[qingcharles]

I was doing legit music downloads and streams for the major labels in late 1999/early 2000 and I was using some sort of paid IP database to determine which of the 34 countries we covered the user was connecting from, so I could pay the right royalties.

Was the market really that small for IP geolocation 25 years ago? I don't remember it being a problem to source the data...

[sanjayparekh]

I think a lot of people are confusing access to some kind of IP location data with access to high(er) accuracy data. Yes, you could scrape whois data to create a IP location database but even country level would be in the mid-80s and then dramatically drop off from there. In the early dot-com boom, that was good enough since there was nothing really better.

[qingcharles]

Got you. I can't remember how accurate the database was. I think as long as you were "in" one of the 34 countries then the app worked fine, even if it had you pegged in the wrong place.