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Australia Trials Phone To IP Service

Posted by Zonk on from the telemarketers-only-get-access-to-my-email-spam dept.

daria42 writes "Australia is doing trial runs with a technology which could connect conventional phone numbers with Web pages, Internet fax services and other online resources. Subscribers to an ENUM service register their other contact details, then set up rules that control how and when calls to their phone are routed. For example, calls from anybody but close family could be routed straight to voicemail between 6pm and 11pm. Because it connects to any IP service, incoming callers could also use phone numbers to access Web sites, the Skype VoIP application, faxes and other applications."

2 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Of course... by cuzality · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    The US essentially enourages female slavery for some reason.

    Not sure what you are referring to when you say "the US essentially encourages" it. According to the World Sex Guide entry on the United States:
    "Prostitution is illegal (a misdemeanor) except in certain counties of Nevada. Visiting a prostitute is illegal also."
    In 99.9% of the United States it is illegal, and a huge proportion of the public would be completely against any attempt to change that.
  2. Re:Of course... by cuzality · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    It may be illegal, but it is everywhere in the US. If it wasn't popular then it would be gone, as in Canada.

    Not according to the Canadian Women's Health Network, which has this to say:
    "World trafficking in women and children for use in the sex trade is a multi-billion dollar market -- and it is on the rise. The United Nations estimates that 4 million people are trafficked throughout the world each year under threat of violence, due to poverty, or through deception. A report by the Solicitor General of Canada (October 1997) concludes that migrant trafficking accounts for 8-16,000 illegal immigrants in Canada every year, many of them female youths and children who are forced to work in Canada's booming sex trade industry. The same report estimates that those profiting from the illegal trafficking of children and women in Canada earn as much as $400 million annually. Authorities have infiltrated trafficking rings that have imported children and youths from every continent in the world to work as sex slaves in Canada. Every major urban centre in Canada has records of children and youths working as prostitutes, as escorts, in strip clubs and in pornography. Thousands of children are believed to be currently engaged in the commercial sex industry nationally."