Skype weighs in on Clinton's response to China Internet freedom
Skype wasn't a target of the recent attack on Google and thirty other companies. Google is considering leaving China, where they believe the attacks originated. The United States government has not adopted a position until today's speech by Hilary Clinton on Internet Freedom. Here is Skype's official response to the Secretary's speech. I'll comment below.
SKYPE LAUDS U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT FOR PROTECTING INTERNET’S FREEDOM TO CONNECT PEOPLE ACROSS BORDERS
WASHINGTON, January 21, 2010 – Skype, the global internet communications company whose mission is to enable the world’s conversations, applauds Secretary Clinton, her senior adviser for innovation, Alec Ross, the State Department and the U.S. government for embracing and defending the principles of freedom of expression, privacy, and the freedom to connect to the Internet, as well as for their use of Web 2.0 tools for 21st century statesmanship.
“Conducting international relations by encouraging online interaction is an example of the Internet’s power to change the way governments and people around the world engage as part of one global community,” said Staci Pies, Skype’s Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs. “Secretary Clinton’s concerted effort to transform the State Department’s role from traditional ‘government-to-government diplomacy’ to ‘people-to-people diplomacy’ is a clear recognition that more and more people around the globe are turning to technologies like Skype to freely connect with one another across borders and to increasingly facilitate diplomacy, interaction and understanding.”
It seems State heard Rebecca MacKinnon's guidance on how not to save the Internet by focusing on human rights to connect. How will these high minded aspirations become policy? Can we expect tariffs on goods from censoring countries? "This product made by people with a censored Internet" product labels?
tags: skype, clinton, china, freedomtoconnect, freedom, freespeech, us, usa
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2 Comments:
Here is a good NY Times piece about the solutions people use to bypass the great firewall of China in order to used service that are blocked there (such as Skype in some cases) : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/16/technology/internet/16vpn.html?pagewanted=all
Our service https://ConnectionVPN.com/ is quoted in the article.
Wow, Hillary, you go, girl. (And here I thought it was the intention of the Obama administration to turn over control of the Internet to the UN.) She sounds like the Hillary of old who used to lecture the world about women’s and children’s rights. You are correct that there’s no bite behind the bark, nonetheless, it’s good to hear her state so emphatically what I hope is the administration’s position.
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