G'day all, Some replies to points about the privacy of recording online interation: A) To follow up Jennifer Stromer-Galley's point about cell-phones not being public for the participants, which was in reply to arguments about "if it's loud enough for me to hear it then it's public", I am surprised that no-one has discussed--on the pro or con side of those arguments above--the fact that the cell phone is clearly *changing* what "public" and "private" mean. To claim that there is a set "public" and a "private" excludes both how the technological affordances and constraints of any given meaning allow for specialized and in-the-moment-enacted practices of "publicness" and "privateness". This is an extension to Baym's argument, in that not only do 'different media have particular purblic/private configurations and users' but also that we, as individuals and societies, are constantly in the process of negotiating our public/private notions even as we enact them one interaction at a time. B) I disagree that chatrooms, newsgroups etc. are similar to the panopticon in particular. 1) In terms of visibility: While some people may lurk without participating, or even being seen (like the guards in a panopticon), most people who are active can see each other. 2) In terms of power: A chatroom etc. is not carceral. Those who participate are not prisoners held without their consent for crimes--they are free-willed subjects who can come and go as they please. Those who watch are not guards intended to observe prisoners--they are either other participants or lurkers. But that is not to disagree entirely with the point. As Goffman would argue, we are all, at all times, regulated and self-regulating in terms of how we understand others to perceive our public performance--even when we are the only person around. But as Baym (and I think JSG) argues, people's awareness of the extent of public/private visibility in internet media are very different, and that matters as to how we, as researchers, can formulate a plan of data-collection and dissemination. It also matters to the IRBs who have to make decisions about protecting human subjects. Until anon Sean -- E. Sean Rintel Department of Communication University at Albany, State University of New York http://www.albany.edu/~er8430