According to reports coming from Asia, the Skype protocol has been reverse engineered. The work was done in China, which, notorious for its lack of intellectual property protection, probably guarantees that it can’t be thwarted by legal means. The crackers are promising it will be available commercially by end of the month.
Interestingly enough, the hacked clients cannot act as supernodes. Effectively, they are freeloading on the PC super nodes out there. Impact? Still unknown, but the speculation is that this could slow down the Skype network.
One wonders how Ebay will respond. My opinion? The smartest thing now would be to publish the specs for the protocol, and attempt to retain control through attractively priced marketing campaigns.
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