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Last updated: April 6, 2007 6:15:58 PM Pacific Time
News.Com: eBay to nab Skype for $2.6 billion. eBay CEO Meg Whitman told investors in a conference call that she hoped a power trio of eBay, Paypal and Skype would deliver an "unparalleled e-commerce and communications engine" by "removing a key point of friction between buyers and sellers." InfoWorld: Are eBay and Skype a good fit? Numerous industry experts are trying to answer that question after learning Thursday that eBay, the undisputed leader in online auction services, is reportedly in talks to acquire Skype Technologies, one of the world's largest providers of free VoIP services. eWEEK: Privacy Pioneer Promises Secure VOIP. Using the open-source, cross-platform softphone Shtoom and the Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol, Zimmermann has developed a session-based encryption tool that lets two users on a SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)-based VOIP connection verify each other's identity to avoid snooping. Wired News: Privacy Guru Locks Down VOIP. First there was PGP e-mail. Then there was PGPfone for modems. Now Phil Zimmermann, creator of the wildly popular Pretty Good Privacy e-mail encryption program, is debuting his new project, which he hopes will do for internet phone calls what PGP did for e-mail. First Monday: Emerging VOIP regulation in Europe and the United States. Both the EU and the United States have taken early steps to fit VOIP into existing regulatory classifications, a course that is more advanced and seems somewhat more orderly in the European case. Yet, politics has inevitably intruded, with important implications for the future course of VOIP deployment. News.Com: Yahoo to buy Net phone services company. Internet giant Yahoo has agreed to purchase Dialpad, a company that offers Internet telephony services, and expects to offer new voice services within the next few months, Yahoo said Tuesday. EE Times: Skype positions itself as 'enhancement' VoIP. The Europe-based firm is positioning itself as an "enhancement" service to existing telephone service and not as a "replacement" service. "We're an enhancement like fax," said Kelly Larabee, a Skype spokeswoman in the U.S. "You should know that Skype is not an emergency service." WIRED: Voice-Over-IP's Unlikely Hero. Lawrence Lessig. When he warned providers everywhere that their violation would incur his wrath, they said the threat was hollow. Powell proved them wrong. There was neither wavering nor further warning. There was simply enforcement of this pro-innovation principle. eWEEK: Skype CEO Takes on Telcos at CeBIT. He might have been wearing pinstripes and a button-down shirt, but he claimed that the current and future strategy of Skype will knock the financial legs off of any company that still thinks it can make money by charging for phone calls. eWEEK: FCC: Consumers Can Put End to VOIP Port Blocking. According to Carlisle, consumers are becoming more savvy about their broadband providers and will notice if services such as those provided by Vonage Holdings Corp. stop working. The industry is going through a "frontier period," Carlisle said, where corporations could press the limits of the law.
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