Much of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence in this area appears to contradict the essential nature of the Net. Where jurisdiction from Internet contacts is at issue, physical presence of the defendant within the forum state will likely be the exception rather than the rule -- cybernauts do physically reside somewhere in real space, and if the defendant cybernaut physically resides within the forum, the law seems well settled that its courts can exercise jurisdiction over her. However, given the far-flung nature of the Net, far more defendants will reside outside any given plaintiff's preferred jurisdiction than will reside within it. A significant number of on-line disputes will therefore require an International Shoe analysis.

Thus, personal jurisdiction over an Internet user will most frequently be premised on the user's contacts with the forum. Given the nature of on-line transactions, those contacts will in many cases be solely Internet-based contacts. As described above, the "minimum contacts" test requires the tribunal to inquire whether the defendant cybernaut has purposefully availed herself of the benefits of the forum state, such that she might reasonably foresee being haled into court there. In particular, pecuniary gain from the forum is assumed to signal that the defendant has "benefitted" in a concrete way from the laws and public services of the forum.

However, one must wonder how reliable an indicator pecuniary gain will be as to minimum contacts via Internet. At the present time, the majority of Internet users probably derive no pecuniary benefit from their on-line activity, yet their on-line activity may still give rise to a variety of legal disputes. Personal communications and discussion groups may be breeding grounds for a wide range of constitutional, contractual, and tort claims, but in the course of conduct that leads to the claim, little money changes hands. This situation is of course already changing; there is money to be made in cyberspace, and entrepreneurs