If you are a European resident and you cannot access the National Enquirer to read the “breaking story” about Obama’s alleged affair with Vera Baker, try surfing with http://www.hidemyass.com/ or any other anonymizer that works. For various reasons, the National Enquirer is blocking European IPs. For example, in Britain, they block IPs because any publication that publishes in the UK is potentially liable to be sued.
We reported earlier today that the National Enquirer was down, without knowing that, in fact, they censor their own content from reaching some WWW users. Interestingly we could access the publication earlier this month, which means that the decision to block content in Germany as well, is probably new (or at least as new as the decision to block content in the UK).
Regardless the reasoning behind the European IP ban, the message displayed by the National Enquirer is at least questionable. A “Page unavailable/under construction” message is confusing and misleading. Correct would be to read “the content of this website is not available in your area” – a message similar to the ones published by video streaming websites like Hulu when they don’t want residents of countries other than the USA to view content.
In the meanwhile, the Obama-Beker story continues to develop. If you are not affected by the National Enquirer IP ban you can access the story directly at www.nationalenquirer.com.
About Mihaela Lica Butler
