Skype Sells Soul to China: Cost of Doing Business

Another one from the “How Do You Sleep at Night?” File: Skype has joined the growing list of companies that are more than happy to engage in censorship for China as long as it plumps up their bottom line. According to a piece in the Financial Times, Skype has admitted that Tom Online, its partner company in China, has been censoring text messages with words like “Falun Gong” (the banned religious group) and “Dalai Lama” in them. Says Niklas Zennström, Skypes’s CEO:

“I may like or not like the laws and regulations to operate businesses in the UK or Germany or the US, but if I do business there I choose to comply with those laws and regulations. I can try to lobby to change them, but I need to comply with them. China in that way is not different.”

Well DO let us know just as soon as you and Yahoo and Google and Microsoft start lobbying to change China’s laws and regulations and how you intend to do that while you’re pigging out in their tremendous trough.