Skype and the Freedom of Speech

Let me tell you an innocent story of three friends who wanted to hold a Skypecast. Skypecasts are Skype's version of telefonferencing. A theoretically unlimited number of people should be able to audio-conference on any topic.

Two friends and I thought that the Iran-Situation was getting somewhat imminent, so we felt the urge to invite guests to a conference through our web pages. About a week before March 25, 2007 we registered a Skypecast titled: "Die Iran-Situation" (the Iran Situation).

When we tried to enter the audio chatroom, none of us was admitted.

Well, OK, I thought, it is Sunday evening, and so Skype's servers may be at their bandwidth limit. So we held a private conference, and were not too worried.

For today, about an hour and a half ago, we had registered another chatroom under the same topic. We did not get access.

So I registered a chat under the title

Hully Gully Tralala

at Skypecasts.  It took us not three minutes to get access to this chatroo, plus around 20 other participants.

Next, I tried to register a Chatroom called

Politics and News

yet again, we were all refused access.

Of course, all of this could be just a regrettable coincidence. From my viewpoint it apparently begs some other questions which I do not address to Skype directly, since I think they are unprepared to handle them.

Instead, allow me to ask here:

• does Skype employ content filtering mechanisms by keyword?
• is there any restriction to the lawful freedom of speech in Skypecasts?
• if, so, what is Skype planning to guarantee a minimum level of freedom of speech?