Tweet
Rise of Internet 'Borders' Prompts Fears for Web's Future
Rise of Internet 'Borders' Prompts Fears for Web's Future
it is the modern-day equivalent of a border sentry. When visitors try to enter UKBetting.com, a computer program checks their identification to determine where they're dialing in from. Most people are waved on through. Those from the United States, China, Italy and other countries where gambling laws are muddy, however, are flashed a sign in red letters that says "ACCESS DENIED" and are locked out of the Web site.
For much of its life, the Internet has been seen as a great democratizing force, a place where nobody needs know who or where you are. But that notion has begun to shift in recent months, as governments and private businesses increasingly try to draw boundaries around what used to be a borderless Internet to deal with legal, commercial and terrorism concerns.
"It used to be that a person sitting in one place could get or send information anywhere in the world," said Jack Goldsmith, a professor of international law at the University of Chicago. "But now the Internet is starting to act more like real space with all its limitations."
These new barriers take many forms. One method is to simply restrict who has access to computers and gateways to the Internet. Another is to make all communications pass through filters that seek to weed out objectionable content, such as pornography or information deemed to endanger national security. Growing in popularity is software that attempts to match a computer's unique Internet address with a general geographic location, a technology that is becoming more precise every day.
The debate is no longer about if we can create these barriers, but rather whether we should. Even those who support the idea in theory disagree on who should erect and maintain the electronic fences, whether it should be done by nation-states or by the Web site operators.
The new borders provide what some call a neat solution to the vexing problem of how to resolve the often-conflicting policies of the roughly 200 independent states of the world on matters such as gambling, commerce, copyright and speech.
But critics fear that the barriers will create an Internet that's balkanized. And civil rights groups warn that freedom of speech will suffer, that the technology will make it easier for oppressive governments to stifle nonconformist viewpoints, and that people's privacy will be eroded, especially because some technologies can pinpoint one's location.
"It's likely that the Internet of tomorrow will look radically different from different parts of the world," said Lee Tien, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
Already legislatures and court systems around the world have been attempting to assert their country's authority over the World Wide Web. Hong Kong's government, for instance, has been debating whether to pass a law that would make it a crime for any overseas gambling site to offer services to its residents. A court in Genoa, Italy, recently found the operator of a Web site in another country guilty of libel. A French judge has ordered Yahoo to stop selling Nazi paraphernalia because a law there bans such practices.
Without an international treaty or mediation organization, such rulings have so far been largely unenforceable on parties residing outside a country's borders. But that has not stopped countries from drafting rules for what is and is not permissible online.
At least 59 nations limit freedom of expression, according to Leonard R. Sussman, author of "Censor.gov." Singapore, for instance, works with Internet access providers to block any material that undermines public security, national defense, racial and religious harmony, and morals. That includes pornography and hate speech.
Some analysts say the barriers could grow with the development of "geolocation" technology, which attempts to match a person's location based on a computer's Internet address.
Silicon Valley's Quova Inc., one of the leading providers of this technology, claims it can correctly identify a computer user's home country 98 percent of the time and the city about 85 percent of the time, but only if it's a large city. Independent studies have pegged the accuracy rate of such programs, which also are sold by companies such as InfoSplit, Digital Envoy, Netgeo and Akami, at 70 to 90 percent.
The system is not foolproof; people can easily get past by using special software programs to cloak their identities. But experts such as Goldsmith, the Chicago law professor, say the technology need not work perfectly to have an impact. These barriers act like checkpoints on a nation's physical border: They can be evaded, but most people probably won't want to go to all the trouble.
Gambling sites were among the first to roll out the technology, last year. When users from countries where online gambling is not allowed try to get on, they are either not given the option to place bets or they are kicked out when they try to register for an account.
"There are a number of sites out there that just don't care about the laws. They are perfectly happy to let U.S. gamblers in even though they know it's illegal," said Jeremy Thompson-Hill, an account manager for OrbisUK, which provides the sentry technology used by Sports.com, Ladbrokes.com and other betting sites. "But most reputable companies want to be able to say to the United States, 'We're taking every reasonable precaution to prevent the use of our gambling software in your country.' "
The technology also is being embraced by Web broadcasters, whose nascent industry had been growing slowly because of concerns about copyright. JumpTV is betting its future on this technology. The Montreal-based venture retransmits television broadcasts from around the world and is trying to avoid being sued by broadcasters who claim it violates their broadcasting licenses. In early 2000, a U.S. judge effectively shut down another Canadian company called iCraveTV by prohibiting it from broadcasting its signals into the United States for 90 days.
Farrel Miller, JumpTV's chief executive, said the company hopes to begin retransmitting ABC, CBS and NBC only to Canadian viewers early next year but was much more modest about his company's aspirations than some heads of other webcasting companies during the dot-com boom.
"We don't see the Internet as a revolutionary medium that will change the TV business," Miller said. "It'll be just another alternative vehicle for disseminating channels."
The difficulty in recognizing nation-state borders on the Internet became such a concern during the 2000 Sydney Games that the International Olympic Committee effectively banned most Web video of the events.
Television stations had paid enormous fees for the rights to broadcast the games on a country-by-country basis -- NBC, for instance, shelled out $3.5 billion for the United States -- and they were worried that piracy or even legitimate online transmissions that were accessible to anyone, anywhere might devalue the worth of those contracts. The IOC and many of the owners of broadcast rights say the accuracy rate for geolocation technology is still not good enough and they won't allow any webcasts for the Salt Lake City games this February.
"The technology just doesn't pass muster yet. There's no way to guarantee that your broadcast would be confined to your territory and would not run in to someone else's," said Kevin Monaghan, a vice president for NBC Sports.
Even if geolocation technology worked perfectly, some legal experts said it would not be feasible because it would require Web site operators to know the applicable laws in every country.
"Geographical location technology is a red herring," said Alan Davidson, a lawyer with the Center for Technology and Democracy, a Washington think tank. "It would be incredibly burdensome to tailor content to meet all of the different laws in all of the different countries everywhere the world."
That's the heart of the question being addressed by a court case that pits Yahoo Inc. against France.
Last year, two French groups -- League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Union of Jewish Students -- sued Yahoo for allowing Nazi collectibles to be sold on its auction pages. The sale of such hate material is illegal in France. Almost 1,000 such items were on the block at the time, including Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," stamps and coins, as well as hate paraphernalia.
Jean-Jacques Gomez, a judge in Paris, ordered Yahoo to prevent French users from seeing the material by using the geolocation technology.
Yahoo declined on principle and sued in U.S. District Court in San Jose to make the order unenforceable because a foreign judge could not impose such conditions on a U.S.-based company. U.S. Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled Nov. 7 that the First Amendment trumps overseas laws when they pertain to content produced by U.S. companies. An appeals court upheld the decision but the French groups have appealed again and have vowed to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
The attorney for the French groups, Ronald Katz, argues that the issue is not about free speech but about national sovereignty.
"Yahoo wants to use the court decision as a sort of megaphone to say the U.S. controls the Internet," he said.
Indeed, the U.S. dominance of the Internet is one major thing that observers say will change with the new electronic borders, slowing the dissemination of ideologies and culture across countries.
"Is geographical tracking a panacea that solves international jurisdiction issues? Probably not. But is it a technology that's significantly changing the social, economic and political aspects of how we communicate on the Internet?" Davidson said. "Absolutely."
it is the modern-day equivalent of a border sentry. When visitors try to enter UKBetting.com, a computer program checks their identification to determine where they're dialing in from. Most people are waved on through. Those from the United States, China, Italy and other countries where gambling laws are muddy, however, are flashed a sign in red letters that says "ACCESS DENIED" and are locked out of the Web site.
For much of its life, the Internet has been seen as a great democratizing force, a place where nobody needs know who or where you are. But that notion has begun to shift in recent months, as governments and private businesses increasingly try to draw boundaries around what used to be a borderless Internet to deal with legal, commercial and terrorism concerns.
"It used to be that a person sitting in one place could get or send information anywhere in the world," said Jack Goldsmith, a professor of international law at the University of Chicago. "But now the Internet is starting to act more like real space with all its limitations."
These new barriers take many forms. One method is to simply restrict who has access to computers and gateways to the Internet. Another is to make all communications pass through filters that seek to weed out objectionable content, such as pornography or information deemed to endanger national security. Growing in popularity is software that attempts to match a computer's unique Internet address with a general geographic location, a technology that is becoming more precise every day.
The debate is no longer about if we can create these barriers, but rather whether we should. Even those who support the idea in theory disagree on who should erect and maintain the electronic fences, whether it should be done by nation-states or by the Web site operators.
The new borders provide what some call a neat solution to the vexing problem of how to resolve the often-conflicting policies of the roughly 200 independent states of the world on matters such as gambling, commerce, copyright and speech.
But critics fear that the barriers will create an Internet that's balkanized. And civil rights groups warn that freedom of speech will suffer, that the technology will make it easier for oppressive governments to stifle nonconformist viewpoints, and that people's privacy will be eroded, especially because some technologies can pinpoint one's location.
"It's likely that the Internet of tomorrow will look radically different from different parts of the world," said Lee Tien, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
Already legislatures and court systems around the world have been attempting to assert their country's authority over the World Wide Web. Hong Kong's government, for instance, has been debating whether to pass a law that would make it a crime for any overseas gambling site to offer services to its residents. A court in Genoa, Italy, recently found the operator of a Web site in another country guilty of libel. A French judge has ordered Yahoo to stop selling Nazi paraphernalia because a law there bans such practices.
Without an international treaty or mediation organization, such rulings have so far been largely unenforceable on parties residing outside a country's borders. But that has not stopped countries from drafting rules for what is and is not permissible online.
At least 59 nations limit freedom of expression, according to Leonard R. Sussman, author of "Censor.gov." Singapore, for instance, works with Internet access providers to block any material that undermines public security, national defense, racial and religious harmony, and morals. That includes pornography and hate speech.
Some analysts say the barriers could grow with the development of "geolocation" technology, which attempts to match a person's location based on a computer's Internet address.
Silicon Valley's Quova Inc., one of the leading providers of this technology, claims it can correctly identify a computer user's home country 98 percent of the time and the city about 85 percent of the time, but only if it's a large city. Independent studies have pegged the accuracy rate of such programs, which also are sold by companies such as InfoSplit, Digital Envoy, Netgeo and Akami, at 70 to 90 percent.
The system is not foolproof; people can easily get past by using special software programs to cloak their identities. But experts such as Goldsmith, the Chicago law professor, say the technology need not work perfectly to have an impact. These barriers act like checkpoints on a nation's physical border: They can be evaded, but most people probably won't want to go to all the trouble.
Gambling sites were among the first to roll out the technology, last year. When users from countries where online gambling is not allowed try to get on, they are either not given the option to place bets or they are kicked out when they try to register for an account.
"There are a number of sites out there that just don't care about the laws. They are perfectly happy to let U.S. gamblers in even though they know it's illegal," said Jeremy Thompson-Hill, an account manager for OrbisUK, which provides the sentry technology used by Sports.com, Ladbrokes.com and other betting sites. "But most reputable companies want to be able to say to the United States, 'We're taking every reasonable precaution to prevent the use of our gambling software in your country.' "
The technology also is being embraced by Web broadcasters, whose nascent industry had been growing slowly because of concerns about copyright. JumpTV is betting its future on this technology. The Montreal-based venture retransmits television broadcasts from around the world and is trying to avoid being sued by broadcasters who claim it violates their broadcasting licenses. In early 2000, a U.S. judge effectively shut down another Canadian company called iCraveTV by prohibiting it from broadcasting its signals into the United States for 90 days.
Farrel Miller, JumpTV's chief executive, said the company hopes to begin retransmitting ABC, CBS and NBC only to Canadian viewers early next year but was much more modest about his company's aspirations than some heads of other webcasting companies during the dot-com boom.
"We don't see the Internet as a revolutionary medium that will change the TV business," Miller said. "It'll be just another alternative vehicle for disseminating channels."
The difficulty in recognizing nation-state borders on the Internet became such a concern during the 2000 Sydney Games that the International Olympic Committee effectively banned most Web video of the events.
Television stations had paid enormous fees for the rights to broadcast the games on a country-by-country basis -- NBC, for instance, shelled out $3.5 billion for the United States -- and they were worried that piracy or even legitimate online transmissions that were accessible to anyone, anywhere might devalue the worth of those contracts. The IOC and many of the owners of broadcast rights say the accuracy rate for geolocation technology is still not good enough and they won't allow any webcasts for the Salt Lake City games this February.
"The technology just doesn't pass muster yet. There's no way to guarantee that your broadcast would be confined to your territory and would not run in to someone else's," said Kevin Monaghan, a vice president for NBC Sports.
Even if geolocation technology worked perfectly, some legal experts said it would not be feasible because it would require Web site operators to know the applicable laws in every country.
"Geographical location technology is a red herring," said Alan Davidson, a lawyer with the Center for Technology and Democracy, a Washington think tank. "It would be incredibly burdensome to tailor content to meet all of the different laws in all of the different countries everywhere the world."
That's the heart of the question being addressed by a court case that pits Yahoo Inc. against France.
Last year, two French groups -- League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Union of Jewish Students -- sued Yahoo for allowing Nazi collectibles to be sold on its auction pages. The sale of such hate material is illegal in France. Almost 1,000 such items were on the block at the time, including Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," stamps and coins, as well as hate paraphernalia.
Jean-Jacques Gomez, a judge in Paris, ordered Yahoo to prevent French users from seeing the material by using the geolocation technology.
Yahoo declined on principle and sued in U.S. District Court in San Jose to make the order unenforceable because a foreign judge could not impose such conditions on a U.S.-based company. U.S. Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled Nov. 7 that the First Amendment trumps overseas laws when they pertain to content produced by U.S. companies. An appeals court upheld the decision but the French groups have appealed again and have vowed to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
The attorney for the French groups, Ronald Katz, argues that the issue is not about free speech but about national sovereignty.
"Yahoo wants to use the court decision as a sort of megaphone to say the U.S. controls the Internet," he said.
Indeed, the U.S. dominance of the Internet is one major thing that observers say will change with the new electronic borders, slowing the dissemination of ideologies and culture across countries.
"Is geographical tracking a panacea that solves international jurisdiction issues? Probably not. But is it a technology that's significantly changing the social, economic and political aspects of how we communicate on the Internet?" Davidson said. "Absolutely."