Monday, April 16, 2012

postheadericon Geotargeting And The Slippery Slope To Fragmenting The Internet With Localized Censorship

For years we talked about the challenges that creates some problems of global Internet based legal skills limited. Since different countries are beginning to deal with this, it has been some fragmentation of the global Internet in the form of censorship in the country, such as those observed in the Great Firewall of China. However, what is to prevent fragmentation of more? Eric Goldman points me to a recent theoretical argument that U.S. courts may begin to enforce local laws on obscenity on the Internet by the use of geographic targeting. As you probably know, the dissemination of obscenity is illegal in the U.S., but "I know when I see it" rule for determining what is "obscene" focused on "community standards." For most, this meant "local" community standards. It works (just) when talking about the physical layout and can try to determine the local community. But in a global Internet? As noted in the paper, the Court Supreme kicked around this issue. However, the paper suggests that a solution could be to use the geographical orientation of aa restoration
limit local governments and Community standards in a world of the Internet:

line between obscenity and eroticism is difficult to estimate, and varies from community to community. In general, the process of analyzing whether a work is obscene includes whether the content violates the Community rules on the geographical area where the published material. Therefore, for most media companies, publishers of content that can be obscene must select communities in which they publish, or face criminal charges less tolerant communities. But for online media, the Supreme Court is still undecided whether the analysis of obscenity should use the standard of the local community. Court doubts arising from global reach of the Internet and lack of control over who receives free content online. For example, if a work is available online in the country, and is judged with the same legal standard as in other traditional media, a local community offended by the content has the power to object to a disturbance at the editor responsible for the distribution of obscenity.


This article explains why the use of a new online technology solves the question of whether the standards of the local community must be used to judge the content online. Call targeting, technology creates boundaries through borderless Internet before, allowing publishers to focus specifically on the communities geographically located, which excludes the areas where the material can lead to criminal charges. This new power to publish documents potentially obscene some communities greatly reduces the problems of constitutional enforcement of obscenity traditional online content.


There are a number of problems that I can see with this approach - some of which are addressed in the document. However, what worries me most is the biggest problem. There is nothing that says this type of approach should be limited to obscenity. Concentrate on something like this opens a fragmented Internet governed by local jurisdictions, where suddenly all sorts of geographic targeting start jumping to create a censorship regime of the mosaic in very localized areas.

Many of us consider the global nature of the Internet
a feature not a problem. It allows people trapped in upstream communities to access the outside world and discover that their "community standards" can not be regarded as normal what is elsewhere. An approach that seeks the opening of censorship in the local rules for the use of geographic targeting, while unlikely to be effective for those who really want to circumvent this problem, it is almost certain to cause problems for those who have legitimate reasons to reach beyond their local community.

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