It's quite a bit easier to quash the dissidents, since those technologies would likely be forbidden in their countries, for whatever purpose, whereas here, the mere use of such a technology in an of itself doesn't constitute criminal behavior. So where it might help dissidents in oppressive regimes, it won't, and where it might help terrorists threaten democracies, it will, and really with very little positive in return for the vast majority of people whose calls are so mundane as to not be worth the extra processor cycles to apply Rijndael to their VoIP packets.
Just because it's illegal in those regimes doesn't mean the disidents won't use it, just being a dissident in those areas is usually illegal and that hasn't stopped them. Meanwhile with the encryption they'll have more secure communication methods that will help them.
That post makes no sense. It's estimated that over 100,000 Chinese use proxy bouncing daily to get around the Chinese internet filters. Iranians have also been using proxies like crazy since the Mullahs bought and implemented the filtering technology.
Simply put, if Zimmerman didn't develop this, someone else would have. (my bet it would have been programmers from the Baltics or Scandinavia.)
Plus, everyone should be happy that Ebay is going to take it in the shorts from the ridiculous price they paid for Skype.