Hmm well my theory is:
When you put an includes for a URL like: /content/content.php
It then converts it to something like
\www\public_html\content\content.php
so you cant include out of the www folder because the server would need to know the server side code to parse so if you did request
http://whatisit.com/content/content.php
when it converts it goes
\www\
http://whatisit.com\content\content.php
(roughly speaking of course)
Also i think the server works faster when you include it like
\www\public_html\content\content.php
anyway as it doesnt need to convert