[governance] RE: Licensing Dispute Threatens Future of Skype

[Michael Gurstein]

Avri,

(more musings on a sunny summer morning...

I think that "too big to fail" actually refers to the failure being one that
brings the entire system down... Which means in this instance I guess that
the needs of the rich and the others may be so intertwined that a failure
this massive would affect everyone (which in the case of Skype may be true
since the rich have kids travelling internationally, servants using Skype to
maintain family ties that might otherwise be put in jeapordy with
unpredictable consequences, low cost producers of sub-assemblies in LDC's
etc.etc.  Hard to know... 

(and my experience and the experience of a bunch of folks that I know with
SIP was similar to yours...

(Part of the attraction of Skype is its ease and transparency of use...

But then there is still the larger question of regulation for "essential
services" in the electronic age

Note: 
After the United States entered World War I in 1917, the country's railways
proved inadequate to the task of supplying the nation's war effort. On
December 26, 1917, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson nationalized most American
railways under the Federal Possession and Control Act, creating the United
States Railroad Administration (USRA), which took control of the railways on
December 28, 1917. The USRA introduced several reforms to increase
efficiency and reduce costs, including standardizing rolling stock and steam
locomotive designs. The war ended in 1918, and on March 1, 1920, the
railways were handed back to their original owners.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_nationalization#United_States

So what would be the equivalent and the equivalent legislative structure in
the age of the Internet--Maybe Skype is just the Western Pacific (or
Canadian Pacific) of our era...

MBG

-----Original Message-----
From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri at acm.org] 
Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 8:39 AM
To: Governance/IGC
Subject: Re: [governance] RE: Licensing Dispute Threatens Future of Skype



On 1 Aug 2009, at 17:06, Michael Gurstein wrote:

> Hmmm.. Maybe it is too big to fail...


my guess is that the incumbent telecom providers would love to see it  
fail.  plus 'too big to fail' just mean that rich people will feel  
some pain if it fails,  has nothing to do with the needs of LDCs, NGOs.

one thought, since Zennstrom et al, still hold the license on the core  
piece of technology, can't we assume that if they can't get sufficient  
compensation from eBay, they will either come out with a new offering  
themselves or find someone else to license it and put out a new  
offering?

what is sad is that no one really believes that eBay can get it to  
work with VoIP.

a.

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