Geoblocking and Legitimate Trade

Geoblocking and ‘Legitimate Trade’
Marketa Trimble, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Law School

978-94-035-0330-1
Kluwer Law International BV, The Netherlands

This chapter addresses the territorial separation of digital markets with regard to copyrighted works and to what extent right owners can invoke legitimate reasons for such separation. The internet could have become a potent vehicle for free trade. When the internet left behind its modest beginnings and became a mass medium of many uses,1 its borderless nature beckoned the free flow of information, digital goods, and services. With no borders hindering a free flow of trade, and without countries erecting trade barriers at any borders, the internet could have become the ultimate free trade zone. But it has not.