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China outlaws Skype. VOIP phone and messaging systems have been outlawed in China with the exception of the state-owned China Unicom and China Telecom.

This is a pattern in China, where the two birds of repression and protectionism nest in the same bush. The combination of eliminating competition and controlling discourse made this act inevitable.

We at ReadWriteWeb believe that innovation is a global business (as we noted in an earlier post on the Global Innovation Graph). The "death of distance" - the notion that the Internet makes location irrelevant - may be an exaggeration. Face to face always matters, and that will happen where hubs of expertise and capital emerge. Silicon Valley will likely remain the uber-hub for a long time. But the Internet does dramatically make it possible for an entrepreneur to start from anywhere and assemble a dream team of experts, partners, and customers from anywhere else. Innovation is not just a Valley story or a US story: it is a global story. And we want to write more about this exciting story. In this post, we'll tell you a bit about how we are starting to do that.

Google has disabled both uploads of videos and comments on the Korean version of YouTube after the South Korean government tried to enforce a new law which requires web sites with at least 100,000 users to verify the person's real name if they upload files or leave comments. The Cyber Defamation Law, as it's called, went into effect on April 1st. According to officials at the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, the law is an attempt to quell the cyber-bullying and spread of misinformation on the internet. However, critics say that it's just another example of the Lee Myung-bak government's overzealous efforts to monitor and control cyberspace.

Web 2.0 Asia is reporting that Me2Day - a Korean microblogging service likened to Twitter - has been acquired by Naver - the most popular search portal in Korea - for 2.2 billion Korean Won, which equates to roughly $2 million US.