Web getting a little less worldly, a lot less wide

[nolabels]

Web getting a little less worldly, a lot less wide

08:17 AM PDT on Tuesday, July 13, 2004

By ANICK JESDANUN / The Associated Press

Type "dentist" into Google from New York, and you'll get ads for dentists in the city. Try watching a Cubs baseball game from a computer in Chicago, and you'll be stymied. Pre-existing local television rights block the webcast.

The same technology is also used by a British casino to keep out the Dutch and by online movie distributors to limit viewing to where it's permitted by license, namely the United States.

The World Wide Web experience is becoming less and less worldwide: What you see and what you are allowed to do these days can depend greatly on where and even who you are.
AP photo
What you see and what you are allowed to do on the World Wide Web these days can depend greatly on where and even who you are. The Web page shown above is what a person might see when trying to view a baseball game that is restricted in their area.

Blocking visitors

As so-called geolocation technology improves, Web sites are increasingly blocking groups of visitors and carving the Web into smaller chunks - in some cases, down to a ZIP code or employer.

To privacy advocates like Jason Catlett, that technology can detect users' whereabouts isn't the most disturbing aspect of this trend. Rather, it's the fear that Web sites will try to mislead visitors.
(snip)
http://www.pe.com/business/local/stories/PE_Biz_onlineborders13.a0d9d.html

[kayell]

1. Here's a link without the log-in for those who don't want to register

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/9119094.htm


Now having read it: This is potentially very, very bad. Especially for those of us who have learned to depend on access to international sites for a true sense of what is going on in the world, rather that what the WH would like us to know.

[nolabels]

3. Thank you

I googled it but all that came up is my hometown rag (it's getting bad)

[Speck Tater]

2. Time to go back to paper and ink.

I knew the dang fool technology stuff wouldn't last.

[Peak_Oil]

4. Baloney. There's a way.

If hackers can write DeCSS in a couple weeks, it'll be but moments before there's a solution to this. You'll be able to do whatever you want.

[Walt Starr]

5. Easy to get around

Simply utilize free high anonymity proxies around the world. Can't watch a cubs game from a chicago computer? Use a procy in West Virginia and enjoy the game.

Can't see that news site from France? Use a German proxy and read the French news to your heart's content.

Getting around this technology is SOOOOO Easy any child could do it!

[TahitiNut]

8. Here ...

http://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&q=web+anonymizer&btnG=Search

[reprobate]

6. I have a feeling it's all corporate driven.

Profits are more important than people.

It will continue to get worse until the capitalist system collapses.

Boy that's wierd. Born to a capitalist republican family, been a business owner myself, and even I can see that the whole system is devolving. In my lifetime I've seen this country's economy change from one in which a one income family could live quite comfortably to the point where it takes two incomes to just make ends meet. And even then many don't make it.

[nolabels]

7. The control of who can get the information

In a case before 9/11 with our two tiered society at work. If the radio station was a couple private individuals insted would things have went different in this case? (things are kind of muddy now, but this seems interesting none the less)


AN ECONOMY OF INFORMATION IN THIS INFORMATION ECONOMY: The Strange Paradoxes Behind The Public Disclosure Of Secret Information
By JULIE HILDEN
[e-mail]
----
Thursday, Jun. 28, 2001

In its recent decision in Bartnicki v. Vopper, the Supreme Court held, 6-3, that, pursuant to the First Amendment, a radio station could not be penalized for broadcasting an illegally intercepted cell phone conversation about a teachers' union controversy. Key to the Court's holding was the fact that the conversation had been illegally intercepted not by anyone at the station, but rather by an anonymous source.

More generally, the Court also held that "a stranger's illegal conduct . . . does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern." The Court also commented, similarly, that "t would be quite remarkable to hold that speech by a law-abiding possessor of information can be suppressed in order to deter conduct by a non-law-abiding third party."

While the Bartnicki decision itself was carefully confined to its facts, these broad pronouncements could have broad repercussions.

The Paradoxes of Limited Disclosure

Bartnicki raises a paradox. Disclosure of certain illegally intercepted cell phone conversations can be of great social value. But free disclosure of all illegally intercepted cell phone conversations might mean no one could ever feel that he or she could speak freely on his or her cell phone again.
(snip)
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20010628.html

[mstrsplinter326]

9. On a similar note, Big Brother elected in a secret emergency election

Hail President Brother!