Blogger with questions about skype use in terms and conditions |
Skype has passed the one million download mark!
Bill Kearney is looking for some clarification of the Skype Terms of Service regarding the P2P technology use on the local user’s machine: Just what utilization are they talking about here? Are they talking about plain p2p exchange where you computer helps the Skype traffic along, in a p2p fashion? If so, that’s fine. But are they instead talking about using your computer to do other proccessing work not related to voice traffic? That’s what other p2p efforts have tried before, hijacking the use of your computer to do something entirely unrelated; often in a way that slows your computer down.
It is kind of unfortunate that some bloggers don’t have comments enabled so people can respond directly to them. Fortunately, he does allow trackbacking so I’ll trackback this entry to his entry. Also unfortunate, that Mr. Kearney didn’t do a wee bit more research on Skype and he would have seen the new Skype BBS where he could ask for clarification on the terms of service directly — or link to his blog entry to get further clarification. (Note to Andreas: you folks might want to make that forum link more obvious on the Skype home page)
Andreas Sjolund skyped me in the wee hours yesterday morning (wee hours, his time, in Sweden, late afternoon Friday my time) and he was very forthcoming with information about Skype that has been the source of much speculation. Bill Kearney does moderation for Jeff Barr’s excellent syndic8. So, Bill, if you read this, just skype Andreas and ask him for clarification — or maybe Andreas will have time to respond here in this blog in the comments so you can get your answer? He does read this blog, as evidence by his comment here, and here, which, BTW, I addressed your UI question).
I asked Andreas a number of questions about Skype that I was curious about and he answered them all openly and honestly, as best as I could tell. One of the senior developers, Jaan, contacted me during the Script School radio show last week (show #160). So, from my perspective these guys are accessible and willing to make clear what their intentions are.
Did this post make you go hmm?
(Hmm, no ratings yet)
Loading ...Maybe Related Posts (plugin generated)
- Skype version 0.95: add your own custom ringtones
- Couldn’t login to new Share Skype
- Skype VoIP adds conference calling
- Skype illegal in South Africa?
- My proposed Skype record user interface (UI)
- Blog comment spam and SE impact: is it that significant?
Forum promotion: plan is to beautify it a bit and then incorporate better to site.
Hijacking: nope! Put simply, all Skype users participate to help users find eachother and route calls (always encrypted). With all end users supporting the network in this way, we can avoid costs associated with centralization and this is how we can keep PC-to-PC calls free for everyone as we scale. See my post here for economic reasoning behind this. http://80.160.91.13/bb/viewtopic.php?t=67
Comment by Andreas — October 5, 2003 @ 6:18 pm PST
Before you go off insulting people on their research and operation of comment systems do a little research of your own. Comment spam has run amok on several weblogs, one of which being mine. Until I get moderated comments up and running I’ve suspended use of them. So please, it’s bad enough trying to clean up from the spammers without getting hassled by you.
As for clarifications, the TOS on many p2p services have equally weak clarifications. And as a result the liberties they’ve taken with machine resources has been an area of much concern. To expect a vendor to clarify this at this stage of the game is perhaps a bit less than realistic, let alone believable. What /developers/ intentions are during beta test is often not what /management and marketing/ actually put into place. Especially as investor pressure starts ratcheting up.
p2p technology has incredible potential. Unfortunately efforts like kazaa have made a less than favorable impression. Guilt by association may be unfair but it’s all too often found to be correct. From what I’ve seen thus far, Skype looks like to be an excellent idea. If it can do this without succumbing to the ills promulgated by other p2p systems then it’s got great potential. But if it’s going to end up being another hook-you and screw-you app then it’s a complete non-starter.
The point here is for users to be /aware/ of the ills behind abuse of these technologies. It’s with that awareness that they can make informed demands from the vendors. This instead of being led down the path like lambs to slaughter.
Comment by Bill Kearney — October 5, 2003 @ 7:12 pm PST