Skype Shuts Down Top Skype Blogger

Skype, Skype, Skype. I guess getting bought by eBay for billions of dollars made them stupid. They just shut down a top Skype blogger just because he happened to have the word “Skype” in his domain names.

Skype lawyer Seema Sharma emailed blogger Jan Geirnaert Friday afternoon. She told him his popular skype-watch.com and skype-gadgets.com blogs put him in legal jeopardy.

Jan, an independent IT consultant, took the implied threats seriously. He promptly blacked out skype-watch, abandoning two years of intense daily news coverage, product reviews, and wry commentary.

[Sharma] didn’t consult with Skype’s PR or marketing communications team before composing her email. If Sharma had, Sharma might have learned Jan’s been:

• working on distribution and marketing for dozens of major Skype-affiliated companies, nurturing Skype’s ecosystem.
• briefing business and government technology executives on Skype’s effect on management, IT, telecom and economic policy.
• covering Skype-related news and issues at international conferences in Europe and Asia, creating unique editorial content.
• contributing to Skype Journal.
• advocating Skype passionately, online and off.

No more.

For a business built on P2P technology, they sure don’t get P2P marketing. In IT as in everything else, we really should kill all the lawyers. Except, of course, the cool ones who promote customer evangelism. The rest are just the corporate attack dogs of clueless suits.