Volume 7 Issue 1

The rise of the Internet as a serious medium of communication threatens the autonomy of a wide range of communicative activities. Increasingly conversation, public speaking, mail, radio, research and even television, are able to be most conveniently conducted through the medium of the Net. The process of technical convergence calls into question the current regulatory structure that surrounds communicative activities. Technical convergence has led to calls for 'legal convergence'. In this essay I argue that calls for legal convergence overstate the degree to which current regulatory structures are based on technical difference. I suggest that current laws are based on 'communicative values' such as access and user control. These values may vary in importance according to the type of communicative activity being undertaken, but will remain relatively constant for each type of activity regardless of the technology being utilised.