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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.
every time you use skype to subvert the rule of your oppresive government, god kills a kitten.
If these filters really work, wouldn't US carriers love to have them? Especially if there will be no enforcement of carrier neutrality? You get to use your network AND block activities that reduce your revenue in other wings of the business...
Hyperom.com
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.
A lot of us became techies or engineers or what-not in the interests of making the world a better place for all. And we are constantly thwarted and bombarded by people with "business" or "political" sense.. (ie people with almost purely selfish and short-sighted motivations).
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?
There is a Central American country that also has made VoIP illegal because of their interest in the state run/owned TelCo. I'm not certain if they have implemented anything other then laws around its use in country, but China is not the first to do this.
I wanna say the country is Panama, but I'm really not sure. Based on http://www.google.com.au/search?q=panama+voip+ille gal&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls =org.mozilla:en-US:official">Google it seems it's Costa Rica, but my point is there are probably a handful of countries doing this already. This by no means makes it ok, of course!
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
For every glimmer of hope there seems to be a million more setbacks.
I only wish there was something I could do to stop companies doing this, but the nature of a free market doesn't allow for intervention really..
One the one hand, they have become a fairly rich country similar to where America was in 1940's-50s. They also believe that they belong in the international trading world. Cool. But, here they are blocking a service because it may (most likely will) compete with their established companies. So, even though they are one of the few countries with large positive growth (8-12% annual), and yet, they block on one of the few competitive groups. Total BS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Back in the "days" when you didnt like the policy of a country, that country would get sanctioned.
I think countries should get "sanctioned" for censorship and abuse over the internet. The internet is ment to be the saviour, the free voice, the alternative.
If it was in my power I would block all telephone calls from china, if they are scared to lose revenue from skype then they shouldnt get any revenue.
Yeah, not going to happen and I am dreaming, but this is really a shocker. I live in South Africa where the cost of telecommunication is the highest in the world.
It is cheaper for me to fly to hong-kong and download 100gigs then it is to download from south africa (And faster I may add). We had all VOIP illegal until 2 years ago. Now we can use VOIP freely but with only 1 telecommunication provider in our country there revenue model is simply moving from phone charges to data charges.
But yeah, blocking skype out is ridiculous!
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?
What's the difference between companies like Verso, Yahoo, Cisco and Google which help the Chinese Communists oppress people, and the oil companies, industrial giants, and weapons manufacturers that have supported tyrants in exhange for access to their markets?
How many innocent people are in jail, or worse, because of their help? How much more free would the Chinese people be, and how much weaker would the Communist grip on power be, if it wasn't for the assistance of these tech companies? "Don't be evil"? -- How impressive and bold that they support free software, but not freedom (as in speech) for human beings.
It's easy for me to say; I don't have to take the risk. These companies certainly have a difficult dilemma and have other responsibilities to shareholders and employees. In their position, everyone wants to say, 'I just want to keep my head down and mind my own business'. Taking sides is a risky, costly, sometimes wasted (if Cisco doesn't provide firewalls, someone else will) and often unappreciated sacrifice.
But I think that with their power comes responsibility, and their freedom is due to the sacrifices of those who came before them. I would think Jerry Yang (Yahoo founder, born in Taiwan) and Sergey Brin (Google founder, born under Communist rule in the then USSR) would be especially sensitive to this issue.
(In fairness, I only have heard second hand what Google, Yahoo and Cicso do in China. Verso seems to proudly advertise their support for the Chinese Communists. And this publicity is probably helping their share price.)
Hell has a special corner for people like you. /hates puns
How exactly is developing a superior product that challenges an existing company nuanced?
Sounds like the same old story we've been seing since the start of the WWW. Disruptive technology enters, large comfortable companies start bribeing gov't officials to protect their jobs.
Nuanced... yet another over used word, that should be shot, burried, and layed to rest next to the Macaraena and "Thousand Points of Light".
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Thank God for Freedom of Spe-
*beating noises*
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
This all adds up to the fact that China can do whatever it wants to do and the US Government won't say a thing. And US companies will do whatever makes them money unless the US Government legislates, which they won't do. See point 1.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Right now, if you are a broadband subscriber, most likely your provider already filters stuff like inbound SMTP, partial outbound SMTP traffic and the like. And you all accept it. And almost all ISP's do it, so you are almost left no choice. Or did you base your provider decision on its filtering policy? If you permit SMTP filtering, then your ISP can choose to filter anything they want later. The choice to allow SMTP filtering on your ISP is the choice to not pay for complete IP connectivity, but for a crippled and filtered one.
The only difference with Skype in China is, that the filtering entity is the government and people do not have a choice to switch the carrier. But then, do you have the choice?
That said, right now Skype still works well and I call daily to Shanghai, as well as using SkypeOut to China, but who knows how long it will remain so...
It's not really about free speech here. It's just the chinese goverment protecting it's profits.
Well.. guess that's why the corporations seem to get so well along with these guys.
At this rate, Communist China is going to be one of the most devoutly Capitalist countries in no time. And here I thought the term "Communism" couldn't become more corrupted, being applied for decades (hell, nearly a century now) to corrupt oppresive regimes serving only themselves with no regard for any of the humanistic principles that Marx stood for . . . then we get a corrupt, opressive regime that manages to implement capitalism on top of all that counter-Marxism, and they still spout the hollow propaganda!
Wow. What a two-faced world we live in . . .
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
1) Start a company in a country founded on the principles of freedom of speech.
2) Develop technology to block legitimate use of software.
3) Sell to a government eager to control its people, using the vague pretense of trying to protect a different company's interests to legitimise the transaction. It helps if you ignore item 1) here.
4) Profit!
What i find really intresting is that every now and then China is mentioned on ./, often followed by a massive amount of "OMG they are suppressing freedom of speech and silencing people", people are really bothered by Chinas oppressive behaviour, and quite frankly for a good reason.
But compare it to the our workplaces, i mean, many workplaces has a communication policy, and in many cases it's just as suppressive and undemocratic as Chinas behaviour with the exception that we dont get jailed.
Then there's this "if you dont like it, get a new job" thing, which is supposed to indicate freedom of choice, but if you've got kids and bills to pay, thats not a choice.
So many of us are effectivly only having at best 2/3 of a democratic and free day, the remaining 1/3 of the day (if not more, due to overtime), is spent in a corporate dictatorship.
Dont believe me? try questioning things at work, you'll soon see where the invisible glass walls are.
Whats even worse is that it's cutting into companies profits, how many times have YOU thought about a procedure, a routine or some way things work, and thought up a better way to do it, more efficient, and just kept that to yourself because you didn't wanna pee in a hornets nest?
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.