Talk title: The Future of Cybertravel: Legal Implications of the Evasion of Geolocation
Speaker: Marketa Trimble, who has background in "conflict of law", e.g. conflicts between us and china law.
The talk uses "cybertravel" to mean tricking geolocation (making a website believe you're somewhere other than where you are located) (e.g. in order to get BBC content while in the US)
framing
- pro: "see the internet as someone in london sees it"
- pro: "if we have freedom to travel internationally, maybe the ability to 'cybertravel' should also be a protected freedom"
- pro/con: "similar to anonymization"
- con: "misrepresentation of your location"
- con: "evading copyright restrictions"
territoriality of law
current situation: "if they can reach you, they will prosecute"
- yahoo auctions & nazi memorabilia. french court got a judgement, us court refused to enforce
- viewfinder. american photographer published photos before the fashion show date. again, us court refused to enforce french law.
- lucasfilm vs ainsworth. ainsworth, designer of Storm Trooper helmets, tried to sell the helmets. british court refused to enforce california court's judgement.
seems like it has to be illegal in both countries in order for you to really get in trouble.
to decide whether the visitor or the site has jurisdiction, courts have looked at language, site TLD, level of interactivity (!). now they look at the number of visitors from each jurisdiction. employing geolocation seems like a reasonable way for a site to avoid being subject to other countries' laws, or tailor a site to be legal for all visitors.
uses of geolocation
common reasons: copyright licenses, gaming regulations (gambling?), financial authentication.
megaupload is a great example. they are based in hong kong and block uploads from hong kong. so they're violating copyright everywhere except where they are based.
italy gambling laws require use of geolocation!
very interesting decision from german court. gambling legal in some parts of germany. court said that geolocation seemed reasonable, and the fact that users might evade it wasn't the defendant's fault. (so then was it someone else's fault?)
taxation
governments' interests in territorial partitioning of the internet
governments' interests in attribution of online acts, accountability
types of evasion
- remote login, which is only available to a small number of people [a negligible issue on the margins -- "de minimis"]
- services like "my expat network" that work at the IP level
- dialup to a foreign ISP
- web proxies
- ip proxies like tor
…
the more government mandates sites use geolocation, the more users will be interested in evading
sometimes related to anonymization, but you can do one without the other
few court cases about evasion, all from 2010 or later.
the court could focus on the tool provider or the user of the tool.
the court could focus on the evasion or the act enabled by the evasion.
(the owner of the server could be in a 3rd country, and the server itself in a 4th country)
is it a DMCA violation to violate ? you're violating a technological measure that attempts to protect access to information, which is of course copyrighted. (and in the US, the evasion doesn't even have to give you more access)
cache copies? one court says that cache copies are legal IFF the action you were doing when you made the cache was legal.
contract law: web site terms of use might require you to not evade geolocation.
if the BBC adds a "pay for foreign view" option, are you suddenly more liable when you evade?
it's interesting that "my expat network" sells in pounds rather than dollars. This helps them argue that they are offering their service to british users who are traveling, rather than to americans.