Truemors
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?
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