Ethiopian Government Denies Banning Skype 42
An anonymous reader writes "Last week, we read that Ethiopia banned using VoIP. According to the head of Communication Affairs the draft bill aims to discourage illegal use of internet telephony, not any VoIP calls made PC-to-PC or PC-to-phone. He also indicated that the draft bill prevents illegal use of internet phone as some people are making international calls with domestic charge." The distinctions here seem finer than I'd like (“We have not adopted a legislation that prevents people from using internet."), since what's legal seems unduly arbitrary, and since the draconian punishment proposed still stands: "According to the draft bill, anyone who uses internet phone illegally is punishable by up to 15 years in prison."
Re:Department of redundancy department (Score:3, Insightful)
By what means will they prevent "illegal use of internet phone"? By making it illegal?
Logically making something illegal causes its illegal use, not prevents it. If we had no laws we would have no crime!
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ethiopia is like the US in many respects. Just like in the US, Ethiopia can have modern skyscrapers [nazret.com] and modern roads, and just like in the US, Ethiopia can have people that go hungry every night.
The only difference now is that if you're a journalist who's trying to call attention to the corruption and to the problems of the Ethiopian government by reaching out to the international community through the use of tools like Skype, you'll probably end up in prison for 15 years.