[Reader-list] Rise of Internet 'Borders' Prompts Fears for Web's Future

[Harsh Kapoor]

Washington Post
Friday, January 4, 2002; Page E01

Rise of Internet 'Borders' Prompts Fears for Web's Future

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer

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."