China Telecom Blocking Skype Calls

Retrospeak writes "According to a Reuters report China is starting to block Skype service in Shenzhen, an affluent southern city of China. Local Chinese media report that China Telecom has plans to eventually block the service throughout its coverage area nationwide. Could this have something to do with the fact that China Telecom charges close to $1 per minute for calls to United States and Europe?" From the article: " A China Telecom spokesman had no comment on the reports about the Shenzhen blockage, but gave a broader view. 'Under the current relevant laws and regulations of China, PC-to-phone services are strictly regulated and only China Telecom and (the nation's other fixed-line carrier) China Netcom are permitted to carry out some trials on a very limited basis,' he said."

Comments

Sad Future of Broadband Access in other countries

[Nerd Systems]

China Telecom is pretty smart to be blocking the Skype service, even though ethically I think it is not right to be blocking a user's internet connection experience like this. User's pay for an internet connection, expecting to be able to use it for many various purposes, and not have certain "features" blocked, but then again, this is not America either.

Here in America, at least we have the FCC and other governing bodies telling big business what they are allowed to do and what they are forbidden to do, and the majority of time the rules are followed at least. I know a while back that some major ISPs tried to block Vonage on their systems but after a major outcry from their subscribers this was changed quickly.

China has always been known to be a government that censor's free speech and tries to limit what it's citizens have access to. I am sure that their email systems are all monitored with anti-government emails being filtered out or those sending/receiving these emails being placed on watch lists, and am sure that each citizen's web surfing habits are monitored as well.

This is just another example of why I am glad to live here in the United States of America. We may complain about things from time to time, but at least we do have more freedom of information and able to know more, then most other countries out there. If my Vonage was blocked by my ISP, I would be contacting Road Runner in a hurry, and getting things straight, something that as an American we can take care of. I'm glad to not be helpless like the majority of private citizens in China are.

I wonder if this is proven to be a successful triumph on China Telecom's part, if it will help spur other ISP's in various countries around the globe to take a part in this as well. Voice over IP has been a wonderful blessing to many around the world, being used by many to reach other's in distant countries, at a far cheaper cost then a normal voice call would cost... hope this doesn't catch on and cause VOIP as a whole to start being shut down outside of America.

Hopefully, Skype can just one-up the Chinese, and change the way their system works, to more easily get around the blockage, as well as having the system be more intelligent in finding connections, bypassing any blocking measures that China Telecom might try to implement.

I'm not a lawyer, and curious about the legal implications of this. I know that with China being a communist nation, that the people probably have no rights, but could Skype turn around and have a lawsuit against China Telecom, for "obstruction of service" or "tampering with service" which is essentially what they are doing?

This is surprising from Communist state-run media?

[gearmonger]

Now if we could somehow get a US company to pay Chinese workers $2 per hour to make Skype handsets for sale in China, then we might have a deal on our hands. Anyone?

Boy, its come down then

[Nom du Keyboard]

China Telecom charges close to $1 per minute for calls to United States and Europe

Boy, it has come down then. When I was in China a few years ago it was $2/minute to the USA. It was a bargain to get to Japan and have calls cost only $1/minute.

Australia, last December by comparison was about 4 cents/minute on a phone card.

Best of luck with that

[gunpowda]

It's a legitimate, functional technology. This is all too reminiscent of the media companies' fear of a threat to their established business models.

Regardless of any efforts to block its use, once people realise the advantages of VOIP, organisations, whether Governments or companies who want to enforce some kind of monopoly, will have to embrace this worthwhile development.

Re:Best of luck with that

[dreamchaser]

I'm not sure how you think the Chinese government will 'have to embrace' anything. If they want to block IP telephony they can and will. What does the legitimacy or functionality of the technology have to do with what a dictatorial, repressive government can and will do?

Re:Best of luck with that

[mrchaotica]

Do you think China Telecom is blocking it to maintain a high profit margin, or do you think that $1/minute reflects the cost of eavesdropping on every conversation? I would imagine China blocking VoIP not due to cost, but because they want to control the information.

It may be a censorship issue

[davidwr]

If they aren't set up to tap IP telephony, then they'll want to block it until they are.

It's the way of such governments.

Re:It may be a censorship issue

[Craptastic Weasel]

Well... I have a good friend who is starting to do business in China, (specifically in the IT business) and from what I have heard, you don't just walk into China and set up shop. Any company that wants to play in China's market has to do it through

1.) The Government,
2.) A Chinese Big Business, or
3.) some nefarious underground type deal, (mafia-ish).
Profit ???

Basically, he has told me that if you try to skip this crucial relational step, they'll pirate, steal and plunder your market share there into oblivion. (Sorry Bill!)

I imagine with such a model market, they're very protective of the ones who play accordingly.

Just my .02 worth

(sig withheld as evidence)

Re:It may be a censorship issue

[pv2b]

Hm, interesting that. Skype uses encryption that (supposedly) makes it impossible (or at least very hard) to listen in on Skype calls. Maybe that's why China wants to block it?

Although, this would be no reason for them to block standard SIP, which typically is unencrypted. Although SIP is a generic enough solution to support encryption at some layer, most existing VoIP solutions don't do this. I know that my IP telephony at home doesn't use any encryption, but I'm not that concerned about it, since neither would a standard POTS line if I were to have one of those.

But then again, when you're not raking in $x/minute for phone calls, but instead routing IP traffic at your own expense, your budget for sniffing IP telephone traffic gets that much smaller. Why invest in new technology to eavesdrop on VoIP calls when you can just maintain the status quo by adding some new rules to the Great Firewall of China?

The cause may lie elsewhere

[A Dafa Disciple]

Could this have something to do with the fact that China Telecom charges close to $1 per minute for calls to United States and Europe?

As the article stated:

China routinely blocks access to Web sites on politically sensitive subjects such as the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square

I'd say it has more to do with the fact that people (mainly Falun Gong practitioners) like to use services such as Skype to tell Chinese mainlanders, who don't have access to free (as in speech) media, the truth about the persecution that's going on there.

You think you have it bad?

[A Dafa Disciple]

Shoo' I'm being raped, tortured, and murdered there!

Re:You think you have it bad?

[geomon]

Shoo' I'm being raped, tortured, and murdered there!

Excellent point!

When I read TFA, I was wondering "Why is this listed as 'Your Rights Online', when it is clearly a political discussion. China maintains a stranglehold on their populace and the only thing we can do is bitch about is Skype getting blocked?

I'm sure China's telco blocking Skype what this guy was pissed about when this photo was taken.

Nope

[dreamchaser]

I'm not a lawyer, and curious about the legal implications of this. I know that with China being a communist nation, that the people probably have no rights, but could Skype turn around and have a lawsuit against China Telecom, for "obstruction of service" or "tampering with service" which is essentially what they are doing?

It's hard enough to sue a sovereign nation for violating it's *own* laws, let alone over something like this. IANAL either, but I can tell you that a snowball would have a better chance lasting in hell than Skype would have in winning such a suit.

Re:Nope

[ScrewMaster]

Yeah ... I can just see SBC helping Skype out with this one.

The big boys would just as soon see Skype and Vonage and all the rest of this newfangled foolishness simply disappear. That's apparently true in China as well as the U.S.

How is it identified for blocking?

[quadong]

Anyone have any idea how they are identifying SkypeOut traffic? Skype makes a pretty serious effort to be hard to identify. Do they just block the login server?

Re:How is it identified for blocking?

[Kadin2048]

Wow, 2/3rds of the way down the page and I finally get an interesting response. :)

Yeah I'm wondering the same thing too. My guess is that Skype was just caught unaware and was sitting there with its ass in its hands like the original Napster service was. Big centralized login server, easy to block. "Problem" for the Chinese, solved.

VoIP isn't just going to go away, although Skype as a corporation probably will, at least from the Chinese market. But there are lots of ways to disguise an internet phone call -- encrypt it and bury it in HTTP traffic, for instance. You'd have to decentralize the system and probably lose any opportunity to make profit at least in the way Skype does now, but it's not tough to do. I don't think the Chinese would be stupid enough to just block all encrypted data traffic, since it would shut down basically all electronic commerce and banking.

The peer-to-peer file networks basically do the same thing: they provide a directory which you then use to open a direct connection between two computers on the internet, to transfer information. In the U.S., where telephones are ubiquitous and service is cheap, they get used for (mainly contraband) data. But perhaps in China, where you can buy the latest pirated movies on every corner, it's the phone conversations that are the contraband that want to be moved over such a network. The same sort of distributed database which normally holds file names, hashes, and other metadata could contain people's names or aliases and IPs.

I find it interesting and a little ironic that the file sharing networks of the U.S. and Europe could potentially become a disruptive freedom-spreading tool for people living under an oppressive government. Or maybe it's not ironic at all, it's just the degree and type of oppression they're being used against.

Re:How is it identified for blocking?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Skype knew this was coming: they have enough people with clues who've worked in telephony and web content providing and dealing with the unconstitutional US government restrictions on the RSA encryption at the core of their technology that their lawyers and techas *must* have thought about it.

Avoiding the political censors is a laudable and reasonable goal, but getting clever this way makes it that much tougher to have a real phone policy in a secure environment where you are *not* supposed to have un-logged phone calls.

By the way, the US export encryption regulations were already ruled unconstutional once, but got transferred to another federal department and are wending their way back through the court challenges once again. Those are what blocked a similar quality encryption that was absolutely end-to-end secure almost 20 years with the PGPPhone published for Macintosh modem users.

Re:How is it identified for blocking?

[mcrbids]

Yeah. I work in the media revision department of the Chinese Federal Govornment.

We block the signals by running iptraf on a 486 Linux box connected to the China -> California gateway. Iptraf, as you may know, is ncurses-based, so we have a REALLY BIG SCREEN on it so we can see all the connections going on.

Then, we have a bunch of short, four-eyed people on ladders in front of the screen watching the connections. Whenever someting nefarious happens, they scream out port numbers to one of our typists who furiously type in commands like

iptables -A input -p tcp -s 1.2.3.4 --sport 18390 -d 4.3.2.1 --dport 8080 -j REJECT;

Every morning, we flush the tables, ensuring we have plenty of work to do that day...

Just so you know, Slashdot is usually on our ban list, so anytime, one of the foureyes is going to notice m!@#!@#913899!# !# { 192.168.1.1: PACKET DENIED }

not because of money

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they are blocking because Skype is more or less a peer to peer protocol, and it's very hard to monitor the conversations.

Anyway, this is the day that the great firewall really becomes useful (in a painfully annoying way)

by the way, calls from china to the US are not 1 dollar per minute. nobody uses those services. everyone buys IP cards for maybe 2 cents a minute or so. FYI

I am talking to Shenzhen NOW on skype

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Are you SURE it's blocked? I have colleagues in Shenzhen and HK and just finished a skype conf call with several of them and didn't have any issues getting through. Granted, it wouldn't surprise me given China's often ham handed attempts to control communications infrastructure. But before we go accusing them of something that wouldn't be so surprising, let's make sure it's actually happening and not some temporary glitch. Cheers,

Re:I am talking to Shenzhen NOW on skype

[wangxiaohu]

This is true. I have my family in Shenzhen and I study in Canada. We phone each others on Skype frequently and found no problem. BTW, calling from China to Canada is about few cents per minutes, not $1.

Re:I am talking to Shenzhen NOW on skype

[nihaopaul]

i'm in china also and i buy IP cards to phone my Girlfriend in atlanta, i buy the cards off the street with printed price of 100rmb (i pay 25rmb) and i normally get ~60minutes.

((25/60)/8.09) = 0.051503914297486608982282653481665 usd/minute. of course its state run, but also think about atleast 4 million people using that service in this city (shanghai), but when i can't be fucked to go out and buy a card off the street i'll just fireup skype and hope it doesn't consume up all my processor io whilst i work and talk.

Lived in China two years, no surprise to me

[jjn1056]

This is what happens when a fascist oligarchy adopts the worst aspects of capitalism.

Funny, I was in Beijing two months ago and there was a HUGE billboard for Skype, right in the center of the business district.

My guess is that they are just using a heavy hand to pressure skype into two things:

1) handing over some money/bribes.
2) making sure they can listen in on conversations
3) They did something like this to Google a few years back. Even now google experiences outages all the time. I guess this is just the way the chinese gov't is used to doing business.

Skype just has to figure out the right person to bribe and this will all go away.

Re:Sad Future of Broadband Access in other countri

[dominion]

This is just another example of why I am glad to live here in the United States of America.

You know, it's fine if you want to be glad that you don't live in China, but you should at least recognize that being better than China when it comes to human rights is kinda like bragging that you're not the stupidest kid on the short bus.

Re:Sad Future of Broadband Access in other countri

[Mullen]

Simple test to see which country is more free.

Can you join a Nazi party in your Country? Many European Countries you can not, in the US, you can.
Can you buy a copy Mein Kamf? Many Countries you can not, in the US, you can.
Can you buy anything that is printed? In the United Stated, bomb making books are printed and sold, legally.
Are your basic rights outlined in your constition? Freedom of Speech, Right to Assemble, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Religion are the basic foundations of this Country are protect by our Bill of Rights.

Europe and other countries can bash us for many reasons and in some areas are more free than we are, but in the Big Picture, we are more free than anyone else.

Re:Sad Future of Broadband Access in other countri

[iminplaya]

I know that with China being a communist nation...

China is NOT a communist nation. It is an authoritarian nation. Big difference there. In other words, The authorities are asserting their authority. Tell me something new. It happens all over the planet. We don't need to single them out. We use IP law to do precisely the same thing. It all depends on the spin that's put upon it. You can use censorship to protect property or one's power over others. It makes no difference. It's still censorship. Your entire post sounds a little like a 1950s propaganda piece.

Re:Can get much lower...

[Tony Hoyle]

They problably won't block anything else.. SIP and IAX2 aren't (usually) encrypted.

If Skype give the chinese government the encryption keys then I'm sure they'll be unblocked...

Never thought I'd say this

[Loconut1389]

I never thought I'd say this, but China's leaders need to keel over and die due to 'natural causes', with the help of a few allied governments' militaries.

I'm usually all for leaving other countries' governments alone, but I'm starting to feel like there's a certain threshold which you can stifle people's rights, and China is well past that and needs to be dismantled/reshaped.

Btw, I should note, that I don't feel like this solely due to Skype - I could care less about skype.. Watching a country try and make information and self-education disappear is both hillarious and saddening. It is hillarious because they will never succeed in the long run, it is saddening that they have succeded in general for now and succeeded in limiting so much other information.

Overreacting

[FRiC]

I think this is just overreaction by Reuter and other slashdotters. Internet based phone is incredibly common in China, you can buy "IP Phone cards" that work with any phone for ridiculously cheap prices. (100 RMB cards selling for 50 RMB, plus buy one get one free.)

Skype has always been somewhat blocked in China since they signed the agreement with tom.com. Sometimes buying credits directly from Skype.com doesn't work unless you're an existing user. Sometimes the entire skype.com site is blocked.

As for popularity, QQ has far more users and is known by even non-computer users...

What a joke

[piecewise]

It's unfortunate you seem to hold most dearly those values related to the Nazi revolution. Unfortunately, I don't like settling for that kind of freedom.

If I'm blocked from attending a town hall meeting put on by my President because I'm a Democrat, I'm not very free.

If elections can be decided by a court, I'm not very free.

If neoconservatives can threaten to impeach judges because they don't decide cases based on religious contrine, I'm not very free.

If big businesses can invest their money wisely enough to buy off a Congress, I'm not very free. (See the energy, telecommunications, defense, highway bills.)

If oil companies formerly run by our Vice President get no-bid contracts and take over Iraqi oil fields, I'm not very free.

If the government office in charge of investigating abuses of power (like those no-bid contracts) say they're "too busy" to investigate Cheney, despite having three times the case load when they approved a Clinton investigation, I'm not very free.

If my uncle down south, along with others, is asked to leave his church because he's a card-carrying Democrat, I'm not very free.

If wealthy people get billions of dollars and, as a result, we cripple state budgets and tens of thousands of people die because of a Hurricane, I'm not very free.

The truth is, honest to God, I'd trade in my copy of "My Struggle" if it reversed all those things. Freedom is in the eye of the beholder. The rich and the religious feel very free. In fact, they feel ENTITLED. But the truth is, there's a reason Norway is #1 on the UN's list of countries to live in and the U.S. is #37. I can't imagine Norwegians are screaming for liberty and freedoms. They're free, they go about their lives, and they do well.

The U.S. has turned a corner and is on a very dark path right now. If you don't see it - even just a glimpse of it - then you need to, because power tends to consolidate, and if past actions lend to future ambitions, we're in for big trouble as neocons continue gaining strength.

Your simple test is misguided. It's not about which party you can join. After all - Germany had a problem with Nazis and outlawed them. We spent a better part of the 20th century tearing to pieces Communists in our own. Even today, in the 21st century, many folks spend their time talking about "killing" (yes, hate speech) the liberals who ruin this country. They are perverse, sick, disgusting individuals who are so entrenched in a false system of values.

The true test of freedom is the consolidation of power. Is it centralized in the people in America? I would say less and less. Corporatism is the new threat - and the neocons (and even many Conservatives) are perfectly aligned to feed it. This threatens our values. These are not our American values -- hell, they're not even good Christian values, if you want to bring religion into it.

Love your country, Mullen. Just don't love it too much. The Constitution is a pitiful and weak thing -- it is not the protector of our great democracy.

We are.

Re:What a joke

[flabbergast]

Love your country, Mullen. Just don't love it too much. The Constitution is a pitiful and weak thing -- it is not the protector of our great democracy.
 
We are.

I wholeheartedly agree. And I agree with many things you've said: corporations and their bitches, aka lawyers, are consolidating power at an alarming rate and Americans don't do enough to protect our liberties. However, I have issues with your idea of freedom.

  If I'm blocked from attending a town hall meeting put on by my President because I'm a Democrat, I'm not very free.

If my uncle down south, along with others, is asked to leave his church because he's a card-carrying Democrat, I'm not very free.

Your idea of freedom seems misguided. You can flip it and look at it from the other point of view. If a congregation believes that a Democrat in their midst is a bad thing, then its their freedom to turn that person or persons away. Is that truly what God would want? Most decidedly not, but its their choice to do so. Likewise, banning someone from a town hall meeting because of their political persuasion is their choice as well. Is it politically savvy to do so? Probably not. Will it create anger and unrest? Yes. Does it infringe on your rights to attend that meeting?

If you always look from the perspective of how you were screwed of your freedom then any decision anyone makes is an infringment of your freedom. Get pulled over for speeding? Infringment of my freedom! Why? Because I'm obviously not free to speed.

If neoconservatives can threaten to impeach judges because they don't decide cases based on religious contrine, I'm not very free.

Sure you're free. Just as neocons are free to threaten to impeach judges for not voting along neocon lines, you're free to fight back if you disagree with them. Simply because you disagree with people doesn't mean your freedom is trampled on. You are guilty of what you imply: that we don't do enough to protect our freedoms.

Re:What a joke

[realityfighter]

I dunno...banning everyone who doesn't sign a loyalty oath from a meeting designed to give the people access to the President comes pretty close to trampling on the right to petition for redress of greivances. If he had been the challenging candidate, he may have been able to get away with it just being a matter of "political savvy." But he is the President. The questions brought up in that meeting, had it been a real meeting and not a groomed praise group, would have undoubtedly involved how the President had acted in his first term.

Every American has the right to have their criticism of the government heard by the government. Every American has the right to demand accountability. A President who locks himself away behind loyalty oaths, yes-men and closed doors comes frighteningly close to negating those rights.

Re:What a joke

[PsiPsiStar]

The problem is that as flawed and faulty as the Left might be, the Right is just as bad. Given free reign, the Right would slaughter any person which didn't agree with their political agenda. Just as the Nazis jailed and murdered their political enemies, we're hearing numerous calls to 'kill the liberals.' People didn't take Hitler's threats seriously either. Give the Right all the power they want and we'd be the Nazi party a la American actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the installation of Pinochet, and the propping up of dictators worldwide. If you truly believe that your enemies are 'traitors' as so many on the "right" have said, then why not? We'd see expanded interference in the governments of legitimate democracies as we have in the Ukraine and Japan, with our government doling out welfare and exemptions to industry and continuing to erode individual rights which interfere with the state's ability to wield power. Or, alternately, we'd have a Religious state which eliminated the teaching of evolution from public schools and any other scientific doctrine which contradicted the Bible as interpreted by a few fundamentalists. They would remake our nation according to their highly selective view of the bible, carefully editing out portions like Jesus' communal lifestyle.

Of course, if you take the most extreme elements of any movement as you've done, you're going to be able to paint a ghastly picture. The authoritarian "Right" despite their rhetoric to the contrary, is as interested in centralization of power as the authoritarian "Left" is. The Patriot Act is now permanent. Those with power will have the information to discredit their political opponents, just as the soviets did. It's just a matter of deciding to use any information that your party can get, as Herbert Hoover and Nixon did.

"The Right" makes itself look good by comparing itself favorably to Communism and trying to convince people that every Democrat is a Communist, or that every person on the left wants centralization of power. There are a few socialist Democrats (who I don't agree with) but the majority of Democrats are not socialist. And sure, you can run a radio talk show and selectively allow folks on the air (Rush Limbaugh's callers are more heavily screened than any other call-in show) or selectively discuss a person's view but that isn't honesty, however much it looks like it. Given enough material, I can selectively quote just about anyone to make them look like an idiot.

Bush has not been honest by any stretch of the imagination. He's claimed to be for tax cuts, while increasing government spending. You can't have both. Either ask people to sacrifice so we can have the best military in the world, or give up the dream of being a global superpower and cut taxes. One or the other. Go for the middle and you're a 'flip-flopper.' Bush decides what he wants, and then manipulates people to get it. Nobody in their right mind thought that Saddam was trying to get Uranium from Iraq.

Look at how he manipulated people to believe that Iraq was behind 9-11. Even if you support the war against Iraq, you have to admit that deceptive means were used to launch it.

Bush claimed he wanted to give more power to the states, yet "No Child Left Behind" is a mandate on the national level. Why does this bill have to be implemented at the national level as opposed to the state level? Why hasn't Bush even funded his own bill? If the funds don't exist to run NCLB, then scrap the attached mandates.

As governor of Texas, Bush claimed that a recount was preferable in the case of a close call, then tried to shut down the recount back in Florida, while simultaneously calling for recounts in New Mexico. His party (not him personally) has since set in place Diebold voting machines which don't even leave a paper trail. This is a stupid thing to do on purpose. If it's a mistake, it's readily solved. But it hasn't been. A mistake of this import should be fixed before the next election.

Putting aside the question of whether Bush could

Re:What a joke

[PsiPsiStar]

If big businesses can invest their money wisely enough to buy off a Congress, I'm not very free. (See the energy, telecommunications, defense, highway bills.)

I don't get it? You're complaining because the economic well-being of companies is debated by congress? I'm don't get it.

Power is, to some degree, like a zero sum game. Political donations influence elected officials.
The purchase of influence dilutes the influence of voters, and is hence anti-democratic.

Re:Sad Future of Broadband Access in other countri

[Detritus]

Don't ignore the fact that the USA's Department of Justice has the perverse idea that since an accident of technology (circuit-switched telephony) made it possible to monitor telephone calls, that situation should continue, regardless of changes in technology. They now view that capability as a "right", forcing others to build backdoors into their systems. It would be trivial to add strong link encryption, and end-to-end encryption for on-network calls, to modern cellular phone systems. Why don't we have it in the USA? Ask the FCC, DoJ and NSA.

Re:This is a problem?

[Thomas Shaddack]

Yes, this is a problem. There are people there who are affected, people like you and me. Help them today, and they will perhaps help you tomorrow when *your* corporation-government gets funny ideas.

Re:Communist 'cement-heads' always last to 'get it

[1u3hr]

we tend to forget that China is still under the political control of the Communist Party.

Well, true, but this story has nothing to do with that, it's just about good old robber-baron style capitalism, big companies who are well-connected with the government abusing the rights of consumers to protect their profits.

Party Line

[Doc Ruby]

What do you expect the telco to do, let people share the resources equally? Pay what they can afford, get what they need? What do you think they're running in China, communism? Er...

Re:Sad Future of Broadband Access in other countri

[DJCF]

You didn't see our country piling innocent arab-americans into prisons after 9/11??

Erm, yes I did.

In short, no, we don't go after commies anymore.

Oh, and yes , you do.

Re:Sad Future of Broadband Access in other countri

[Elrac]

I object to your simple-minded "simple test" for a country's freedom. piecewise offers a number of "if"s, of which I consider some much more relevant than the items of your simple test, and some less so. But I believe he missed out on a few important ones, which I would like to add. For conciseness, these tests are for non-freedom:

• Can your government to search your house without a warrant signed by a judge?
• Can your government to detain you indefinitely without access to a lawyer and a fair trial?
• Can your government force your librarian to secretly surrender their records about your book loans and public browser useage?
• Can your government extradite you to Syria/Pakistan for torturing?
• Can your government run a jail outside its borders to avoid being confined by its own constitution?
• Can your government order your death by execution/toxic gas/lethal injection?
• What percentage of your population is currently in jail? Is that percentage higher than in China?

Only SkypeOut is blocked

[hnjjz]

Only PC-to-Phone calls are blocked. PC-to-PC calls are not affected. Phone service is regulated in China with China Telecom and China Netcom being the only 2 companies licensed to provide fixed-line phone service. It's under this pretense that China Telecom is blocking Skype PC-to-Phone calls. This sort of tactics to block potential competitors is not really surprising. A few years ago, China Mobile and China Unicom (the 2 cellular phone service providers in China) tried to prevent China Telecom and China Netcom (the fixed-line phone service providers) from introducing a limited range wireless technology called "Little Smart" using the fact that they were the only officially licensed mobile phone providers.

Re:Sad Future of Broadband Access in other countri

[elyobelyob]

"Can you join a Nazi party in your Country? Many European Countries you can not, in the US, you can." Well, go and join Al Qaeda and see how long your freedom remains. I'd also suggest you read up on neo-nazism, there's still a few about in Europe. However, I'm quite happy that exterminating whole races of people is outlawed. Still, America are quite happy to do it themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazi