The latest in the unintended consequences of intellectual property legislation is covered by The Register: "Seven years jail, $150,000 fine if you don't tell the world your email and home address" This is further example, though thankfully one not yet on the statute books, of the industrial regulation leading to a daft situation when applied at a personal level and in an unexpected/unexplored context.

The article winds off with an amusing exchange between a Harley-Davidson trademark manager and an IP lawyer included in Milton Mueller's wonderful book Ruling the Root. Mueller went on to say: "Under ICANN's contractual regime, the consumers and suppliers of domain name registration services are required to facilitate their own surveillance by intellectual property owners. If we apply the same logic to any other industry, it seems absurdly overreaching. Motorcycles can be used to break the law, but we do not require all vehicle manufacturers to create a publicly accessible, global database with complete and accurate information about all their customers... The linkage of resource administration to policy and regulation in the domain name regime has given intellectual property interests much more extensive rights of surveillance than they had before."

That's a pretty good rule of thumb when it comes to regulation of new communications or Internet techologies - apply the same logic in a different context and give it the absurdity test. James Boyle calls it the telephone rule. When ever he gets some hyped up journalist contacting him for 'the internet angle' on the latest sensational crime story, he asks them to substitute the word "telephone" for the word "internet" and see if they a can blame the telephone for whatever terrible crime has been perpetrated.