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Yahoo May Be Facing Suit Over Chinese Journalist
WindBourne wrote to mention a story covered by Forbes, detailing a possible suit against Yahoo! as a result of their involvement in a Chinese Journalist's jailing. From the article: "Zhang Yu, representing the family of Shi Tao, said they were considering taking Yahoo Hong Kong Holdings to court either here or in the United States. 'We believe what (Yahoo) did was illegal so we are considering taking Yahoo to court,' Zhang told reporters, adding that Yahoo had refused to discuss the matter with him. "
That would serve as an example that hits those companies where it'll get their attention: in their wallets.
All of them claim they're in China because they have to be 'responsible' to their shareholders and make a profit; if the bad press from giving up names of 'dissidents' or other 'troublemakers' doesn't bother them, then the lost cash that results from lawsuits may convince them that morals and ethics aren't just abstract concepts.
All any of Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo! had to do was get creative about having trouble finding/retrieving the info the Chinese government was after, and delay it for as long as possible; surely they have some experience with that in dealing with the Chinese officials?
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
"...detailing a possible suit against Yahoo! as a result of their..."
"!" ends a sentence. A capital letter is necessary for the next sentence.
What if China only asked to see all of Yahoo's data so it could study how people looked at poolitically and sexually subversive sites in order to develop specifications for future filtering laws, and China then used that info to arrest dissidents. Could they still be sued for complying with China's laws?
It'd make for an interesting precedent either way, wouldn't it?
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
From the Chinese Constitution to 2004 here we have some selected excerpts.
(Try to imagine this being read aloud to you through a megaphone.)
Article 28 [Public Order] The State maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other criminal activities that endanger State security; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.
Article 40 [Correspondence] The freedom and privacy of correspondence of citizens of the People's Republic of China are protected by law. No organization or individual may, on any ground, infringe upon the freedom and privacy of citizens' correspondence except in cases where, to meet the needs of state security or of investigation into criminal offenses, public security or procuratorial organs are permitted to censor correspondence in accordance with procedures prescribed by law.
Article 41 [Freedom of Speech] (1) Citizens of the People's Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or functionary. Citizens have the right to make to relevant state organs complaints and charges against, or exposures of, any state organ or functionary for violation of the law or dereliction of duty; but fabrication or distortion of facts for the purpose of libel or frame-up is prohibited. (2) The state organ concerned must deal with complaints, charges or exposures made by citizens in a responsible manner after ascertaining the facts. No one may suppress such complaints, charges and exposure, or retaliate against the citizens making them. (3) Citizens who have suffered losses through infringement of their civic rights by any state organ or functionary have the right to compensation in accordance with the law.
Article 53 [Obedience to the Constitution] Citizens of the People's Republic of China must abide by the Constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property, and observe labor discipline and public order and respect social ethics.
Article 54 [Integrity of the Motherland] It is the duty of citizens of the People's Republic of China to safeguard the security, honor, and interests of the motherland; they must not commit acts detrimental to the security, honor and interests of the motherland.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
There's only one word I can say to celebrate this.
:)
Yahoo!!!!!!
It makes complete sense. Yahoo! is a US company, and as such is, or ought to be, bound by US law, under which the lawsuit is more likely to get a fair trial. Rather than China, where dissidents are treated in various ways, including (but not limited to) being run over with tanks. At least when the US government wants to jail dissidents without trial, it creates jails outside of the US to confine them in so that it can claim that it's actions aren't bound by US law... hmm, on second thought, you may be right, maybe they haven't thought this through.
I am going to take an extremely unpopular position here, just to try and give people some perspective.
;) This supercedes many concerns, as it is rooted in the 2000 year history.
The flamebait version is China's censorship is not a bad thing.
Now to explain.
China is a much different country than the United States (as an American I will be referring to the US exclusively, a lot applies to other free western nations). Our country was founded on the principles of individual liberties and freedom. 200 years ago we got a fresh start and set out to do things right, and for the most part its worked pretty well.
Now lets look at China. This country has a written history of over 2000 years. In the last hundred years China has seen more revolution and social change than the U.S. ever has, even if you include the American Revolution. In the 1910s China overthrew their last Dynasty. What resulted was 10-20 years of civil war between regional warlords. Then communism came along, sweeping the nation with promises of food for everybody. They were opposed with the Nationalist party. 20 more years of civil war and struggle until the Nationalist party was forced to flee to Taiwan. Mao Zedong became president but had to step aside because of the political atmosphere. When he regained power in the late 60s he completely changed the country. The often quoted figures of 30million people dying because of reforms, combined with the systematic distruction of everything that represented Old Chinese Culture make him evil in the eyes of many. Yet he accomplished a lot of good for the country, uniting the people and restructuring the land.
This is a very important point, one of the most important things in Chinese culture is unity of the country. (the South shall rise again!
Since the Cultural Revolution many many changes have occured. Gaige Kaifang, or the Openness Policy was set into motion, and every year China moves closer and closer to a capitalist economy (In some ways it is indistinguishable).
The point of talking about all the revolutions and societal change in the last hundred years is to understand that China is not stable. The people do not know where things are going, or if where they are going is truely a good thing (Like it or not, not everyone thinks us westerners are perfect).
That said we can take a look at demographics for further evidence that we cannot judge the Chinese like we judge ourselves. The country is home to over 1.3 Billion people, hundreds of millions of which do not live in the cities. These country folk have enough trouble with running water and food, let alone electricity to worry about Google or Yahoo.
The central government is very strong, and it does a lot to keep the infrastructure of China solid and the people fed. Furthermore, there are millions of people living in many cities. By the nature of cities ideas can spread very fast. The main concern of the government is stability, they dont want hundreds of thousands of protestors upsetting the core of the country because they want a luxury like democracy.
Now that last statement is quite inflamatory, but think about it. We can have polarized debates here, we can have peta and the NRA, but the general stability of our country insures that millions of people arent going to hit the streets because of some nut with a megaphone.
Now before you all call me facist, I truely believe in the freedom of information as the savior of this world. I believe what is going on is "not good" but I just want to illustrate that we cannot hold everyone to some of our standards and not others. When the Chinese have advanced their economy, and they are buying toys manufactured by American kids, perhaps then they will have all the wonderful freedoms you and I take for granted everyday.
Until then we can only do our part, get educated. Understand that you cannot change entire cultures by force. Lead by example, and help out the PEOPLE that need help. You may disagree with these highly pu
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
The central government is very strong, and it does a lot to keep the infrastructure of China solid and the people fed. Furthermore, there are millions of people living in many cities. By the nature of cities ideas can spread very fast. The main concern of the government is stability, they dont want hundreds of thousands of protestors upsetting the core of the country because they want a luxury like democracy.
Well the funny thing is that when these same inland Chineese move to Hong Kong, or to the United States where fredom isn't restricted as much, then why it it that they seem to have no problem adjusting to this "culturally disruptive" freedom in a matter of days? Sure HK is rich now, but it had almost nothing (but a huge amount of people and freedom) just after WW2. Was there chaos? sure, disorder? Sure - but it was mostle directed into productive activities because people had the freedoms to direct in into productive activities. It simply amazes me how many ways are there for people to say that rights are subjective and dependent on circumstances. It simply amazes me that when others judge by facts, history, and what is known to work that they are called closed minded or kneejerk - I think those would be more appropiate lables for the Chineese government. FYI, since people who are free are more efficient and more productive, what we should really be saying is that China can't afford the "luxury" of communisim.
There are an infinite number of nice sounding excuses to shit on peoples freedoms. We've herd them all before: how protestantisim would rip the western world apart. How free press had to be controlled to ensure order. How people need to be disarmed to stop violence. Like usual, they are all shit. If China really really needs stability, then what they really really need is democracy so that people can change government when it needs to change without a violent revolt.