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BW: Skype caves in to Chinese censors

January 17, 2006 11:28 PM

Topics: Life | News | Skype杂志 | freedom

Business Week: The Great Firewall of China:

Richard Eriksson: Skype and Microsoft claim they have "no choice" in censoring phrases on their services. They do, but the choice is between doing business in China and not.

Skype had a dilemma. The Internet telephony and messaging service wanted to enter China with TOM Online (TOMO), a Beijing company controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing. Li's people told their Skype Technologies (EBAY) partners that, to avoid problems with the Chinese leadership, they needed filters to screen out words in text messages deemed offensive by Beijing. No filtering, no service.

At first Skype executives resisted, says a source familiar with the venture. But after it became clear that Skype had no choice, the company relented: TOM and Skype now filter phrases such as "Falun Gong" and "Dalai Lama." Neither company would comment on the record.

Carl Bildt: The story says that Skype has now entered an agreement that effectively makes Skype part of the censorship authorities of China. If that's the case, I'll certainly end my Skype account.

Hmmm....

  1. Is the filter list embedded in Skype's source for TOM? Or updated via download? Does anyone have the url for the list?
  2. Is the filtering happening in the client? Or are the TOM Skype clients passing through an IM proxy service that filters the text?
  3. Does this mean that Skype ceases to be a p2p client if one of the parties is operating behind the GreatFirewall?
  4. Does Skype filter voice as well as text?
  5. Does Skype offer governments the option to be a hidden party to any voice or video Skype call? Or just to those downloaded from TOM?
  6. Does the TOM Skype filtering engine inform the Chines agency of its specific actions and identify the speakers?
    "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
  7. Will Skype lockout specific accounts from the Skype network if asked by a government authority? Does it have to be a national security authority or will Skype respond to requests by regional and local police or civil authorities? How about divorce courts?
  8. The United States (a big market too and a target for Skype growth in 2006) National Security Agency wants the power to eavesdrop on Skype conversations too. Will Skype give them access too?

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Posted by: Leo Harolds at January 17, 2006 12:48 PM

If this is all true, I'm rather disappointed in Skype, or should I say eBay? I've been using it for a long time now and I really enjoy it, but if they waiver for China, they could also do so for others, including the USA. Skype has always maintained that they are safe, encrypted End to End, well, apparently no longer (if you're living behind the Great Firewall that is).
My guess is that it's only for the TOM version.

Posted by: Andrew Sheppard at January 18, 2006 11:24 AM

This is very sad news. But perhaps it will be the stimulus for an open source P2P system that does much of what Skype does? Or even perhaps an open source Skype client (remember, open source Samba was engineered without Microsoft releasing its protocols to the world - but that was done, it must be said, before the Mellenium Digital Copyright Act and the current trend towards an intellectual property land-grab through software patents)?

I for one would love to see the equivalent of an "eclipse" platform for P2P telephony. Plugins could be commercial or open source. But, the important thing would be that the end user has the choice over what, and how, he runs on his or her machine.

It seems, more and more, that to open source's long list of credits and advantages we should add "keeping vendors honest and responsible".

Posted by: Ella Chou at January 20, 2006 5:20 AM

I'm from China. I've been using Skype for about three years. I understand in China almost everything on the Internet has been censored or filtered. For instance, we can't browse Wikipedia and Blogger, because some contents are thought to be improper to the government. But I'm glad Skype is willing to make some compromise, if it's forbidden too in China, I don't know what's fun Internet would be.

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