As we wrote earlier this week the New York Times tried the difficult balancing act of making a story about an alleged terror plot available to everyone but readers in the UK. The idea was to avoid running foul of British laws about coverage deemed prejudicial to defendants by making use of geo-targeting technology. Evan Rudowski, one of our UK readers, told us he saw the story without trouble but couldn’t read it later. Evan’s question: “If they can’t block the story absolutely, why bother blocking it at all?” The other obvious option — not putting it online at all.
The MediaGuardian explains that people at companies with international networks had no problem seeing the story. The BBC tells the paper that IP tracing is good 90 percent of the time, while Richard Clayton, an internet expert at Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory, said the process the NYT used may be good enough for ad targeting but not for a court of law. That takes us back to that other option — not publishing a major story online — which may not work in the court of public opinion.
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