Discuss Ch5Part1 here

Andy Oram: I've been trying to figure out how to incorporate at least mentions of three recent developments that seem worth bringing up in the context of this chapter. First, VoIP? continues the Telephone issue that's discussed in two parts of this chapter. It would probably be worth adding a "Telephhones: Part 3" section that explains why it's even harder to regulate VoiP? than to demand wire-tapping on cell phones. VoIP?, as is well known, is under scrutiny for wire-tapping and E911, along with number portability and the universal service fund. No government has dared to take on computer-to-computer voice yet. For VoIP? phones that are connected to the phone system can probably comply with most of the requirements, but at a cost. Mobile phones will be a particularly big challenge technically to provide E911.

The second current issue is data retention, which is law or close to being law in the European Union and Canada. There are more ISPs than phone companies (although they're falling fast in the U.S.), so the responsibility is spread thinner than with phone tapping. The technology is actually simple; it just means keeping a lot of traffic data. This issue is probably worth making another section in the chapter.

A third issue was touched on in one tiny parenthetic phrase: China's blocking of IP addresses and keywords. Because it's become so prevalent in China, and it's in the news a lot, it might be worth mentioning as a relatively simple blocking technique that achieves some ot its goals in conjunction with legal repression.

Shammi Sandhu: This Chapter talks about governmental interests in regulating real world domains such as TV, telephone, tapes etc as well as Cyperspace.  But recently some technologies are emerging which do not fall in one such domain only, rather creating a “Hybrid” of two or more of them.  One such example is VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which is basically a hybrid of internet and telephone.  Such technologies create further complications to the regulators, which can be included in the new edition of this book.