[Air-l] netcraft question

[Donna Cavallini]

Knowing a server's location could be important from a legal perspective.
Jurisdiction for a lawsuit is based at least in part on connection of the
place where the basis for the lawsuit occurred to the place of the court in
which a litigant is seeking to file suit.  So, for example, in a case
involving defamation on a website that was hosted on a server in state X,
state X becomes a legally viable option for filing suit, even if the company
running the site is headquartered in state Y.  

Donna Cavallini

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Alex Halavais
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 5:03 PM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] netcraft question

As earlier responses noted, locating servers is a shaky business, and
even once you have, it's not clear why it matters in many cases. Until
recently, my personal website had a server in Hong Kong (IP location)
managed by a web host in Sofia, the name was registered to a Seattle
address (whois record), by a Parisian registrar. The only piece of
locational data in all that which was correct (Buffalo, at the time)
was the ICBM tags on some of the pages. So, be sure you know what it
is you are trying to locate, and if the server is really it.

There are commercial databases of IP address geolocation. These are
somewhat reliable, some of the time :). You might, for example, play
with:

http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm

There is an effort at developing a free/open IP location database: not
quite as complete (~50% correct!), but worth supporting. In fact, if
AIR-L readers go and hit this database and check to make sure it
correctly locates your IP address, it would take only a few seconds,
and help to develop a great public resource:

http://www.hostip.info

- Alex


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// Alexander C. Halavais
// Social Architect
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