[OTR-users] QQ is blocking OTR

[Ananda Samaddar]

On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:46:30 -0400
"Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> There is another type of goodwill involved here:  If MSN/Yahoo/AOL/etc
> started blocking OTR it would make them look a little more evil. It
> would cost them goodwill from the public. So doing so doesn't make
> economic sense.  If it ever does, then there is probably nothing we
> can reasonably do to stop them.

This sort of evil behaviour is already going on in the PRC.  Under the
pretence of supporting 'local laws' Yahoo has already turned over
e-mail of a Chinese dissident to the authorities.  He is now serving a
prison sentence.  Plus we probably all (should) know about the recent
Skype China controversies.  Although this only pertains to the PRC I
certainly wouldn't count out the possibility of this happening in other
countries.  After all I live in the UK, the most surveillance happy
nation on Earth it would seem, so you can forgive me for being a little
cynical.

> This is a good reason to support Jabber:  It doesn't depend on a
> single party controlled server.

100% agree.  The ultra paranoid can even run their own Jabber server now
that broadband has supplanted dial-up internet connections.
 
> I think that the only thing we can do in regard to this is to make
> sure that the OTR blocking doesn't cause a silent failure for the
> client and thus encourage people to think OTR doesn't work and
> deinstall it.

Definitely, OTR has worked for me on every major IM provider I use and
is a fantastic piece of software.  It does however give a silent error
when it doesn't work with QQ, see mine and Eliah's follow up posts on
the issue.

Ananda
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