Notices

Indeed, a general voicemail for skype/sip/IAX/... would be AWESOME!

The laws regarding recording of telephone conversations depends on your locale. In certain areas, it is illegal to record a telephone conversation without permission from both parties. Just because a tool exists (or almighty Apple gives it a stamp of approval ) doesn't mean that it's legal.

As far as I'm concerend recording for my own personal use(i.e. remmber what I need to bring from the store etc..) is legal in the same way personal irc logging is legal.

But using any of the recordings in court might be a different matter entirely.

From reading Google Voice a week back, you can only record a conversation when the call is placed to you.

You're not allowed to record if you were the one that dialed.

every s60 phone can record telephone conversations. you must buy 3rd party software if you want to get rid of beeps that notifies that the conversation is recorded

I won't rely my info in wikipedia.

The n900 uses pulseaudio and gstreamer to place phone calls.

So parec works exactly how you'd expect it to work. Pulseaudio-utils and gstreamer-utils are both available from the official repo, so all the examples online of how to record with pulseaudio on the linux desktop should work on the n900 (actually I had some trouble due to busybox's grep, but simple parec usage worked fine).

Yeah, it really doesn't work that way and you may well be breaking the law. It depends on the laws of the country the call is placed from and, in the case of international calls, the laws of the country you're calling to.

The wikipedia article doesn't cover Slovenia, but I'm sure there are laws there about recording phone calls.

In the U.S., according to the wikipedia article, it depends on what state you're in. Twelve states require all parties in the call to be notified that the call is being recorded (check the wikipedia article for a list). The other states require that at least one party in the call has been notified. Although if you're phoning to a state that requires all parties to be notified, then that state's laws may take precedence. If no parties are aware the call is being recorded, nor have given their consent (because they work in a call center), then it's an illegal wiretap. Also, the requirement is that people are notified that the call is being recorded, not that they give their consent (of course you have the option to just hang up if you don't consent). Disabling the beeping notification in a call recording program, as one poster mentions, would make the recording illegal if you do not otherwise notify the person you're calling that the call is being recorded in states where this is required.

So just because the technology is available to record calls and it is legal to obtain this technology, doesn't mean it's legal to use it or legal to use it in any way you see fit.

I'd quite like to record *all* phone calls automatically, and keep them in a similar way to voice messages in the conversation tracker.

I realise there are legal issues, but it would be a nice feature, for referring back to calls.

I think the issues are not just legal, but ethical as well. A lot of people would not want or consent to having their calls recorded and would certainly feel violated to find out they were being recorded without their knowledge. It might be convenient (although if you're not a journalist, it's a little hard to imagine what the need really is), but I think people need to take into consideration the person on the other end of the line as well. After all, the call doesn't simply belong to you. It involves at least two people and it's just as much the other persons call as it is yours, regardless of who placed the call. I think the most minimal standards of respect for other people would demand notifying other parties that a call is being recorded.