Geographical Borders on the Web

Boise3981 writes "An article for the New York Times is talking about geolocation software, originally meant to deliver localized ads to web surfers, being used by some countries (and possibly even states or cities) to enforce local decency laws on the internet. In one instance a judge in France decided to fine Yahoo! $13,000 a day for displaying nazi memorabilia on its auction website. The article talks about web sites dumbing down their content to the lowest common denominator, lest they break some obscure decency law in some tiny village somewhere. fun."

Comments

Its a matter of where you have a location

[Zachary Kessin]

The French court had the ability to regulate Yahoo because Yahoo has a branch that operates in France. If Yahoo was operating only in the USA the French court could not have done much. You will note that the French (or German) courts have not shut down a large number of Neo-Nazi sites running in the USA. (Though I would love to see them go) Its because the people who run them have no pressense in France or Germany that can be made subject to a local court.

I used to work for DHL (The shipping company) they have a big book that comes out every so often that explains what you can and can not import into each country that they deliver too, over 200.

The Upshot of this is that Slashdot only has to follow laws of the USA and Whichever states (Mi, CA and MA maybe others) that they have offices or staff in. A French court would have a very hard time making a ruling stick agenst Slashdot.

Disclaimer IANAL.

Geo-location an impossible task.

[Greg@RageNet]

Geolocation software has always been iffy at best; IP addresses are doled out based on network provider, rather then geo-location. The biggest nightmare of all for someone trying to solve this problem is AOL; who uses internal addresses for clients while all requests go through proxies. The biggest internet provider in the world and there's no way to geo-locate it's users.

Geo-location is nearly useful for technical uses; it's less than useless for the enforcement of juristictional directives.

What I don't understand is why more businesses don't just outright ignore courts that have no juristiction over them issuing rulings that are rediculous on their face for anyone with even a cursury knowledge of how the internet is pieced together. I think bowing to rediculous demands now is just going to result in the demands made becoming more outlandish and the application of these demands to smaller organizations who cannot afford to fight them will become more widespread.

-- Greg

Destroy the Web.

[Alien54]

The only solution for all these folks, is to cut the wire between them selves and the rest of the world.

The list of all the things people are offended by goes on like you would not believe.

But they want all of the benefits of world wide connectivity.

Heck you see it even here on Slash all of the time. Someone takes an unpopular stand, say, heaven forbid pro Microsoft, and watch the flame throwers come out of the wall.

But tolerance is what makes the web. If you cannot be tolerant here, is there any hope out there?

Or can only the party line have access?

The web is segmenting bit and piece as the technology is developed to separate everyone from everyone else based on "the social norm" and the community standard. The final outcome is this, to destroy the web, for the public good, inorder to save what is the best of the web, for the greedy few.

[ptuogh]

It won't happen

[CyberDawg]

This will never be workable.

First, the use of VPNs and VLANs makes it just about impossible to find people. I am currently connected to my employer's network, behind their firewall, despite being over an hour drive away at my home. I could just as easily be across the country. You have no way of telling where my notebook computer is connected. Until IPv6 is deployed, this will only get more common, as will use of NAT (network address translation) and PAT (port address translation), both of which make it impossible to locate a system by IP address.

Secondly, proxy servers make it easy to dodge geographical constraints, for those who wish to do so.

Third, ISPs often offer 800 numbers in addition to the local POPs. How is anyone supposed to know where you are when you're dialed up through an 800 number?

A local government does not (and should not) have jurisdiction over the Internet any more than it has jurisdiction over satellite television and radio broadcasts from neighboring towns or countries.