Comments on: Hey travelers, who owns your Internet phone call? Hint: it may not be you

By: Caitlin

Caitlin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:53:06 +0000

What about Google Voice?

By: Nobody

Nobody — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:27:36 +0000

Sooooo….
Some underage highschooler Skypes herself in the nude to her boyfriend, Skype Management goes to jail for OWNING child pornography? If a lawyer can represent a man who claimed the child pornography on his PC was downloaded by his CAT, I guess we can see how this plays out on a future episode of “Law and Order”, the final say in judgement in any locale.

Here lies the ACLU lawyer
killed in the crowd at the scene
by the backup of
the ambulance he was chasing

RIP

Nobody was faster

By: Travel News and Stories for 09/16/2009 : Kathika Travel Website

Travel News and Stories for 09/16/2009 : Kathika Travel Website — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:43:22 +0000

[...] Hey travelers, who owns your Internet phone call? Hint: it may not be you Internet-based telephony services like Skype and Google Voice are a lifesaver for travelers, who can make reliable and inexpensive voice and video calls from almost anywhere on the planet. But who actually owns the data from these calls? http://www.elliott.org [...]

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:31:15 +0000

The traditional telephone companies in the US operate under under “common carrier” status. That means they provide service to the general public without discrimination for the “public convenience and necessity”.

As I understand it, as common carriers, traditional phone companies also aren’t allowed to snoop on or otherwise use the contents of phone calls for their own purposes. (Wiretaps by the government under a search warrant aren’t for the phone company’s purposes.) In return, they are indemnified against liability for the contents of phone calls. For instance, if a couple of gangsters organize a murder over the telephone, the phone company won’t be held as an accessory.

I’m not a lawyer, but it sounds to me like Skype has just taken themselves out of “common carrier” status with that EULA change, and can now be held liable for the contents of Skype conversations. I doubt that was what they intended. It will be interesting if/when this is tested in court.

By: Jasper

Jasper — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:27:09 +0000

In several European countries, you have a constitutional right to ‘the secrecy of correspondence’. Recently (last decade) it was updated to include electronic communication. This is a strong right. Employers do not have the right to read the e-mails from their employees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence

By: Ames

Ames — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:22:49 +0000

I think that unless one is having a private conversation between only two people in a sound proof, bug free, windowless location one must expect that some content or photo can make its way onto the internet. And this level of privacy is possible only if you also trust the person with whom you are speaking not to publish it.

By: David Z

David Z — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:41:18 +0000

Last I checked with some U.S. lawyers on this, whatever “stuff” you “put” or “give” to a service provider becomes “their” data. Or at least that’s something one ought to expect when using such, although obviously lots of people don’t like that line of thought.

OTOH, I’ve read of online forums’ legal agreements or Terms Of Use saying to the effect you give them a “a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable licence” to your posts also when in their forums. Or another way is you still own that “data”, but you’re giving the service provider “permission” to use them as they see fit.

I gather that’s still being debated, especially in court, although (again) some lawyers hold that view. It remains to be seen.

By: Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:29:25 +0000

Hopefully they do tighten up the language to protect us from privacy issues, but as it stands in the EULA right now, we do technically own our media in Skype, because the language in the EULA isn’t expressly giving away our copyright to Skype–it’s only giving Skype a “no holds barred” license to use our content however it wants. Obviously since we have no say in our EULAs, the language defaults the broadest license possible. (Still scary, of course.)