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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."
"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.' "
Since when does the FBI have the right to wiretap it's citizens? I have the right to privacy when it comes to my communications.
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
First, the FBI does not have the right to demand that new systems go out of their way to support snooping--maybe they do legally, but they shouldn't morally.
Second, there are already encrypted real-time internet communications protocols: Secure AIM comes to mind. If this technology gets blocked because it "can't be wiretapped", then something's fishy: it won't let The Terr'ists do anything They couldn't already do.
Wow, sometimes I wonder about this country.
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.
Frankly, these guys have a poor reputation: they make a product that is designed to aid breaches of copyright, they use their network to install spyware and possibly worse on their users' computers...
It's hard enough to keep a clean rep (look at Google), but frankly I'd think twice before installing anything with the label "Made by the Guys who Brought You Kazaa!".
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I lo....vve.. my Voi...ce...over....IP.
Other analysts are more skeptical. Eventually, they say, Skype's growth will depend on customers who do not understand peer-to-peer networking or have computer headsets. Moreover, the program works best over broadband connections, which just 16 percent of Americans have at home, according to a May report from the Pew Research Center.
Hmmm. Nice to try to downplay it, but the music industry sure is in an uproar over something that is mostly only for broadband users who know how to use P2P file sharing...namely the swapping of mp3's...and popular music has a smaller base of interested parties. And I don't see that not having a $10 headset is going to cripple the popularity of this.
Everyone uses the phone.
Can I bum a sig?
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.
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Written communication became popular, because it was an improvement over word of mouth. Anyone could learn how to do it. It was free at first, but as it caught on, people payed for the priveledge.
Telegraphy became popular, because it was an improvement over commication by postal mail. Anybody could set it up. At first, it was free, but soon people payed for the priveledge.
Telephones became popular, because it was an improvement over communication by telegraph--It circumvented the charges normally associated with communication by wire. And anybody could do it.
The internet became popular, because it was an improvement over communication by telephone. Relaying information from point to point over a public network was cheaper than calling long-distance, and anybody could do it. Soon, people began paying for the priveldge.
Given our own track record, what on earth makes you think your VoIP service is going to be free? Like any other service, infrastructure is paid for by those accessing it. The networks that make it happen don't build themselves, you know.
Its a novelty for now, sure, but 10-20 years from now, you're going to be doing the same thing you're doing now. Paying someone to communicate a message over their medium.
The idea that VoIP is going to remain a free-as-in-beer alternative to traditional phone networks is a pipe dream. Sure, it's a charmingly optimistic to think so, in a cute sort of pat-you-on-the-head sort of way, but..At the end of the day, the one who pays the piper calls the tune.
Bowie J. Poag
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
Since e-mail is an improvement over snail-mail (and possibly phone-alls), do you see everyone paying for it?
While all the previous improvements you mentioned needed new infrastructure, e-mail and VOIP do NOT!! Introducing new applications on the Internet is easy! That's where the end-to-end, dumb network, smart edge nature of the Internet shines!! And that, my friend is where your analogy breaks down.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
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 ----
You are right up to a point.
We structure our communications like this:
1. emergencies: phone
2. normal business: web-based workflow
3. random shit: email
Email is too unreliable for the business, and phone are too interruptive for normal work. Oh, and there is a category zero too:
0. personal: mobile.
The most evil form of "communication" I have ever experienced is the conference call. It is almost as bad as PowerPoint.
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I totally agree, and am happy to see someone working in that space make comments like that.
"the transport company shouldn't care what data I send over the pipe" -- this indeed should be the case, but it's increasingly not. I don't want to digress, but priority is being given not to the type of content (video, audio, web, etc.) like it should, but to the actual content itself, these days.
For instance, Skype says they're using 256-bit AES to encrypt your voice. That's a really good start, but how do they exchange keys? Is there a way to steal the keys? Is there a way for a man-in-the-middle attack to get both you and the person you're talking with to pass your voice calls or key exchange messages through the attacker? Since it's a supernode-based system, there's a very convenient place to _locate_ a MITM... How do you even verify that the directory entry for the person you're trying to talk to is really theirs? Since Skype's documentation hypes the fact that it's using AES, and doesn't mention public key, that strongly implies there's no public key infrastructure to help you.
Microsoft's original PPTP had at least seven things wrong with its crypto, most of which were related to password handling or crypto key reuse (which is Rule Number 1 for what not to do when you're using RC4 encryption.) Some of their weaknesses were in their fundamental protocols, and some of them in their implementation of their protocols. As far as we can tell, Microsoft was trying to do the right thing, and could afford to hire real engineers, yet they screwed up inexcusably badly. Skype doesn't document their protocols, or their implementation, and at least their marketing people don't understand enough crypto to be able to tell if their engineers have a clue, much less whether there's deliberate spyware included, or who gets to be the spy if there is.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks