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Vonage's CEO Says VoIP Blocking Is 'Censorship'
Avantare writes "CEO of leading VoIP provider says port blocking of VoIP traffic is one potential small step toward an unwanted future of IP-based censorship.
According to Vonage Holdings Corp. CEO Jeffrey Citron, intentional blocking of Voice over IP traffic is more than just a competitive dirty trick -- it's an act of censorship against free speech.
In an exclusive interview here Tuesday [March 1], Vonage's chief executive said the issue of the company's recent incident of having some VoIP traffic blocked reaches beyond the market for IP-based voice communications and into the realm of free speech -- and as such, should be protected by the courts, the FCC, or by new telecom regulation that ensures free and open access over the Internet."
IANAL, but I don't think HIAL either.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That makes my Linksys router The Ministry of Truth.
The engineers, Citron said, "could talk to the [customer's] box, but the box couldn't talk to [Vonage's] server, and it only couldn't talk SIP. We thought, Ah! There must be something going on here. So my guys just changed the SIP ports to something different, and 'schwing!' The service worked just fine."
This has to be the first time a CEO has used the word 'schwing!' in an official interview.
Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
No need to read all the comments. Just realize that in any article relating to censorship, you'll have three kinds of posts:
1) Vocabulary pedants reminding you that only governments can censor and that ____ isn't government censorship.
2) Replies to vocabulary pedants claiming that any sufficiently powerful and/or monopolistic entity hindering communications isn't functionally different than government censorship.
3) People suggesting that Linux be deployed as a remedy.
No, but I heard my ISP was going to start blocking access to slashd [CarrierLost]
liqbase