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Geolocation Enables Internet Borders
JimRay writes: "The Washington Post's Tech site is running an interesting piece on geolocation technology and its increased use on the net. The article explains the technology as being able to locate an Internet user in the world, at least to their mother country, and then grant access based on their location. They note how television broadcasters are interested in this kind of technology to prohibit the loss of distribution rights to things like the Olympics."
...some technologies can pinpoint one's location.
That's a pretty big pin. Pinpoint an IP address maybe, but that doesn't tell you much about where someone really is. Ignoring the effect of proxies, some dynamic address allocation schemes can cover huge areas.
I think the more "Big Brother" aspects of this can probably be ignored for a while - until ISPs start getting more involved with content providers at least.
No, no no.
The Internet is (IMHO) a global community. Identifying and restricting people by ip address is, to my mind, contrary to the whole ethos.
I dislike the thought that people will be allowed to track who and where I am. I also dislike the thought that it'll be possible to prevent/deny access to your site based on where in the world the person who's trying to access it is located.1
Then again, I suppose there's always enough anonymous proxy servers out their to circumvent this.
Its for law enforcement. If you can know what country a user is in you can apply local laws to that user. This is a boon for things like unauthorized computer entry, IP laws, jurisdictional determination, as well as determining what rates to charge somebody.
Really... if The Man wants such a thing he'll get it one way or the other. Passing laws is cheaper, but determining where somebody is, is the first step to enforcing the laws on the book.
It won't be long before the SSSCA is amended to add anonymity and location scrambling to its list of prohibited activities.
I think this story was run a year or so back too.
I could see this being abused at a high level. Someone could definately take this technology, and make it into a form of tool. For instance:
Good:
Company had 4 divisions: US, UK, China, Brazil. The company sets their website up to detect browser's location, and directs them to the site for the proper division.
Bad: Company has banner adds on their site. When someone from Las Vegas goes to their site, they advertise hookers and casinos, (since they are legal in vegas, lets entise the natives to go boost the economy!). Someone sitting in California goes to the same site and gets a banner for suntan lotion. Wow.. we just geographically marketed our products!
Btw.. "visitors try to enter UKbetting.com"
I went there, and tried to sign up. The program they use to detect your location seems to take forever (over 5 minutes)! Probably because I'm in the US =P
Can all fish swim?
This technology (and damn, it's really not perfect yet) is incredibly important for internationally-broadcast shows. We're currently developing a system which will hopefully tune a website to the market the show is playing in, so that the audience gets their language, their teasers (watch XYZ this Thursday at 8) and limits spoilers based on their broadcast schedule. If it worked all the time, it'd be great, which is why you have to introduce the loophole of letting the user override the setting if it's just plain wrong. Some of the things that make the internet great, like big pools of people from all over the world in one place, bring with them bad things (what happened on this episode of X-Files months before it hits Australia). Things like this, when used for noble purposes, are making the whole business work much better.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
http://www.ukbetting.com
or
http://www.ukbetting.co.uk.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
In this thread everyone will cry out at the Evils of regional laws restricting the internet. The Evils of companies invading your privacy by tracing your location. The Evils of restricting internet access based on geography. "They can't do this to us! We'll fight back! We'll use international proxies! The internet is international and borderless! Keep your stupid local laws out of our net!"
And how many of these people will recall that just 13 articles back they were cheering on California's anti-spam law. Forcing spammers to identify the location of recipients, and having to learn and comply with 50 different sets of state regulations was a GoodThing. Anything to make life tough on spammers.
SPAM IS EVIL AND MUST BE STOPPED AT ANY COST! We need laws to protect us from spam! ACLU / EFF are evil if they defend spammers in court! We need to protect the children! Anyone who opposes anti-spam laws is probably a child molester!
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
A gnutella like multi-proxy system.
Imagine something similar to anonymizer.com, but completely distributed. You have a local ingress to the proxy network, and before your http sessions leave, you select the country/ip you'd like the egress to come from. Your connections are encrypted while on the proxy network, and its decentralized to be impossible to legally shutdown. You just need one or more computers on the proxy network in each locale you want to impersonate, willing to run the proxy software.
You could manually choose the locale of egress, or have it just randomize each connection for you. The latter might make targeted content not work at all (i imagine peoplewill embed detected locales into URLs, so it might suck to get
foo.com/ENU/index.html
but then get
images.foo.com/JPN/title.jpg
displayed in the html.
Oh, i think IPv6 throws a huge wrench in all of this, btw. (geolocation)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Yeah right. For the first time in two years, I left my phone plugged in. Three telemarketing calls, all for a complete stranger who has never lived there.
Phone stays unplugged from now on.
All I Want For Next Christmas is a federal do-not-call registry and a corresponding law allowing for a $500 private right of action, and a local phone company that uses, as a business model, a h4x0r3d switching system that supports a "*[2-digits]" combination that customers can punch in on their phone keypads to automatically log the ANI number and print off the paperwork for a civil suit.
You know, how "*69" gives you "Number not available?" But there's a "*harassing-call" combo for harassing phone calls that logs it for the cops, should you press charges? I want a "*fuck-telemarketers" combo that logs it and authorizes the phone company to file suit on my behalf.
The phone company files the suit on my behalf. I get one month's free phone service for every telemarketer they nail. They get the remainder of the $500. And in all probability, every customer in the country after the first few geeks say "Wow, I got my first 3 months' worth of phone service for free in the first week!"
Hey, I can dream, can't I?