Geoblocking and Evasion of Geoblocking – Technical Standards and the Law
Geoblocking and Global Video Culture (Ramon Lobato & James Meese eds.,2016, Forthcoming)
10 Pages Posted: 31 Aug 2015
Date Written: August 25, 2015
Abstract
The relationship between geoblocking and legal compliance has undergone significant development in recent years. Legislators, courts, and agencies previously did not view geoblocking as a reliable method of achieving compliance with territorial limitations on rights and responsibilities. They assumed that the internet was inherently borderless and geoblocking was invariably unreliable, and they adopted laws, rendered judgments, and issued decisions with the conviction that the global, territorially-unrestricted effects of their actions were inevitable. Recently, however, legislators, courts, and agencies have begun to consider geoblocking as a viable tool for delineating the effects of their laws, judgments, and decisions, and for territorially limiting actions on the internet in general.
The consideration by legislators, courts, and agencies of geoblocking as a means to achieve compliance with territorial limitations set by law is one part of the development of the relationship between geoblocking and legal compliance. This chapter outlines the three stages through which this development will proceed. In the first stage, geoblocking will be accepted as a tool of regulation and enforcement. While acceptance has already occurred in some countries in some contexts, this acceptance is certainly not yet general or widespread. In the second stage, minimum standards for geoblocking will be promulgated because the use of geoblocking for purposes of legal compliance necessarily calls for minimum technological standards that geoblocking tools must meet in order to create virtual borders sufficiently precise and impermeable to satisfy the law. In the third stage, circumvention of geoblocking and the tools that facilitate circumvention will be targeted by countries’ regulation. The three stages will likely begin at different times in different countries, industries, and contexts, but will eventually overlap and thereafter develop concurrently.
Keywords: geoblocking, geolocation, territoriality, compliance, border, cross-border, transnational, evasion, circumvention, cybertravel, regulation, enforcement, gaming, gambling, online, Spanski, Telewizja Polska, GlobalMode, Commission, European Union, Digital Europe, legal
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