I don't think the question is how best to prevent geographic Internet regulation. IMO a country should not be forced to weaken its laws enacted by its government just because one of its neighbors doesn't play by the same rules. The US is right to try to enforce its laws on its soil. The problem is that enforcing its law in this case wasn't possible on its soil alone. As I see it, the US can either look for a way to uphold its laws on foreign soil, or it can look for a way to block problems at the border. That's why I don't see geographic categorization as a bad thing: it would help sovereign nations enforce their laws on their land while reducing their need to drag other countries into it.
First, I don't think that geographic categorization guarantees the complete closure of traffic that Mr. Katz's vision of Balkanization seems to imply. There's plenty of aboveboard traffic going in and out of the US and many other nations at all times. Tourism, education, and business all function despite physical borders, and wouldn't be shut down online borders either. There's no percentage for corporations, governments, or individuals in completely closed borders all the time. Look at airport customs, at least in the West. Customs inspectors act as a filter to keep contraband and known criminals from freely entering a country, and let everything else through. What's criminal or contraband could be up to each country, based on whatever foreign or domestic input that each country's government chooses to accept when writing their laws. Certainly, a country could choose to close itself off from the Net, but that's ultimately up to the country.
Second, the fact that a filter leaks when attacked by a knowledgeable user doesn't make it worthless. Like any law enforcement tool, if enough people are discouraged from breaking a law, the tool succeeds. I'd image that the percentage of the online population capable of setting up VPNs and proxies is small enough that a geographic filter would succeed by that standard. More importantly, though, such a filter would give groups like the MPAA (in the iCrave case) legal recourse with fewer international demands. If the US required ISPs to block connections to a blacklist of illegal international sites, then the MPAA could just have Canadian TV rebroadcasters put on that US-only blacklist. The MPAA could try to get them stopped in Canada too, but because the webcasts wouldn't be accessible in the US they'd be trying a crime that no longer had a victim. Sure, there'd be some pirates, Canada could acknowledge, but that minority of US citizens would be a US problem. Any rebroadcaster foolish enough to operate in the US then becomes subject to US prosecution, legal rebroadcasters in Canada go their merry way, and that would be that. Civil suits may still be filed, but at least the criminal angle would be more easily resolved.
Nations aren't about to give up their sovereign rights to make their own laws just because the Internet makes some of those laws hard to enforce. It's not in the interest of their governments, their economies, or any of their citizens who don't trust the idea of local laws being made abroad. Geographic categorization and national site blacklists sound nasty and aren't perfect, yes. The alternative is years or decades of jurisdiction catfights and localized censorship as the every country on the planet tries to keep their laws from being rewritten. IMO, that's worse. You still get all the censoring of geographic categorization on that path, but with extra confusion and less chance for local protest or debate to impact law enforcement policy.
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I don't think the question is how best to prevent geographic Internet regulation. IMO a country should not be forced to weaken its laws enacted by its government just because one of its neighbors doesn't play by the same rules. The US is right to try to enforce its laws on its soil. The problem is that enforcing its law in this case wasn't possible on its soil alone. As I see it, the US can either look for a way to uphold its laws on foreign soil, or it can look for a way to block problems at the border. That's why I don't see geographic categorization as a bad thing: it would help sovereign nations enforce their laws on their land while reducing their need to drag other countries into it.
First, I don't think that geographic categorization guarantees the complete closure of traffic that Mr. Katz's vision of Balkanization seems to imply. There's plenty of aboveboard traffic going in and out of the US and many other nations at all times. Tourism, education, and business all function despite physical borders, and wouldn't be shut down online borders either. There's no percentage for corporations, governments, or individuals in completely closed borders all the time. Look at airport customs, at least in the West. Customs inspectors act as a filter to keep contraband and known criminals from freely entering a country, and let everything else through. What's criminal or contraband could be up to each country, based on whatever foreign or domestic input that each country's government chooses to accept when writing their laws. Certainly, a country could choose to close itself off from the Net, but that's ultimately up to the country.
Second, the fact that a filter leaks when attacked by a knowledgeable user doesn't make it worthless. Like any law enforcement tool, if enough people are discouraged from breaking a law, the tool succeeds. I'd image that the percentage of the online population capable of setting up VPNs and proxies is small enough that a geographic filter would succeed by that standard. More importantly, though, such a filter would give groups like the MPAA (in the iCrave case) legal recourse with fewer international demands. If the US required ISPs to block connections to a blacklist of illegal international sites, then the MPAA could just have Canadian TV rebroadcasters put on that US-only blacklist. The MPAA could try to get them stopped in Canada too, but because the webcasts wouldn't be accessible in the US they'd be trying a crime that no longer had a victim. Sure, there'd be some pirates, Canada could acknowledge, but that minority of US citizens would be a US problem. Any rebroadcaster foolish enough to operate in the US then becomes subject to US prosecution, legal rebroadcasters in Canada go their merry way, and that would be that. Civil suits may still be filed, but at least the criminal angle would be more easily resolved.
Nations aren't about to give up their sovereign rights to make their own laws just because the Internet makes some of those laws hard to enforce. It's not in the interest of their governments, their economies, or any of their citizens who don't trust the idea of local laws being made abroad. Geographic categorization and national site blacklists sound nasty and aren't perfect, yes. The alternative is years or decades of jurisdiction catfights and localized censorship as the every country on the planet tries to keep their laws from being rewritten. IMO, that's worse. You still get all the censoring of geographic categorization on that path, but with extra confusion and less chance for local protest or debate to impact law enforcement policy.