The Internet continues to bring people together and provide information on a grand scale – internationally. The UK’s law which does not allow pre-convicted individuals to be tossed about the papers was respected and the NYT simply notified users from the UK that they could not read the article due to local law.”
Okay, so logon to Anonymizer and read the article, right? Anyone who knows anything about the internet can still see it, from the UK even. Logon to a US AOL account from the AOL Client – you’ll see it as it thinks you are in Dulles.
If Web readers in Britain were intrigued by the headline “Details Emerge in British Terror Case,� which sat on top of The New York Times’s home page much of yesterday, they would have been disappointed with a click.
“On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain,� is the message they would have seen. “This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial.�
But does any realize that these types of laws, in an international environment such as the Internet, well, they are just a little hard to keep enforced. People in the UK can logon to anywhere and get the news. According to a Guardian report,
The article purports to contain new information about Scotland Yard’s surveillance of the alleged plotters and the subsequent police operation which resulted in the arrest of 24 suspects.
The claims in the article are based on testimonies from “British officials and others briefed on the evidence, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, citing British rules on confidentiality regarding criminal prosecutions” with six reporters contributing to the piece from New York, Washington and Pakistan.
Source: The Guardian
In adapting technology intended for targeted advertising to keep the article out of Britain, The Times addressed one of the concerns of news organizations publishing online: how to avoid running afoul of local publishing laws.
“I think we have to take every case on its own facts,� said George Freeman, vice president and assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company. “But we’re dealing with a country that, while it doesn’t have a First Amendment, it does have a free press, and it’s our position that we ought to respect that country’s laws.�
Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University, said restricting information fit with trends across the Internet. “There’s a been a sense that technology can create a form of geographic zoning on the Internet for many years now � that they might not be 100 percent effective, but effective enough,� Mr. Zittrain said. “And there’s even a sense that international courts might be willing to take into account these efforts.
For those who are in the UK and want to read the article, Read here
Source: Times Withholds Web Article in Britain – New York Times
Photo Credit: Reuters
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