Do you Yahoo? Errr, no, but should you choose to do so in the near future bear in mind that the US portal will waste no time in putting in a quick shout out to the Chinese authorities.
Information supplied by Yahoo! helped put Chinese journalist Shi Tao away for 10 years.
According to Reporters without Borders Tao Yahoo! provided China's state security authorities with details that helped to identify and convict him.
"We already knew that Yahoo! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well," the press freedom organisation said.
Tao worked for the daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News). He was convicted of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal message which the authorities had sent to his newspaper warning journalists of the dangers of social destabilisation and risks resulting from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre. Chinese state security insisted during the trial that the message was "Jue Mi" (top secret).
Oh why send it out?
While this particular case is one that concerns press freedom, it raises wider issues about the lengths that Western companies, not just media companies, are willing to go to in order to satisfy the regime in Beijing to gain access to the lucrative Chinese market.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
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Beat me to it Gord... as the article also points out Yahoo are simply following a trail already blazed by Microsoft... Marx of course would be far from surprised...
Funny isn't it how our leaders (and ourselves) worry about the Chinese bra mountain (see post below) and seem to forget that we're dealing with a dictatorship.
Putin, I'm sure, has taken note.
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