[Infowarrior] - NYT Withholds Web Article in Britain

[Richard Forno]

Times Withholds Web Article in Britain
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/business/media/29times.html?ei=5090&en=d2e
b8d24ef801b5f&ex=1314504000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

If Web readers in Britain were intrigued by the headline ³Details Emerge in
British Terror Case,² which sat on top of The New York Times¹s home page
much of yesterday, they would have been disappointed with a click.

³On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of
nytimes.com in Britain,² is the message they would have seen. ³This arises
from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of
prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial.²

In adapting technology intended for targeted advertising to keep the article
out of Britain, The Times addressed one of the concerns of news
organizations publishing online: how to avoid running afoul of local
publishing laws.

³I think we have to take every case on its own facts,² said George Freeman,
vice president and assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company.
³But we¹re dealing with a country that, while it doesn¹t have a First
Amendment, it does have a free press, and it¹s our position it that we ought
to respect that country¹s laws.²

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at
Oxford University, said restricting information fit with trends across the
Internet. ³There¹s a been a sense that technology can create a form of
geographic zoning on the Internet for many years now ‹ that they might not
be 100 percent effective, but effective enough,² Mr. Zittrain said. ³And
there¹s even a sense that international courts might be willing to take into
account these efforts.

Plans were made at The Times over the weekend to withhold print versions of
the article in Britain, as well as news agency and archived versions.

But the issue of the Web was more complicated.

Richard J. Meislin, the paper¹s associate managing editor for Internet
publishing, said the technological hurdle was surmounted by using some of
The Times¹s Web advertising technology. The paper could already discern the
Internet address of users connecting to the site to deliver targeted
marketing, and could therefore deliver targeted editorial content as well.
That took several hours of programming.

³It¹s never a happy choice to deny any reader a story,² said Jill Abramson,
a managing editor at The Times. ³But this was preferable to not having it on
the Web at all.²