Cyberspace a Separate Place?

Sierran writes: "According to the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of appeals (and reported by The New York Times) cyberspace (and a person's or corporation's activities therein) exist in 'a place' distinct from their physical location. This has some interesting legal ramifications; does this mean we'll see Internet 'virtual estate' zoning as in Stephenson's Snow Crash?" Most courts have held the opposite - that internet activities are firmly rooted in the real world, located wherever the computers and people are.

Comments

I donn't know about everyone else but ....

[vtechpilot]

When I am online its is a special magical place completely different from my living room. I loose all contact with the physical world. I know this because I can't hear the telephone ring.

This is a *zoning* law issue

[bill_mcgonigle]

But you wouldn't get that from the summary, would you?

The court is interpreting the zoning laws properly:

...the Supreme Court has held that a city has authority to zone or displace an adult business, because it has an important interest in preventing so-called "secondary effects" on adjacent properties -- such as a decline in property values or an increase in crime.

Yet "those concerns are not implicated in this case," Weinberg said. Voyeur Dorm's business does not encourage "guys with bloodshot eyes to tromp around the suburbs of Tampa, looking for naked ladies," he said.

This is clearly a case of prudish interests trying to use a zoning law against its originl spirit, and not getting away with it. That's good. But it's not a major change in cyberspace law.

Not really another place

[Rupert]

This is not really about the location. If the company running the Voyeur Dorm was showing the live video feeds on a TV in its offices in (say) Miami, then that would be subject to Miami's zoning laws, not Tampa's (where the house is). Presumably a city could come up with a zoning law that restricted the areas in which adult web-hosting businesses could operate.

This ruling would strike down such zoning laws. The judge ruled that because there are no secondary effects of operating the business (late night visitors, disturbances, unsavory characters roaming the streets) then the city does not have the right to restrict constitutionally protected behavior.

And quite right, too.

Don't look at it backwards

[Dooferlad]

Most comments posted so far are looking at this from the point of view of people creating different laws for Cyberspace. This isn't really in the spirit of the ruling. The point is that Voyeur Dorm wasn't selling sexually explicit material in a particular area where it was banned. This doesn't mean that I, in the UK, can import pr0n on the net, and say it is OK because it is in cyberspace. The point is that cyberspace sales don't affect the people in the area directly by changing the atmosphere of the area (the law that was being challenged was to do with keeping sales of a sexually explicit nature away from residential areas, because it changes the mood of the area for the worse). You can't just use this ruling to say "DECSS doesn't break the law, because the law doesn't apply to cyberspace", the law does (in all the places I know of at any rate).

-- Dooferlad

What about gambling?

[Rand Race]

With this ruling, which makes perfect sense with regards to zoning laws (sorry P2P people, this doesn't cover you), it seems that online gambling should recieve the same protection. For adult businesses and gambling establishments the reasoning in controlling them via legislation is their 'secondary effects' on the immediate community. There is no other constitutional justification for controlling these industries and since online-only businesses do not have any significant detrimental effect on the surrounding communities they can not be contrilled via zoning restrictions. Any attempt to do so is most likely a violation of the seperation clause of the 1st amendment as the only reasoning behind controlling these industries is purely religous.

Now, what about online prostitution?

Re:Location

[well_jung]

In this case, the house is in Tampa, not only serving up webcam feeds, but where "the action" is taking place. It almost seems trivial that the images are distributed over the internet, since the place of manufacture is clearly in Tampa.

That is true. However, this case was about wether the zoning laws should apply. What they (Virtual Dorm) were doing was NOT illegal, per se. It's firmly covered by the First Amendment.

At issue here was if the city could use it's zoning laws to kick them out of that neighborhood (probably to save the children). The court ruled they can't, since the zoning laws are meant to allow cities the ability to keep casinos, strip clubs, and car factories away from the neihborhoods where the people that actually vote live. The reasoning for this is to avoid negative imapacts on property value, crime, and genreal peacefulness. Since the Internet was the forum for the service that Virtual Dorm provides, nobody was physically going to the house to watch the girls. Since nobody was going to watch them @ the house, the house isn't really where the infringing behavior is going on, and none of the traditional issues with strip clubs wrt zoning were applicable.

It's quite different to run an Adult website than to run an "Adult" bookstore or a strip club. Not many bachelor parties hanging around outside your Co-Lo breaking beer bottles and pissing on flowers. ;)

Nothing to see here, move along...

[Kjella]

Basicly it's a ruling stating that this company isn't causing problems in its neighbourhood, and therefore doesn't violate zoning regulations. If they were producing something that's illegal in the state in general (say if making such video recordings at all were illegal), it'd be different, then the laws will apply as normal. It's simply a case of a company not violating the *intentions* of zoning regulations, and therefore got off the hook. And I'd say it's a good thing, that sometimes the legal system looks at laws and make sure they are enforced as intended, not only by the letter.