Slashdot Mirror
NY Times on VoIP, Skype Profile and the FBI
securitas writes "The New York Times Business section published a longish profile of P2P VoIP startup Skype, founded by the people that brought you P2P file-sharing client Kazaa. Previously the domain of geeks everywhere, this is significant if only because it seems to signal that VoIP is starting to garner mainstream consumer interest and serious business interest. The article discusses Vonage and a Daiwa Securities telecom report that says Skype 'is something to be scared of, and is probably set to become the biggest story of the year.' Critics dismiss it as hype.
But Skype faces a potential court battle with the FBI. 'Because traffic over Skype is strongly encrypted and distributed over wide-ranging sources, it could hamper authorities' ability to wiretap.' An FBI spokesman says, '... it is something that we are looking into.'
Of course last week's Minnesota federal court ruling that exempts VoIP from traditional telecom legislation doesn't hurt the case for VoIP. The text of the ruling is expected to be available this week. Read the previous Slashdot stories on Skype and the Vonage vs Minnesota case for some background."
Is anyone else reading this article running into a massive flood of 500 Server errors?
I started seeing these about 48 hours ago, and they've gotten to the point where it's just about impossible to read Slashdot.
Is this just me (i.e. ISP set up flaky transparent proxy) or is it affecting others as well?
May we never see th
Despite that, VoIP still has one problem: voice is simply less flexible useful than text messaging, for most people.
IMHO, voice is only useful when I'm away from my desk, and this will only work when VoIP marries Wifi, and since widespread Wifi is still going to be a pipedream for at least a year or two, there sits VoIP.
I predict the next generation of small mobile VoIP handsets will be extremely popular with business travellers, and pretty much ignored by the general population.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Long term VOIP is the way to go and I can see the traditional phone number going the way of the DoDo bird. People will find others through directories such as those on IM. That is why MS is so big on Passport. They know that in the future he who controls the directory controls everythng.
I use Vonage and it is great, but I have become scared from pending/proposed legislation.
Looking at the history of the net, everything that lawmakers or big companies try to regulate, only makes that technology evolve faster.
If Napster had not gotten its butt kicked, then everyone would have been dl'ing just music from a centralized listing server for the past few years, instead, they forced it to evolve into a de-centralized network that you can download everything from.
Same will happen here hopefully. I used to be scared that they could prevent the free flow of information on the net, but so far, the net has been one step ahead.
That doesn't mean simply the expression of ideas, but also in what manner I express those ideas.
That includes whatever particular language or encoding system I desire to use.
If the FBI wishes to to figure out what my speach means, well, that's up to them kid.
I also have the right to be secure in my papers. Even if those "papers" are digital and I cannot be forced to testify against myself.
Again, the FBI can go scratch.
Once upon a time until a judge agreed that there was sufficient evidence that I had actually commited a crime the FBI had no right to even question my speach or papers in the first place.
Ah, thank God we're fighting for "freedom" now and homey don't play that shit anymore, eh?
KFG
If PC's were used to translate voice to text (voice recognition)and at the recieving end, translate the text to voice (voice sythesis), wouldn't the resulting data stream be small text packets that could be easily encoded/decoded and/or hidden in creative ways plus the result would be smaller amount of data to send over the net? (thesound may not be the original speaker, but it may sound cool, and also, the computers could interact with the parties as the decoded text strings could now be recognized by computer programs and the computers could resond to you too, sort of like an application where you could talk to and get a response from search engines (or other computer entities (CYC?, like ask.com) on the net?
Countries like my previous home of Jamaica, who have a telephone monopoly, are already banning VOIP because it cuts into C&W's telephone revenue. In fact, in the past, there have been police and telecom raids on VOIP users there.
In Jamaica, broadband (including DSL, Wireless Broadband, Satellite Broadband, T1) are being rapidly deployed and the cost is becoming even reasonable. What are the implications of Technology like Skype?
- No central authority to bill or control calls
- Any computer user with 56K and upwards can probably use it
- Not easy (legally) for computer authorities to prevent data transfer between two computer users.
- Not so easy to block ports, since they change
- Cannot block IP address ranges
- Joe sixpack will learn more about VOIP
The only way around this is to outlaw use of the software and shut down the site, but the cat is already out of the bag. If you really think about this, if this technology catches on, then its a bit bite in the chunk of traditional phone company revenue. Is bandwidth costs going to rise as phone companies depend more on that for revenue?At the very least, Skype is going to make introduction of VOIP to the masses super easy. I wish them luck, and I wish that the Phone companies will take their heads out of the sand for a few minutes to see the lay of the land.
Newsfollow.com
To extend your highway analogy - we currently pay for highway access (through taxes) regardless of what we're transporting*. If the phone companies ran the highway system, you're going to pay a different fee to drive four people across town relative to just driving yourself. Same distance, same car, same wear-and-tear on the road system. The only difference is that the 4-person transport has more value to you, and the phone company wants a piece of that.
...
The "free" part isn't really free, but rather an unrestricted use of the bandwidth you pay for. If I'm paying for brodband cable or DSL, the transport company shouldn't care what data I send over the pipe as long as I don't exceed the bandwidth limit.
The counter-arguement is that transporting voice over a telephony network is a pain in the ass. I work in that industry, and the end-to-end latency is what kills you. The transport vendors will argue that meeting the latency requirement for VoIP costs them extra, so they need to charge you by-the-minute or by-the-packet (on which I call bullshit.) They can bill me a fixed fee for a VoIP-capable broadband connection, added to my monthly ISP fee, should I desire to use VoIP.
It all distills down to money-grubbing for the almighty buck. (I was going to say "greenback," but that's obsolete now, isn't it?)
*Yes, I realize that there's a different fee structure for vehicles Class 3 and above, but that's largely because they tear up the road more. The fee is structured by weight of the vehicle, so hauling 10 tons of chickens is considered the equivalent of carrying 10 tons of steel. Yes, Hazmats are different too
Are we seeing the beginnings of a total ban on encryption? The concept of 'secure communications' is nothing new.
Remember that we encrypt mail, files, data streams.. even IM messages, already..
I wonder if the HSD/FBI/etc will start moving to squelch that as well.. ' for our protection '
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I got you. I meant that more as the relevant laws preventing wiretapping but I definitely see where I was unclear. Really what I meant was that even though the 4th amendment protects you in a lot of ways it doesn't prevent wiretapping in cases of probably cause.