical Location
and
RFC1876-A Means for Expressing Location Information in the Domain Name System

Isn't this the holy grail of I18N?

[babbage]

What's so bad about this? I don't really care for the censorship angle, but on the plus site, this could do wonders for the internationalization & localization of web content. If a site as big & complex as Yahoo can tailor itself to local markets, then surely smaller sites can apply at least some of the same strategy.

I know this already happens in limited form -- lots of sites have local editions, e.g. bbc.co.uk, cnn.com, ikea.com just to name three of the top of my head. But to go a step further and automagically give visitors the right version (presumably with a version to switch languages / locales, to catch the inevitable errors) would be a huge boost to bringing the web to the non-English speaking world.

I know that there's a lot of talk about doing this sort of thing, but this would be the first largescale application of it that I'm aware of. I'd love to see this take off...

Re:Isn't this the holy grail of I18N?

[Malc]

I don't want automatic localisation based on location. Things really get buggered up when you travel. I'm already irritated by MSFT Expedia - it trys to go to a version based on the language settings of IE... which in my case don't match the country in currently in.

Re:Isn't this the holy grail of I18N?

[babbage]

Fair enough, but what about the person sitting down in front of the web for the first time in, say, a library in Jakarta or Mumbai? What if this person just knows to type in (or, more likely, click on) Yahoo, and is then presented with this bewildering stream of English text?

You're smart enough to know how to override this (say, by logging into something like my.yahoo.com, and thus getting your own language preferences), while the newbie, who understands neither computers nor English, is able to get started without any unnecessary obstacles.

I agree that a lot of these "usability enhancements" do absolutely nothing to enhance usability, especially for say the typical Slashdot reader that knows the way around a computer without any problems. But technically proficient people are not the norm (sadly), and when it can be done well (e.g. without pissing off the experts or further confusing the novices), there is a lot to be said for enabling those novice users to get up to speed quickly.

I see this as such an example. The possible benefit to non-English speaking users (a hugely underrepresented group) is more than enough to offset the comparitively mild annoyance that experts will be imposed with, especially considering that the only people that should be getting the foreign editions will ideally be the visitors from those foreign countries and, presumably, the experts there will be smart enough to figure out how to switch to English if that's what they prefer. It's not exactly "first do no harm" (because it is making the experts do a bit more work), but it's better than the current "only do much harm" method.

Of course, on the other hand, sorting out which language to feed to a visitor from, say bilingual Montreal is left as an exercise for the implementor.... :)

Because Yahoo lied to the court, and here is proof

[anticypher]

Can we access Nazi pages on ebay from Europe? Yes!

When someone accesses a web page containing nazi memorabilia, or any page with containing a keyword from a list of questionable terms, we get a warning that the item may not be legal for sale in some countries. But only if the originating IP address is from a RIPE assigned range.

That warning is sufficient to comply with French and German law. By providing a warning to a user, eBay has complied with the law. If a user were to continue with the sale or purchase of a banned item, it is now the user, not eBay, who has broken the law. If a European user were to go out of their way to use a U.S. based proxy, then they have taken a step to circumvent the law, thus indicating they are knowingly breaking the law. eBay and Yahoo do not have to catch 100% of all cases, they merely must make an effort to inform. That is all the French court ruled.

Yahoo swore in court it was impossible to determine with any kind of accuracy at all how to determine the physical location of a person based on IP address. But they change their web banners based on IP address. Their local office sells banner space to French companies with the guarantee that the ads will be served to people in France, and not to an uninterested audience in another country. It was this fact alone that caused the French court to rule against them. Yahoo proudly markets their ability to determine user location based on IP addresses, they know every IP block allocated to French ISPs and businesses and universities, and they filter on that. But they lied to the court, and the court wasn't fooled and ruled against them.

And as others have pointed out, but were mostly lost in the /. S/N ratio, this case was brought about by a French law student's organisation, not the government. The LICRA is just one of hundreds of similar orgs where law students are expected to volunteer their time bringing cases to court before they start work in a cabinet. Other groups attack environmental abusers, hunting, illegal construction, or other bleeding heart issues that only students could care about. Consider these groups to be the FSF of the law world, the students do this for free to earn a reputation for themselves before job hunting. The higher profile the case, the more known their names, and the more likely they are to get a job with the Transmeta of the French law industry.

The LICRA has made a name for itself in tearing down the ultra-far-right Nazi worshiping Front National, but since the FN almost doesn't exist today after a bunch of scandals, they have turned their interest towards the internet. Yahoo is the project of a group graduating next year, and they are as well versed at PR as they are at law.

I hereby invoke Godwin's law, and declare this whole thread terminated
the AC

Re:So does CNN

[anticypher]

CNN used to display different news depending on which geographic region your IP address was in. It was very annoying or amusing, depending on your point of view.

I used to have two browser windows open side by side, one using a local RIPE address, the other going through an IPSec tunnel to an american IP address. The differences were pretty bad, the americans tended to get lots more shallow, local, happy news and less international coverage. The European servers just didn't have very much american coverage, nor a lot of the content from the american site.

Recently, CNN has taken to popping up a very annoying window to every European asking them to change editions every time they access the site. But if you just close the window, you can access american content. If you click Ok, you get redirected to the European server. They also set a cookie which then permanently redirects the browser.

the AC