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Verso Trials Skype Blocking in China
An anonymous reader writes to tell us MacWorld is reporting that Verso, a US company based in Atlanta, GA, has just begun a paid trial for 'NetSpective'. Verso hopes to use NetSpective, and M-Class filter to block VoIP calls made using Skype in China. From the article: "While Verso said in its release that the use of Skype is illegal in China, the situation is more nuanced. Chinese government officials have been generally tolerant of VoIP software, such as Skype, that is used to make calls from one PC to another. But the ability of Skype users to make calls to a phone via the SkypeOut service is more sensitive, because this directly affects the revenue that operators such as China Telecom earn from international phone calls." This seems to be just another in the continuing campaign of China vs VoIP.
So let me get this straight...
It's perfectly OK for everyone in China to blatantly pirate information, but all hell breaks loose when you try and make a VoIP phone call overseas from there.
You'd think they'd want information to be free or something, but I guess that everything just cuts one way with these guys.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
They currently earn NZ$900m profit per year out of a total NZ population base of approximately 4 million people, so any method to 'enhance shareholder value' (ie screw everybody else) is eagerly investigated. They plan(ned) to cripple VoIP via interleaving methods.
Blocking VoIP is hopeless. If they try to block computer to international phones, then Skype can set up servers in the US that take the computer to computer call and re-route it here, making a computer to computer call from China to the US indistingushable from a computer to US phone call. If they try to block all Skype calls, then Skype can just change its software enough to make it unrecognizable to the filter. If everyone just goes online and downloads the new version every week...
Basically, the Internet by definition is a lot harder to regulate than any other communication medium.
There's got to be a simple change to the Skype protocol that will make it hard to detect and block. Randomizing ports, for example. If The Man can sniff out what Skype traffic looks like, encrypt it or create some mechanism that would generate random number "noise" to throw off the detection. That's about all I can come up with. Other than politics and laws, what methods could Skype do to make it difficult to be controlled?
Say that again: encryption. China.
Of course, using encrypted protocols is not only filtered (if it can be spotted), but also severely punished. I'm not talking about just a fine here -- you would be facing a prison term, or, if you try to start a group that spreads this knowledge, even a death penalty.
In Poland, in the 50s, my grandfather's bro was taken to a police station and this was the last time we heard of him -- all because he unknowingly walked near a place where an illegal printer was. China is about on this level now.
Believe me or not, but totalitarian states worse than the US still do exist.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Will the power balance ever change.. is it possible for someone with a motivation to assist society in general to make it into a powerful position?
Yes. It's happened many times. And in pretty much every case, the results have been disastrous and bloody beyond all imagination.
May the gods protect us from those who would "assist society".
I used to work at a school, and we had to filter. Moreover, we had to spend money on it, so no DansGuardian on Squid. Verso's Netspective looked interesting, it would block p2p services by spoofing an RST packet. It would spoof an "image blocked" jpg, png, gif, etc. based on the ability to beat the internet's traffic back to the site.
The matter isn't quite so cut and dried. There are free presses in China but the government has firm control over the mass media. You can criticize the government, but you have to be POLITE. The problem is more that laws are weak and families are strong. If you piss off a powerful family, they can retaliate against you. This isn't totalitarianism per se, though it has most of the negatives of totalitariansm. It's more anarchic or oligarchic than, say, Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy. Of course those seen as embarassing China (by spreading accurate information on the spread of infectious diseases) often manage to piss off the boys in Beijing.
China has been changing a lot in terms of freedom of association. People are now allowed to sleep together even if they aren't married. New rule! Heh.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.