The Meaning of Free Speech

The acquisition by eBay of Skype is a helpful reminder to the world’s trillion-dollar telecoms industry that all phone calls will eventually be free.

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype, which distributes software that lets people make free calls from their computers to other Skype users anywhere in the world, don’t usually travel to America. Legally, they probably could. But they prefer to avoid that jurisdiction, since they also founded (and subsequently sold) KaZaA, a peer-to-peer software company whose product many people use to share copyrighted songs. So setting foot in America could invite some legal trouble. This does not mean, however, that they cannot appear at conferences in Silicon Valley, where Skype — which uses the same basic idea of KaZaA, but applies it mainly to voice communication — is considered the next big thing.

Thus, in July, Zennstrom appeared, via a Skype video call, on the screen of a packed auditorium at Stanford University, while sitting in Estonia next to Tim Draper, a venture capitalist who invested $10 million in Skype. Draper is the ultimate loud American, whereas Zennstrom is a somber Swede. "He’s already taken down one industry and he’s on to the next one," hollered Draper — referring to recording studios and telecom companies. Zennstrom started shifting uncomfortably. "I never wanna sell my stock until it’s a hundred billion," Draper yelled, then started singing and dancing. The blushing Zennstrom was speechless.

Full Story: http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/4418702?f=AlsoOn092305