IP Democracy: Skype Censors Content in China

Courtesy of Andy Abramson, this Financial Times piece about how Skype censors its text messages in China. Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom admits that Skype’s joint venture in the country, Tom Online, filters out words, such as Dalai Lama, that the Chinese government doesn’t like.

Zennstrom claims that Skype is just following the law in China, the same way it follows the law in the western countries in which it operates.

“Tom had implemented a text filter, which is what everyone else in that market is doing,” said Mr Zennström. “Those are the regulations.” He claimed that compliance with Chinese censorship was no different from obeying rules governing business in western countries. China, along with the US and Germany, is one of Skype’s three biggest markets in terms of active users of its free telephony service, which routes encrypted calls between computers via the internet.

Yeah, well, last I checked, the U.S. and Germany don’t lock up their journalists and throw away the key.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on April 19, 2006 9:00 AM to IP Democracy