National Laws Extend their Reach
By Bret A. Fausett
In just the last year, the Iranian government has shut down more than 25 newspapers and journals and jailed dozens of editors and publishers because of content they published. As I write this, the managing editor of one leading publication is on trial for a crime that translates roughly to "desecration of the sanctities." It's a crime allegedly committed through the written word.
The Internet certainly doesn't have the same penetration into Iranian households as it does here in the United States, but Web-based content originating here certainly reaches inside Iranian borders. Some of that content contains material that's as objectionable (from the perspective of the Iranian legal system) as the content that has led to jail terms for Iranian citizens. In fact, activist groups here and abroad specifically target Iranian citizens with messages that, if they came from the Iranian print media, could lead to significant prison terms, or worse, for the senders.
Yet, from our perspective, we're free from the regulation of Iranian law. No one in the U.S. seriously contemplates "desecration of the sanctities," much less a jail sentence in a foreign land, before uploading a new page to a Web server. National boundaries still matter in the enforcement of laws. For obvious reasons, we tend to focus on our own rules and regulations, feeling relatively safe that we won't be subjected to unknown laws—in places where we don't live or work—for things we post to the Internet.
In recent months, however, California-based Yahoo discovered that it would be fined $13,000 a day by a French court if it couldn't find a way to prevent French citizens from purchasing Nazi memorabilia from its auction site.
