that contained the information, or where your personal computer happens to be? Dr. Cerf suggested that geophysical location might become less and less important. For example, an online purchase might be made from anywhere in the world, so that the transaction might more reasonably be said to occur at the billing address of the credit card holder. For a cable system, a more appropriate regulation point might be the address of the subscriber—the delivery point. Such ambiguities must be resolved for Internet commerce to thrive.

Dr. Brynjolfsson concluded the discussion by pointing out the very large projected size of e-business. He said that the projections of $3.5 trillion a year in the United States and about $6.7 trillion worldwide are realistic and that such projections have been revised upward each year. He cautioned that care must be taken when comparing business-to-business volume with national or global GDP because the same good and its components may be sold at many Web sites, but would be counted only once in GDP. In principle, while the projections for future business-to-business volume may be reasonably realistic, they need to be considered in context, and are not directly comparable.