“Imagine there’s no countries...” – Geo-identification, the law and the not so borderless Internet

The Internet is undergoing a remarkable change: from the world's first and only borderless communications medium to something that much more resembles the physical world divided by borders of different kinds. This has enormous consequences, as people are losing one of the greatest benefits of the Internet: its ability to allow people to communicate across borders. This article examines how and to what extent the geo-location technologies work. Further, the legal implications of these technologies are discussed. The use of geo-identification has profound legal implications virtually in all areas of Australian law. If geo-location technologies amount to technological protection measures under § 10(1) of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), then providing circumvention technologies may amount to a breach of § 116A of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), thereby making such circumvention unlawful. Privacy law affects and is affected by geo-identification, for example, by the fact that the most common and most sophisticated form of geo-identification is based on the translation of IP addresses into geographical locations.