Minimum Contacts in a Borderless World: Voice over Internet Protocol and the Coming Implosion of Personal Jurisdiction Theory

Citron, Danielle K., "Minimum Contacts in a Borderless World: Voice over Internet Protocol and the Coming Implosion of Personal Jurisdiction Theory" . UC Davis Law Review, Vol. 39, No. 4, April 2006

Abstract:

Modern personal jurisdiction theory rests on the twin pillars of state sovereignty and due process. A non-resident's "minimum contacts" with a forum state are treated as the equivalent of her territorial presence in the state and hence justify a state's exercise of sovereignty over her. At the same time, the non-resident's "purposeful availment" of opportunities within the state is seen as implying her agreement to that state's jurisdiction in exchange for the protection of its laws. This theory presumes that a non-resident directs voice communications to known places by dialing a telephone number's area code.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and the borderless communications of the twenty-first century belie this assumption. Area codes will no longer reliably correspond to known locations; individuals can call, and do mischief in, a state without ever realizing that they are contacting that state. With VoIP and its emerging applications, most means of interstate communications - voice, fax, file-sharing, e-mail, and video - will lack geographic markers.

This will force the Court to choose which value is paramount: state sovereignty or the implied contract approach to due process. In a few cases arising from cellular-phone calls, lower courts have privileged the implied contract theory. This effectively returns the law of personal jurisdiction to the nineteenth-century formalism of Pennoyer v. Neff by limiting jurisdiction to defendants' home states. This wholesale evisceration of state sovereignty is unwarranted. Other means can protect a non-resident defendant from abusive process. Securing state sovereignty over harmful borderless communications advances both the Court's decentralizing judicial federalism agenda and its centralizing efforts to preserve a national market and identity.

Facts on voip

• The United States government had set a deadline, requiring VoIP carriers to implement e911, however, the deadline is being appealed by several of the leading VoIP companies. This is a different situation with IPBX systems, where these corporate systems often have full e911 capabilities built into the system. A simple solution to this problem is to store the local emergency numbers on speed dial which is usually even faster than having to be transferred by the 911 operator.
• One must note that the maximum upstream in your Internet connection is the final throttle and service is not as good as standard telco services.
• Integration into global telephone number system Whilst the traditional Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) and mobile phone networks share a common global standard (E.164) which allocates and identifies any specific telephone line, there is no widely adopted similar standard for VoIP networks.

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