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Technology moves fast. There's simply no other way to put it. With things like Moore's Law and even Cooper's Law making their presence known on the market, it's hard for even the technologically adept to keep up with all the changes in the field. If those who focus on technology have a difficult time, then it's easy to imagine how much trouble regulators are having with technology. That's a problem that's becoming particularly apparent with issues relating to voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and online video.

Recently, California lawmakers issued a prohibition on the state's Public Utility Commission, requiring a “hands-off” approach to VoIP service until at least 2020. California isn't alone in pulling back the public watchdogs, as states like Maine and Florida are also looking at the issues surrounding VoIP technology and seeing that this could be problematic at the very least.

The results of a growing number of users—reports indicate about one in three landline households in the United States are using some level of VoIP service—combined with the broadly-dispersed nature of such services leaves state governments in a bad position as far as regulation goes. If the regulations aren't similar across the nation, the result is a crazy quilt of rules that may leave providers pulling out, and a loss of jobs, tax revenues, and worse.

Many of the problems involved in regulation stem from the Communications Act, an act originally crafted in 1934 and amended in 1996. The Communications Act provides for separation of jurisdiction based on the type of service involved, and with the rapid development of technology overall, regulators are struggling to pour the new wine of Internet-level technology and beyond into the old bottles provided for by the Communications Act.

VoIP actually illustrates this problem particularly well. Under the Communications Act, a standard telephone service would be defined as a “telecommunications service” under the Act's Title II provisions. Meanwhile, the1996 update expands the definition of a Title I service to include “information services”, which has typically been deregulated and off limits to regulators.

VoIP, meanwhile, steps in with a confusing dilemma: it is clearly a Title II service, being telecommunications-based in nature, and making it subject to regulation. But it is being undertaken over a Title I network, which should be left alone. Under the Communications Act's current provisions, it is a bargain that would fluster even Shakespeare's Shylock: can a service which should be regulated while it exists in a venue that should not be regulated?

Attempts to regulate such services, like with Vonage (News - Alert), have fallen under intense legal scrutiny of their own, and that's making things especially difficult for regulators. But those services aren't alone in causing issues; video providers like Netflix and Hulu (News - Alert) may be running into similar legal problems as they too operate in a sort of gray area that features one service operating in the midst of another.

This is the point where some would say that the solution is simply to update the Communications Act again, and to perhaps do so with some regularity. As mentioned previously, laws like Moore's Law, Cooper's Law and others are acting on the system to make regular changes in the overall structure of technology and telecommunications. The regular course of innovation is likewise perking things up, and the chronologically compressed nature of advances in technology means that there's a lot going on. A proper mix of regulation and laissez-faire would seem to be the right approach here, allowing technology to gain without more control than is strictly necessary.