Legal challenges of Skype
Like every patent product, especially one that deals in internet chat and software development, Skype has had its own share of problems, legally and politically. These challenges usually pinpoint on issues of monopoly of telecommunication and intellectual property. Of all the countries they have had problems with; the most recent are those which occurred in France, UAE, Oman, China, India and USA.
In September 2005, the French Ministry of Research, acting on advice from the general secretariat of national defense, issued an official disapproval of the use of Skype in public research and higher education; some services are interpreting this decision as an outright ban. The exact reasons for the decision were not given, but speculatively may relate to issues noted earlier, relating to inability to monitor the nature of information being communicated, possible extreme resource usage, or unknown potential actions of the software.
As for UAE, there was an outright block on Skype and SkypeOut with undisclosed reason. Most Skype users in UAE can not buy minutes from the site due to this block. It is suspected that the lone ISP provider, Etisalat, is behind the block since it has a monopoly of controlling the telecommunications there. Reasons seem to be both economical and political. The same seemed to be similar in Oman when the sultanate blocked access to the website and hence, the usage of SkypeOut in order to maintain the monopoly of Omantel [Oman's telecommunication company] over the telecommunications market. Reasons seemed to on issues of security and economy.
For a brief period, SkypeOut was blocked in some regions of mainland China (notably Shenzhen) by the operator China Telecom for undisclosed reasons; it has been speculated that this may relate to Skype Out's ability to take lucrative international and long-distance business away from the People's Republic of China's state-controlled telecommunications companies. Although Skype has been helping the Chinese government to maximize their policies, critics say they have no right to it. As for India, the main reasons lie in that Skype has evaded the normal revenue share required to be deposited by every telecommunication company, which Skype ot has happened to give a lee way for this since it is not an Indian ground account. When the government saw how much has been lost, a ban was placed. This and many more are the troubles they have faced so far.
