Skype ignores users concerned about China censorship

Last week Skype's Jaanus Kase posted an interview with Kevin (surname not given) from Skype's new Chinese partner, Tom Online. It's a fairly lightweight and content-free interview for the most part (one question: "what's the weather like in China?"). The conversation makes no mention of the fact that Tom's chat censorship system is being used on the new Chinese Skype client marketed by Tom. Jaanus wrote a post last month defending Skype's censorship cave-in. I blogged about it and posted a comment, raising a number of questions. Jaanus has chosen to ignore me and a long thread of other commenters, including Chinese blog pioneer and businessman Isaac Mao who wrote:

As the long term skype user maybe one of the ealiest users(or ever fans) in China. I don't think the excuse from skype the company can stand.

First of all, I don't understand why Skype selected Tom as local partner. It's neither the best portal site nor even have fairly good tracking record to serve local internet users. From business view, I don't think Tom played good job to promote skype in China. Instead, blogosphere and prominent users played the role. They should be rewarded, not TOM.

Sencondly, Skype don't need neccessarily need Tom to operate business in China. Skype itself can do the job well since user s help skype spreading anywhere. I don't know or even can't image any government enforces a software to do text filtering unless they do self-policing first. Skype is misled by Tom, the useless partner. Basically Skype is different from Google or Yahoo online service, it's standalone software.

Geeks in China ever regard Skype as the hero to play important role to conduct secure communication. They are very disappointed now to see Skype join the evil business list. Sigh!

The cooperation is definitely reducing the reputation of Skype in this country. It will also pushing users away. Please re-consider the decision(cooperating with ToM and anti-freedom). I suppose Skype the company is becoming a responsible business, why not rethink it?

Jaanus, you can ignore me if you want, I'm just an American who spent a lot of my adult life and part of my childhood in China. What the heck do I know. But Isaac really knows what he is talking about, and he speaks for a large community of Chinese internet users. If I were an internet services company looking to do the right thing in the Chinese market and gain credibility and trust with Chinese users, I'd ignore him at my peril.

Got questions and views you'd like to share with Jaanus??  Head on over here and let him know. Maybe eventually he will see fit to stop ignoring us.

Comments

[Yusuf Goolamabbas]

Rebecca, I guess censorship is the cost of doing business with China. Take for example, Martin Varsavky from Fon (I think you are on their advisory board).

A few days after his recent China trip, he removed images of TankMan from this blog entry

http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/fon/branding-at-fon.html

[China Law Blog]

Very good point. Why didn't Skype go into China alone? I do not think there would have been anything stopping them from doing so, though I have to admit I am not positive about this. Do you know? Generally, with all but a few exceptions (telecon? isp?) nearly all businesses can go into China as a Wholly Foreign Owned Entity (WFOE) these days. Could Skype?

[Jaanus]

Rebecca -- thanks for all your comments and questions. I have not posted a followup on the comments because I don't have any new info to add to what's already been said. Skype has taken a decision to have TOM Online actively manage its business in China, thus you should be addressing these questions to TOM.

[TWAndrews]

Honestly, I'm willing to bet that Skype's decision proves to be the correct business decision, much damage though it may do to the cause of freedom in China.

Business have a long history of successfully co-existing with authoritarian regimes, and I'd be surprised if any attempt to do otherwise would bring any tangible gain to Skype, Google or the other companies who have bowed the the exigencies of doing business in China.

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

Thanks very much Jaanus. However, given that the censorship is happening under Skype's brand name, don't you think that Skype should be taking responsibility for how censorship of your tool is being carried out? Otherwise if you don't want to take responsibility for TOM's practices, shouldn't the tool just be called TOM in order that users are clear about which company truly has control over their conversations??

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

Yusuf, you make an astute observation. What Martin chooses to do on his personal blog is his own business and I have no comment. FON is neither a content nor a chat business - it's about sharing wifi signals - so the issues are different. I also don't think FON will be doing much in China on the commercial front for quite some time. That said, I have made it clear that I cannot remain on the advisory board of any company that censors user content or conversations in an untransparent, unnaccountable manner, or which exposes personal user data to Chinese authorities. So we'll see how things go. :)

[sam]

Jaanus does have a good point.

To ignore China would be a mistake and China doesn't things their way. Besides there are many easy ways around this problem. I did a post on it here: http://www.laowise.com/blog/view/10