Gossip

Niklas doesn't get a penny from eBay. Maybe it 'expired' before he could spend it?

A small voice from an anonymous - but furious - Skype user tells me that Niklas Zennström's "free Internet telephony" company has pinched twenty of his Euros. Ironic, isn't it? - this Skype user has something in common with Niklas himself. Fund Expiry.

The deal with most commercial companies is that you buy something; they give it to you, and bill you, and if you like it, you pay them. Well, this doesn't apply with Niklas. He sold Skype to eBay, but isn't getting any money.

And when you buy SkypeOut minutes from him, you pay in advance, but you only get the minutes you've paid for if he doesn't get impatient.

Here's how it works. You get Skype for making free Internet phone calls, it says. But you only get them free if the person you're calling has Skype, too. If they have an ordinary phone, you get charged. Real Money.

Most phone companies bill you in arrears. Skype, however, bills you in advance. You put money in the meter, and as you speak, the amount left runs down. And our angry user has discovered that it also runs down as you don't speak.

"I hadn't used more than ten of my thirty-Euro advance payment, and so I was somewhat irked to find that the remaining twenty had 'expired,' without being used," he snarled. He gave the Euros to Skype; Skype spent them; but now, they won't let him make the phone calls he paid for.

The irony is that Zennström, himself, is in a somewhat similar position. Word reaches your Sniffer from inside the Venture Capital bastions that he can't touch a penny of the up-front money paid by eBay to buy Skype. Why?

Because there are a thousand well-trained copyright lawyers in America just waiting for him to be worth suing over what they think he stole from him by running Kazaa, that's why.

So don't begrudge Niklas his thirty Euros. Why, he needs it more than you do!

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