Google Patents Country-Specific Content Blocking 106
theodp writes "Today Google was awarded US Patent No. 7,664,751 for its invention of Variable User Interface Based on Document Access Privileges, which the search giant explains can be used to restrict what Internet content people can see 'based on geographical location information of the user and based on access rights possessed for the document.' From the patent: 'For example, readers from the United States may be given "partial" access to the document while readers in Canada may be given "full" access to the document. This may be because the content provider has been granted full rights in the document from the publisher for Canadian readers but has not been granted rights in the United States, so the content provider may choose to only enable fair use display for readers in the United States.' Oh well, at least Google is 'no longer willing to continue censoring [their] results on Google.cn.'"
Yay ! (Score:5, Funny)
I just filed a patent today too ... if it pans out, I'm gonna be rich.
"A method by which the mechanisms described in US Patent No. 7,664,751 can be circumvented by any fool who has access to a proxy server, thus making the payment of any licensing fees to Google an exercise in futility".
Google may not intend to use this patent. (Score:2, Funny)
This may seem like a far stretch, but what if Google's intentions with this patent were in fact to disallow anyone from doing that? It seems rather surprising to me that the giant would suddenly switch sides like this, so I'll hope for the best.
Previous art (Score:3, Funny)