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Yahoo Defends Itself On China Allegations

Posted by Zonk on Fri May 12, 2006 04:38 PM
from the good-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder dept.
Businesses The Internet Yahoo! Government Politics
Vitaly Friedman writes "Yahoo defends its policies in China as doing more good than harm, even as multiple dissidents have been jailed based on Yahoo Mail evidence. From the article: 'Yahoo continues to defend itself against charges that its Chinese operations have been responsible for the jailing of multiple dissidents. Multiple reports have surfaced which tie Yahoo Mail to various Chinese court cases that have ended in imprisonment for writers with politically unpopular opinions.'"
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  • Anyone want to buy a bridge? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Distinguished Hero (618385) on Friday May 12 2006, @04:44PM (#15321603) Homepage
    "Yahoo defends its policies in China as doing more good than harm, even as multiple dissidents have been jailed based on Yahoo Mail evidence."

    Only a Yahoo would believe such a claim. In related news, has anyone read Gulliver's Travels? I take it the people who chose the name for the company didn't.
    • Pretty lame article. There's all of one line of "Yahoo defending itself." The rest is just rehash of stuff we've heard for months. Here's the Yahoo line:

      "You have to get whatever news you possibly can into China as opposed to pulling back," he said. "Will they be edited? Yes. Should you go home? No."

      There, now you don't have to waste your time reading this so-called "article."
      I've seen blog entries by drunken teen-agers with more content and insight.
    • Even if Yahoo is subject to the laws of Beijing, the management (including Chief Yahoo, Jerry Yang) of Yahoo can still make significant attempts to thwart Chinese violations of human rights. In a 2005 report titled "Information supplied by Yahoo! helped journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison [rsf.org]", Reporters without Borders states, "Tests carried out by Reporters Without Borders seem to indicate that the servers used for the Yahoo.com.cn e-mail service, from which the information about Shi was extracted, are
      • About the best you can say is, "Shame on you, Yahoo!, for letting it be you." But, if you're going to do that, you better shame all of us for buying Chinese products. We're just as complicit.

        Exactly right. Conversely, if you're going to allow Yahoo to participate in human rights abuses then you'll also have to allow the Chinese government to do it. They're just as complicit, after all.

        If you decide to take a stand against human right abuse then you'll have to stand againt Yahoo, the Chinese-purchasing cons

  • In the imaginary country of Jailand... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Xiroth (917768) on Friday May 12 2006, @04:49PM (#15321629)
    In other news, in Jailand, a nation with a rate of imprisonment of people who later turned out to be innocent which recently topped 45%, a police spokesman commented that as the rate was below 50%, the police force was still doing more harm than good.
  • Q: Doesn't 'Yahoo' mean Chinese Whore?

    A: It does now!

  • Welcome to the real world! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by i am kman (972584) on Friday May 12 2006, @04:57PM (#15321701)
    Jeez - why do people expect these for-profit companies to be driven by the same idealistic, personal visions they have for the internet?

    The internet is a technology - it's goal is not to undermine communism or authoritarian governments or to impose US ideals/values upon other countries. So why are so many people 'shocked' that companies like Yahoo! actually abide by the laws in the countries they do business in?

    Look at wikipedia - just how successful do you think they'll be in China now that they're officially blocked??? Exact same thing would happen to Yahoo!
    • The thing is, Yahoo isn't just abiding by the laws of China - it's acquiescing to their non-binding requests. Also, the Internet isn't just a technology - it's the result of users taking advantage of this medium to create their own content, whether corporate or personal. As such, the Internet has it's own cultural ideals, etc. People are angered by Yahoo! because it is going against the libertarian Internet cultural ideals, as well as going against the American ideology that says liberty and freedom are
    • They are welcome to go and live in China if they think it is such a great country and system of government. If they are going to live in America and benefit from the freedoms (and relative safety from the government) then they are going to get grief (and frankly should get worse) when they help enslave, murder, torture, etc. native peoples in other countries.

      It's wrong to support a company which takes actions which are immoral and would be illegal here.

    • Re:Welcome to the real world! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Asic Eng (193332) on Friday May 12 2006, @07:40PM (#15322734)
      On the other hand: why should it be an excuse for anyone to engage in amoral behavior, that they are doing so in order to earn more money?

      It seems a little absurd to expect morals of a person, and then if that person founds a company say "oh that's alright, the company can do whatever is legal". What would be the benefit of giving companies such a free pass?

    • So by that logic, wouldn't it be okay for US companies to sell gas chamber supplies to the Nazis? Surely there has to be some line drawn in the sand, and I'd say complicity in the violation of fundamental human rights is a damn good place to draw it. As an aside, when did a profit motive become an *excuse* for committing heinous moral offenses?
    • If Yahoo has to choose between 1. not having physical operations in China, and 2. helping the Chinese state jail dissidents, 1 is the only moral choice. 2, as they have and continue to do, is despicable. Furthermore, there's no real proof that they had to help the Chinese government nab those people; it seems they did it more to curry favour than anything.

      Yahoo is not just a faceless corporation who must do the bidding of governments whenever told. It's made up of actual people who have to decide whether th
    • Wikipedia is one of the very few organisations that has refused to work with the Chinese regime on censorship as "the cost of doing business". Censorship is not something on which we should be compromising. Look at the article being featured on the main page of Wikipedia today: Prostitution in the People's Republic of China [wikipedia.org]. Thank the spaghetti monster that some people won't be swayed by political pressure and will simply stand up for their principles. U.S. foreign policy seems rather hypocritical to us di

  • Yahoo can't do it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Itninja (937614) on Friday May 12 2006, @05:00PM (#15321724) Homepage
    From TA:
    "He went on to say that Yahoo cannot change Chinese policy and that it needs help from the US government to do so."

    So clearly, Yahoo is also powerless to change there own business practices.
    I mean, that totally makes sense, right?

  • Private companies are not David. (Score:3, Informative)

    by RealityThreek (534082) on Friday May 12 2006, @05:07PM (#15321773)
    Yahoo CEO Terry Semel ... went on to say that Yahoo cannot change Chinese policy and that it needs help from the US government to do so.
    He is completely right here. We are expecting private companies to fight a battle that Chinese citizens and/or the US government should be fighting. Yahoo has to play by the rules China sets up and it is absurd for any of us to expect otherwise. Their only other choice is to go home.

  • What's one customer... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Original Replica (908688) on Friday May 12 2006, @05:08PM (#15321786) Journal
    "These companies are trying to walk a fine line between offending the Chinese government, on the one hand, and offending the American government on the other."
    Yeah, who cares about the actual people being taken away as long as we don't offend any governments. Morals and ethics are just there to appease the media and government officials, right?
    • The Chinese government can shut down their oeprations in China completely. The US government have given them a close eye and are considering putting requirements on companies that do business in China.

      The lone customer will do what exactly?
  • One Yahoo guy says whatg Yahoo always says about this, then Ars Technica asks its readers to discuss. This is news?

  • Here's a ranking of prisoners per capita (Score:4, Informative)

    by jfern (115937) on Friday May 12 2006, @05:21PM (#15321861)
    Guess which country is a solid #1 for prisoners per capita?

    http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pri_per_ca p [nationmaster.com]
    • Perhaps that is because other countries (e.g. China) employ less official as well as "more capital" methods of taking care of "prisoners" than the US. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], 90% of executions world wide are carried out by China (and who knows how under-reported such matters are within China).

      P.S. On the same page, you'll find that "Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen" still officially execute juveniles. "China, the most frequent user of capital punishment, does not allow f
    • That only covers documented prisoners. This [straightdope.com] sheds a bit more light on the issue.
    • We have 715 per 100K, China has... 121.

      I'd bet my lunch the companies we are bashing (Yahoo, Google etc.) have given into more questionable American subpoena the name of "anti-terror" than Chinese over speech violations.

      If you skip the one sided over sensationalized headlines typical of Slashdot and actually read what Yahoo said [com.com] on the issue you will probably see their point.

    • Interesting line in the straight dope link...

      "The record holder, though, is undoubtedly Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge: the regime forced virtually the entire population into labor camps or prisons during the late 1970s, killing as many as two million of the country's six to seven million people."

      I particularly liked the fact that cuba had zero prisoners. Wow! Either the criminals are running rampant there or there are no criminals according to "reported" prisoners.

      There is a reason huge numbers of people
    • Great objective source. </sarcasm>

      According to your link there is no one in prison in ten countries. Some of the whose own governments admit there are prisoners.

      Try again.
    • I'd rather 100 people be thrown in prison for committing legitimate offenses such as violent crimes and even drug possession than even one for political speech.
    • Some respondents have suggested that many countries are hiding a certain amount of prisoners; while I'm sure that's true, the US is still astonishingly ahead of the pack; and they're hiding their share of prisoners as well, particularly in off-shore gulags like Guantanamo.

      A telling statistic is the US's portion of citizens who have been victims of a crime: 21%, which while high, only puts them at 15th of 21 reporting countries. That means they have a middle-of-the-pack crime rate but the world's highest jai
    • The stat you want to look for is political prisoners per capita; while plain official prisoner stats tell a lot about the efficiency of the state, there's very little you can say about the context in which the state wields this power, whether it is against street-crime or organized thugs, or indeed, political dissidents.
      • Stupid. Deduct the number of people executed, and you still have roughly the same figures.

        Your argument that the US is better because it executes fewer people than in China is stupid. If the US put an end to the medieval practice of killing people, perhaps you could exercise a greater pressure on China on the capital punishment. We try to do that in Europe, but the US is a fly in the ointment, as always when it comes to human rights (the Gitmo gulags, intervention in too many countries, spy planes over Euro
  • Ahhh, the old "greater good" fallacy. What a load. The only "good" coming out of this is Yahoo's bottom line. Which is far more valuable than the lives of a couple of lousy dissidents, evidently. Well, if they're doing this in China, I wonder what they're doing to the Americans. Oh, yeah. Pretty much the same thing. With even less evidence of any crime. We should start seeing some arrests in the near future, but "national security" interests will prevent us from ever finding out.
  • Come on all you First-World armchair reformers! Here's your chance to reiterate your pious political beliefs about freedom and democracy!

    Once again, you can gratouitously shit on China because it is a repressive authoritarian regime, and say stupid things like "no information is better than censored information," or "foreign companies have a duty to flout the law in authoritarian countries," or any of the other drivel so often posted under this topic.

    Things are not as they appear at first glance; if you l

  • Yahoo can go to hell for all I care. The only good thing about yahoo is that there are alternatives to yahoo that don't have a record of imprisioning people yet. I have never been one for boycotts, but this is a classic exception. We should boycott because this is way beyond contracting to sweat shops, and there are so many easy and good alternatives. I wonder if yahoo would be so causal about it if people defended the victims by firebonbing yahoo headquarters. Maybe there's a legal difference, but I do

  • Boycott Yahoo says NYT's Kristoff (Score:3, Informative)

    by forgoodmeasure (885419) on Friday May 12 2006, @07:28PM (#15322670)
    In an opinion piece on 19 Feb 2006, Kristoff of the New York Times all but called for a boycott on Yahoo. He thought that Google got a bum rap, Cisco and Microsoft were sleazy (but nothing like Yahoo), and that Yahoo was a national disgrace.

    Kristoff: "...nobody should touch Yahoo until it provides financially for the families of the three men it helped lock up and establishes annual fellowships in their names to bring Web journalists to America on study programs."

    I think Kristoff's suggestion sounds doable.

    Pay only link: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F6 0815F63B5A0C7A8DDDAB0894DE404482&n=Top%2FOpinion%2 FEditorials%20and%20Op-Ed%2FOp-Ed%2FColumnists%2FN icholas%20D%20Kristof [nytimes.com]

    The website that coordinates the Yahoo boycott follows:
    http://www.booyahoo.com/ [booyahoo.com]

    Booyahoo has a link which details some of the alternatives to Yahoo services (hotmail, etc.) Some Slashdot users may want to help flesh it out.

    Wikipedia lists some of the Yahoo owned sites and services (to avoid?):
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo [wikipedia.org]!
  • Digg [digg.com] mentions a video interview [toprankblog.com] with Yahoo!'s CEO, Terry Semel. One of the topics was mentioned on these China allegations.
  • Yahoo made money. To them, that's all that matters. The taxes on their profits help fund your schools, your hospitals, your roads, your military.

    The profit chain doesn't just stop with Yahoo. Ultimately, the suppression of the Chinese people benefits Americans, and most other western countries. Not just through Yahoo, but through the collusion of countless other multinational companies with the Chinese oligarchs.

    Our societies profit from the oppression of other nations. They did it during the colonial era, and they are doing it right now. The method has changed, some might say it's less severe now, but the result is the same.

    People lose their freedom, so we live in opulence. And for most people in the west, it's a price they are more than happy to accept. Compassion is a rare commodity in the face of profit.
  • At some point we must accept that we are subjects to the laws of the juridiction in which we operate. At the very least, we are expected to respect those laws in exchange for the freedom to operate. This could involve stopping at lights when driving, or omplying with safety regulations, or a dress code. Granted, in a reasonable society there is always leeway in the laws, but the basic need to respect the rule of law is central. No matter if we agree with it or not.

    If we disagree we have two choices.

    • Re:Why is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Arandir (19206) on Friday May 12 2006, @05:01PM (#15321737) Homepage Journal
      But Yahoo! is a US company. Not only that, it is a publicly traded company. News of what Yahoo! is doing in China is very much something to be concerned about.

    • It's a concern because Yahoo is a US run corporation helping a communist government crack down and imprison people for things that are not crimes in a truly free nation.

      Of course China is worth billions to the US so not much is said about it. If it were, say, Cuba, then politicians would be beating their chests and wanting to invade as Cuba has little financial impact on the US economy. China does.

      It's all about the almight fucking dollar.

      • That, and considering China has a billion and a half people, chances are they would win in combat. Every man, woman, and child in America managed to kill five Chinese. No point starting a war we know we're going to lose before we even get there.

    • Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Distinguished Hero (618385) on Friday May 12 2006, @05:14PM (#15321822) Homepage
      China is not the United States and they not only can, but do run things differently. ... I say let China do what China is going to do and lets concentrate on making things better in America first - then we can work on improving China's (online) rights.

      Except that in at most 20 years, China will be a superpower, so if you don't fix them now while they might still listen to you, in 20 years they definitely won't listen to you. In 30 years, China may very well be the superpower, at which point how broken the US is affects me and the majority of the world's population a lot less than how broken China is.

      I'll leave you with one though: around the annexation of Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain remarked: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!" or something to that effect. I'm sure people might have said something of a similar effect regarding the Holocaust if they had known: "[The Third Reich] is not the United States and they not only can, but do run things differently. ... I say let [The Third Reich] do what [The Third Reich] is going to do and lets concentrate on making things better in America first - then we can work on improving [The Third Reich's] rights." In fact, I do believe many people did in fact say many things to that effect.
      • To clarify, the annexation of Czechoslovakia referred to the annexation thereof by Nazi Germany, and "The Third Reich" = Nazi Germany. Forgive me for being condescending, but I simply do not have much faith in the capacity of people with mod points to know or understand these things.
      • In fairness, the Third Reich was a hell of a lot more oppressive than the current Chinese government. It's not feasible to invade every country that violates its citizens' rights no matter how infrequently. So it isn't at all inconsistent to think that military intervention in Nazi Germany was a good idea but still think it's a bad idea for today's China.
        • but to make a big case out a small, and common occurrence (that we know about mind you) seems silly.

          You have it bass ackwards. You're making a small case out of a big (and common) one. Freedom of speech is something we deem fundamental and universal.

          When we lose the capacity to care about injustice, what good are we?
    • Why you are correct.

      We should not only sell them the gun to shoot us with but the ammo as well.

      And then we should help them kill anyone protesting killing us before they come for us.

      Come on guy- Yahoo is an american company-- it's okay to protest them helping a foreign government to advance non-american ideas.
        • They are an AMERICAN company operating under AMERICAN laws. Their executives benefit from living in AMERICA. Notice a theme here?

          If the executives of Yahoo want to go live in China (and risk being picked up and shot one night when they say the wrong thing) then I have no problem with that. You don't see us protesting the behavior of CHINESE companies behavior in CHINA.

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