The concept of "freedom of speech" is that the _govt_ can't stop you from speaking.
It does not mean that someone has to provide you with the soapbox or bullhorn from which to speak. When it comes to that, you're on your own.
My local convenience store and drugstore carry certain newspapers, but not all for my area. Does that mean they are _censoring_ the ones they don't sell? According to Vonage they are.
Likewise, my local convenience store carries its own brand of milk from its own dairy. I guess according to Vonage it should be required to carry every brand of milk offered in the area, but for some reason no one seems to care. People who want a specific brand of milk, cheese, or candy bar can go to any store they want to get it. Likewise, there are lots of ISPs, and if one chooses not to support VOIP, a customer can go find another one.
As somene else here pointed out, the VOIP industry had a big celebration when it was recently determined that they're not under regulation -- they don't have any of the burdens the traditional phone companies have which saves them a heck of a lot of money and aggravation. But now the VOIP people want to impose those very same regulations on others. Seems rather unfair to me.
Someone asked the telecom director of my employer while we don't "save money and use VOIP". The director replied emphatically that the Internet is NOT free -- having it requires routers and servers and networking and all of that comes at a cost. Adding VOIP on an enterprise-wide basis would add quite a load said installation and increase its cost.
Right now VOIP is a novelty, but if and when a lot of people start using it I suspect the bandwidth to carry all that chatter will be consequential and drive up ISP costs.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Lisa, see the two earlier messages in this issue on this topic (Jack Decker and Danny Burstein). It would appear the 'government' in the form of the FCC *did* get involved in this 'censorship' case, and after a friendly chat and a fine, the ISP had a change of attitude. And unlike at your place of employment, where someone else is paying the bill, here we have a public service where presumably the customers are paying the bill for the type of service they wish to receive. PAT]