Regional Opportunities, National Directives Threaten Concept of a Borderless Internet

As appealing as the borderless Internet may be, Yahoo sports producer Tonya Antonucci is willing to sacrifice the idea for a shot at Webcasting the Olympics.

Broadcasting rights to the Games and other copyrighted sports events typically are sold regionally. So to win future rights, online businesses such as Yahoo are looking to break the Net into regions.

Existing Internet addressing schemes allow Web sites to get a fix on a visitor’s geographical location and thus block out surfers from certain countries, Antonucci said. Though hardly 100% effective, “the technology is basically here,” she said.

Antonucci is not alone in arguing for techniques that could effectively erect national boundaries in a medium designed to circumvent barriers. As nations assert their legal and cultural norms on their piece of the planet, efforts to divide the Net into separate sovereignties could become increasingly popular.

A Paris court recently ordered Santa Clara-based Yahoo to prevent French Internet users from seeing Nazi paraphernalia on its auction pages.

As technology matures, more attempts at cyberspace segmenting are likely.

Alan Davidson, staff counsel with the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, said the result could split the World Wide Web into regional virtual fiefdoms “where you’ve got to show your ID at the door.”

The free exchange of ideas could be inhibited by governments intent on blocking materials posted on foreign sites or by Web sites trying to restrict distribution of specific content, he said.

Erecting borders, Harvard University law professor Jonathan Zittrain said, could turn a truly revolutionary technology into just another mainstream commodity. A mom-and-pop business in South America could thereby lose a worldwide customer base.

The most popular method for location detection uses the technology that locates computers on the Internet. The technique is called reverse Internet Protocol look-up: A Web site tries to determine users’ locations by checking their numeric return addresses, or IP addresses, against databases that list their service providers.

Thus, an address that begins with “24.92” probably is from a Time Warner cable system in the United States. Addresses starting with “161.23” are assigned to the London Hospital Medical College.

Microsoft Corp. and other companies used the technique to comply with U.S. regulations that, until last year, prohibited the export of strong-encryption Web browsers.

But there are many ways to circumvent reverse IP look-up.

Though expensive, a French user could make a phone call to the United States to access a U.S. service provider such as EarthLink. From the Internet’s point of view, that computer would appear to be in the United States. In addition, services exist that allow users to hide their true geographic origins.

Because reverse look-up tracks users’ Internet providers, “it can be a very misleading indicator,” said Vinton Cerf, one of the Net’s early developers.

“It has nothing to do with the specific location,” Cerf said. “It has to do with the operator of the network.”

Location detection will improve, Harvard’s Zittrain said, as more people use wireless devices that link with global positioning satellites or as they connect through high-speed broadband networks that prohibit long-distance phoning.

But Heather Killen, senior vice president for international operations at Yahoo, said the idea of Internet borders is “just antithetical to the nature of the Internet.”

“You can’t really stop people from being able to access all of the information,” she said.