Google Patents Country-Specific Content Blocking

theodp writes "Today Google was awarded US Patent No. 7,664,751 for its invention of Variable User Interface Based on Document Access Privileges, which the search giant explains can be used to restrict what Internet content people can see 'based on geographical location information of the user and based on access rights possessed for the document.' From the patent: 'For example, readers from the United States may be given "partial" access to the document while readers in Canada may be given "full" access to the document. This may be because the content provider has been granted full rights in the document from the publisher for Canadian readers but has not been granted rights in the United States, so the content provider may choose to only enable fair use display for readers in the United States.' Oh well, at least Google is 'no longer willing to continue censoring [their] results on Google.cn.'"

Comments

How is this different?

[T Murphy]

Recently, working on a paper, I came across some papers on the National Bureau of Economic Research website that said they were $5 to access for me, but they are free for anyone in a developing or undeveloped country. I didn't try to find a proxy in Azerbaijan so I don't know how the site looks if you are from a country that gets free access, but I am curious how that works and how it differs from this patent.