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Yahoo Helps Jail Chinese Writer
An anonymous reader writes "Internet giant Yahoo has been accused of supplying information to China which led to the jailing of journalist Shi Tao for "divulging state secrets". "
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it's not the only faul of You! Know! Who!
Grammar Zealots: please spare a non-english writer (lastknight dot com)
Well?
I'm sick of the excuses:
- We're just following Chinese law
- If we don't comply, are the Chinese people better off without Yahoo/Google/Cisco/MS?
Haven't we learnt a thing?
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
I don't expect US corporations to impose US laws on foreign soil, but perhaps we can at least expect them to respect a basic set of human rights standards.
It's not acceptable that these US based coporations become collaborators in the persecution of dissidents in another country. It's not acceptable for them to concede to ridiculous demands of filtering workds like "Freedom" or "Taiwan". It's not acceptable at all.
If these corporations want to ignore these basic human rights standards, let them go and base their HQ in China instead. They're not doing anybody any favors by helping repress the Chinese people.
We were told that more trade and more interaction with China would bring greater freedom. We were lied to.
- sigs are for wimps.
From TFA: The companies say they have to abide by local regulations, and point out that since China is set to be the world's biggest internet market, they cannot ignore it.
Ahh.. so that's what it boils down to. "There is money to be made there. We have to bend over for their government and/or police, it's our fiduciary responsibility".
Fuck Yahoo. Helping send a person to jail for 10 years for a petty "crime"? I'm sure this will not be lost on the Chinese market, and there goes your "world's biggest Internet market".
This news has pretty much turned me against Yahoo!. I've been using Yahoo since the beginning when it was just someone's personal web site hosted at Stanford. My homepage in my browser is a "My Yahoo" page that I've customized and used since they offered customized pages. I've got a Yahoo email account going back to 1998.
And now I want out.
Can anyone provide some guidance on an easy way to export about 7 years worth of email out of Yahoo's system? I'm sticking with Google's customized homepage and my Gmail account from now on.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
But very few are ever particularly outraged when companies, based in the US, or Canada, or the UK, or some other country that pretend to love freedom and democracy enable these regiems, these dictatorships. That's called business nowadays, and I guess it's acceptable.
Is this the new deal? When do we stand up and boycott these companies in an effective way? Is it even possible anymore? Do enough people care?
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Here is one guy's opinion on Google and China and "local law". His point is they have a lot of choices -- not just to bend over for the dictators.
I really wonder what local law means in Burma and Somalia -- is it "do what the local mafia running stuff says?"
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
What a steaming pile of bullcrap! If the story had been that Yahoo! had complied with an investigation into a child molester in the US, then there would have been no story. Yahoo! was simply complying with the laws of a country that Yahoo! has operations in. Big deal.
Yahoo! is a publicly-traded company. Its shareholders want one thing: more money. For Yahoo! to pull out of the biggest growing economy in the world wold be suicide. If they want to operate in China, guess what? They have to abide by Chinese laws. Their only options if they don't are to follow the political process in China to change the laws or to pull out of China entirely. There is no special Most Favored Corporation status that magically protects Yahoo! and makes it so they don't have to follow the laws just because they're popular with a bunch of pimple-faced, 40 year old virgins.
You think China's bad, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Don't just sit here bitching about how someone else didn't.
They're not the same. What Yahoo! did may have been within their code of ethics, but it was certainly immoral.
Putting companies out of business that help imprison Chinese dissidents is 'doing something about it'.
Yahoo being a "publicly traded company" doesn't absolve them of being complicit with dictatorships.
I don't mind buying Chinese manufactured goods, unless they are made by, for example, prisoners who are being used as slave labor.
Do you honestly think Yahoo is an "American" corporation, or is IBM or Cisco? Hell no.
Yahoo has no allegience to any government and is following the laws of the country they are operating in. That is why no one understands the outsourcing argument. People seem to think that "American" corporation Levis sold out the US by moving all of its production to 3rd world sweatshops. Levis in fact sold out no one. Levis has no loyality to any government. Ford could easily build tanks for the US and then sell the same tanks to one of the US's enemies if it wishes.
Yahoo goal is to make money.
IBM's goal is to make money.
Cisco's goal is to make money.
They will gladly help law enforcement; regardless of country; to jail its citizens to achieve a higher bottom line.
No corporation is of any citizenship.
That's your reply?
Yahoo is a US based corporation, thus they need to avoide by our law. A case can be made against them if they're found helping violate human rights in another country, and I really hope someone makes that case.
Also we can start imposing new laws on these corporations of our own whenever they do this, after all they have to "abide by our laws".
And look, it's great that you're making the argument for more US corporations being able to freely and with no worry help suppress other populations. That's real progress!!!
- sigs are for wimps.
What bothers me about this is what China appears to be becoming -- this weird, totalitarian-corporate hybrid which Western businesses appear all too willing to support.
I can't help but think that corporations, which are almost always defined as anti-democratic entities, prefer a totalitarian government, since a totalitarian government allows for easy limitations on the things that drive corporations nutty -- labor rights, environmental regulations, consumer protections, and freedom of speech.
But it's the interest that gets you. Oh, you meant "principle"?
That's why we need assassination politics. A few well-placed deaths amongs the boards of the worst corporations would stop them from committing horrific crimes. The Shi case is not particularly bad, but things like United Fruit in Guatemala in the 50s, or Shell in Nigeria in the 90s, where companies hire government troops or mercenaries to kill off inconvenient peasants demand substantive action. Tobacco companies still kill a third of their customers, and they do it with impunity in most of the world. If the Reynold's family name were a death sentence, that would change quickly. Even the Shi case might merit the ultimate penalty, considering that it represents participation in the brutal campaign of mass-murder that is the Chinese government.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
What exactly is so out of the ordinary about this type of behavior? Whether it's Boeing handing over secret technology - paid for by the citizenry - and forbidden to leave the US by federal law; or the Clinton Administration handing over missile technology to China, or the Bush Administration allowing them to buy that manufacturer in Ohio for smart bomb technology, or..... We all get the picture, at least those of us with functioning brains.
Have you ever heard of people voicing their concerns regarding the path that has been taken by the current administration with regards to Human Rights in the USA?
There are quite a few people concerned that freedom is giving way to a police state in the US.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Yes, they did the "logical" thing. What bothers me, however, is that they are a company founded in the US with the majority of its company being here. Shit man.. even Jerry Yang is a Chinese-American who owes at least some of his success to an American education system (Stanford).
This bothers me because of the cross between politics and business. I understand "obeying the laws of the land" but there's a problem when it fundamentally conflicts with your own beliefs. For instance, in some cases it's illegal to kill your wife if she "dishonors" you/her/the family according to religious laws. If you were there, would you simply say, "hey, it's logical"?
I'm sure these are the risks of doing business in China, but it still bothers me. We shouldn't be bolstering governments that fundamentally go against values we built this country on, like freedom of the press. To simply say, "hey. it's a huge market, we can't avoid it" is pure negligence.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
More detail for you: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/2005/09/ 06/warning-yahoo-wont-protect-you/
Officials from the Changsha security bureau detained Shi near his home in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, on November 24, 2004, several months after he e-mailed notes detailing the propaganda ministry's instructions to the media about coverage of the anniversary of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square. Authorities confiscated his computer and other documents and warned his family to stay quiet about the matter.
On December 14, authorities issued a formal arrest order, charging Shi with "leaking state secrets." On April 27, 2005, the Changsha Intermediate People's Court found Shi guilty and sentenced him to a 10-year prison term.
I'm sorry, but what a shocker. China tosses a journalist in jail for 10 years for a mislabled "crime". Here is a picture of this Chinese James Bond http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/China25aug05na.html
It should be of no suprise to anyone that Tao's appeal was rejected without reason nor public hearing. As is correctly pointed out at http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884 does Yahoo! simply state they are just following a countries law? When do they have ANY ethical considerations? Can the law in China stipulate that child labor is lawfull and Yahoo could practice this under the same defense?
Yahoo is the ONLY American search engine that has agreed to self sensor it's search results. They have invested heavily in China and as a result bow to their every request. "Just follwing the law" is not a defense for Yahoo in my opinion. Self censoring your search results is one thing, cooperating with Chinese security officials to track down an IP address is another.
Here is Mr. Tao's verdict http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/Verdict_Shi_Tao.pdf
It all boils down to profit. Yahoo can be sued by a minority of their shareholders for not pursuing profit toward to utmost benefit of wealth for the shareholders. Here (www.lapres.net) is a link of the precedent that makes this happen.
So it all boils down to no profit in protecting dissidents compared against the torrent of profit from serving Chinese Internet users. This is a travesty, but I suggest a market opportunity...
We need to establish a speculative futures market for human rights violations, perhaps by geopolitical region. Things like genocide, curable disease infections and suppression of thought under totalitarian regimes can be assigned fair market values and traded amongst participants.
Maybe this (www.capitalistpig.com/) can help set it up. I dunno, just an idea. It seems imagination is the only thing that will save us. Sure has worked out for the greedy people!
Even though I have a login here, I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
I have a female friend in, well, let's say a middle eastern country well known for outrageous restrictions, who I met in a yahoo classical music chatroom; a wonderful person. In the course of our, well, getting to know each other, we noticed that her mailbox was being hacked, addresses she's never heard of were blocked, (emails from me were in there, too) and that someone else was logging into both of our accounts.
I reported this to yahoo for both of us, got the usual form letter...a couple of days later I was sent an automated request to rate the level of service - a ticket number was given. I sent an email to yahoo asking what had been happening, they sent me a form letter, from "Eugene", telling me that they don't discuss others' accounts with 3rd parties. After repeated requests, and nothing but form letters, and sound evidence of continued hacking, she finally went offline, quite frightened about the entire affair. We're on another messenger service, quite anonymous now, but she is definitely not the same person as before.
Yahoo would never give out the identity or i.p. number of the perpetrator(s), so God knows what those people at yahoo are doing...
God forgive them, it's not humanly possible for me to...
Mind you I'm being sarcastic here ... Google's policy is a total smoke screen, and Yahoo is simply showing us exactly what Google will do to us eventually...scary thing is that Yahoo likely stores less info on us than Google, yet they are willing to bend over backwards to a murderous regime....hmm, I think I feel a little "regime change" is in order...hehe
Yay for our Right to Privacy!!! (again, sarcasm)
Yahoo needs to ask themselves whether they will support freedom and democracy or side with thugs. I wonder what kind of spying yahoo has been doing for the US gov?