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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.
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
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?
True, it is possible to evade most filtering systems. The basic proof-of-concept is an encrypted tunneling protocol, like OpenVPN, that can pass arbitrary IP traffic via UDP or TCP. You have to set up a remote server, outside of the filtered jurisdiction, to act as your gateway out, but it's not really that hard. It's similar to the idea of open proxies to get around the Great Firewall for web content, but it lets any layer 3 traffic pass (not just HTTP). In fact, OpenVPN even has a nifty method for encapsulating layer 2 (ethernet) inside of an encrypted UDP or TCP tunnel, so you can use non-routable protocols.
But most of these methods aren't commonly known to ordinary users, and they require some technical sophistication to set up. Then, you have the logistical difficulties of maintaining the remote servers and shuffling them around to avoid IP bans. A lone, tech savvy user can use these method for personal communications, or perhaps even support a small group of people, but stealing fire for the whole human race would require an active organization to keep things humming. At that point, you start to become a nice, fat target for the government to crack down on.
That's the problem with subversive activities: organizational capacity scales with org size, but so do the risks of operating.
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.)