ABSTRACT
Communications have undergone massive change in the last two hundred years. Old roads were improved and new road systems built. The railway came on the scene. Shipping was transformed as engines replaced sails. Aviation was developed. These all facilitated the carriage of mail. Inventors produced the telegraph, and the railway helped the laying of electrical communications networks. Further experiment led to wireless communication. Computers and the Internet, using both cable and radio, have come on the scene. Technology has improved and the pace of innovation has increased. Of course it is arguable whether technical development and rapidity of communication has been an entirely good thing – that is material for a separate book.1 But our modern communications infrastructures are there. The ‘post’ distributes physical objects – letters and parcels. All modes of electrical communications carry data, documents, photographs and movies, news and trivia. We have to learn to live with these facilities.2 And, as we live with them, most either ignore, or are ignorant of, the substantial body of international law and less formal agreements that underlie modern international communications.
