• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, August 31, 2006

In a bizarre turn of events, The New York Times this week attempted to prevent British readers from accessing a Web article about the British investigation of the terror suspects.

Using geo-targeting techniques, the Times tried to block the article--a front page story in the United States--from Web users in the United Kingdom.

The effort was doomed, of course, as U.S. readers can cut and paste the article into their e-mail and send it to anyone they wish; even had the Times never placed the article online at all, anyone with access to a scanner could have done so. As of this morning the censored piece is available in its entirety on a number of blogs.

What's more, geo-targeting doesn't work perfectly. In the article, "Why the NYT web block doesn't work," the British paper The Guardian exposed some of the more basic flaws in targeting. First, some Web servers abroad use U.S.-based services to connect. AOL, for instance, uses a U.S. connection in the United Kingdom, according to the article. And, the Guardian gleefully reported--in an article that doubles as a how-to guide--Web users can sign up for services like the-cloak.com, which mask users' actual IP addresses.

In fact, the Times had to have known it couldn't control the flow of information online. Instead, the effort was clearly a symbolic gesture meant to appease the British authorities, in hopes of persuading them not to sue.

And why is the Times so afraid of a suit by the British government--a prospect that appears to be a very remote possibility, according to The Guardian? Is the Times so tapped out from its other legal battles--like contempt of court fights for refusing to disclose the names of sources--that it has no will left to fight to print information of obvious public interest?

Of course, the Times can publish or not publish whatever it wishes. But one has to wonder why the paper goes to the trouble of reporting out a story and then takes steps--ineffectual as they may be--to deny access to the story to the very readers that care about it the most.