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NY Times Online Addresses Local Publishing Laws
The New York Times recently took steps to make one of its online articles inaccessible to viewers in Britain. The article contained further details of an ongoing British terrorism investigation, and the NY Times had to address the issue of how to make the article available to its readers while not running up against a British law prohibiting the publication of prejudicial information about defendants prior to trial.
Keeping print versions of the article out of Britain was relatively straightforward, but addressing the Internet version of the article was more challenging. However, the NY Times was already using advertising technology that determines the location of Internet users connected to the NY Times website in order to deliver targeted advertising. By adapting this technology to editorial content, the newspaper was able to prevent the article from being accessed by British Internet users.
This solution is an interesting response to the international publishing problems posed by the Internet; the NY Times has demonstrated that publishers can take steps to prevent certain publications from being accessible in jurisdictions where they are prohibited by local laws. It will be interesting to see if the NY Times takes similar steps in the future, and whether other online publishers follow suit.
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