Yahoo! Asks That Chinese Rights Suit Be Dismissed 248
Eviliza writes that Yahoo! is asking that the suit filed against it over the infringement of a Chinese journalist's civil rights be dismissed in US courts this week. The company has stated that it had no choice but to give up the journalist's information, as it's Chinese subsidiary is subject to Chinese laws. "'Defendants cannot be expected, let alone ordered to violate another nation's laws,' the company said in its filing. But Morton Sklar of the World Organization for Human Rights said the company had failed to meet its ethical responsibilities. 'Even if it was lawful in China, that does not take away from Yahoo's obligation to follow not just Chinese law, but US law and international legal standards as well, when they do business abroad,' he said."
Feel Bad For Yahoo! No Win Situation? (Score:3, Interesting)
So they play ball, and they get sued in the U.S.
Makes me think a bit of the situation in Cuba. Lots of U.S. firms would like to do business there, have it opened up to trade, see relations normalized. I mean we've normalized relations with Vietnam even though POW/MIA groups feel the country still hasn't been as forthcoming as it could be on the subject of missing servicemen from the war. But POW/MIA groups can't swing Florida in a presidential election, so every president has given in to a small special interest group, and kept a hard line on Cuba.
So, while American companies are denied access to Cuba as a market, a source for materials, and a source for goods, those benefits go to companies in countries where a small block of Cuban immigrants don't hold the disproportionate political sway they do here.
The same can be said about China. If we let human rights activists use lawsuits to penalize companies for following Chinese rules while doing business in China, it just opens the door for companies from countries where human rights aren't as important and suing isn't as easy.
!yahoo! (Score:1, Interesting)
At least you're not as bad as the Register, which still thinks it's cute to bang all words in headlines mentioning Yahoo.
Rock and a Hard Place (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Feel Bad For Yahoo! No Win Situation? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in Cuba a few years ago, there were plenty of American corporate offices, all in one heavily guarded (by Cuban military/police) compound in one of the best locations in Havana, right in the center of the city. There were probably other locations, too, and certainly enough business operations to support their offices.
The Cuban "embargo" is nearly entirely a fraud, except the part that keeps individual Cubans cut off from the rest of the world, and (most) individual Americans cut off from Cuba. It's proven to do nothing to force political change there, and to promote political corruption here in the US (and in Cuba, and elsewhere in cooperation). It's one of the greatest political crimes in American history. And it's going on right now, and will continue tomorrow. Along with the propaganda that it is really an embargo.
Re:Yahoo! is correct (Score:2, Interesting)
There has to be some limit to what an international company can do in violation of human rights. Would supplying genocide chemicals be too far even if it is not in violation of a nation's laws (obviously)? What is the limit? Do international agreements mean nothing?
Different case (Score:1, Interesting)
And vice versa.
However, once I have offices and employees stationed in both countries, I have put myself in a pickle. Breaking American laws while in China suddenly become punishable in America, since I work there and am under its jurisdiction.
There is precident for this sort of thing, as I understand. If you go to a foreign country and sleep with an underage prostitute, you can still be prosecuted for it in America. If individuals must honor laws in this way, why shouldn't businesses also honor laws in this way?
If yahoo doesn't want to have to follow Chinese laws, it should pull out of China. If yahoo doesn't want to have to follow American laws, it should pull out of America. If yahoo insists on having offices and employees in both countries, it should be bound by both laws, and if that produces legal conflicts, that is yahoo's own fault for locating itself in two countries with conflicting laws.
Re:Yahoo! is correct (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe it will be, I don't know. Maybe China will find a way to deliver such a society without ever releasing the strangehold of a monopolitical culture. I doubt it, though. I think the cracks are already showing. The country is rife with corruption, and from what we can tell, the uneveness of how this great economic revolution's benefits to various populations and sectors within Chinese society are creating a lot of unrest. What we do know is that the technocrats and military officers at the top of the Chinese political system have no problem torturing dissidents and turning the tanks on their own people. They are killers with no meaningful legal apparatus to prevent them from doing anything they please. They, like all the Communist nations, have these meaningless dusty piles of paper they call constitutions, but that never produce any impediment to the exercise of raw power, or means of redress when the full scope of that damage that power has done is revealed (which it often isn't, we still don't know how many people were killed by Mao's Great Leap Forward).
Now, the West has lots of problems. There's corruption here, there are violations both subtle and flagrant to the constitutions of the "free" countries. As always, the wealthy oligarchs and aristocrats can wield an unhealthy amount of influence, but somehow, the people still hold an enormous amount of power, and can still upset even the most entrenched political groups. We have developed concepts like the rule of law, fixed elections (or at least, in many countries, limits on how long governments can sit), regularized courts with the capacity to overturn laws. We don't always get the results we want, and we can't always guarantee that the powerful won't undermine the system in one way or another, but no one can sit here and tell me that the citizens of the Western world are in a boat anywhere approaching the thought control that a nation like China tries to force upon its populace.
There's no perfect country, no perfect political system, and in many ways I accept that the West has damn little business trying to export its own political and social leanings. By the same token, I don't think we should have to accept that our own companies, which exist solely because the West adopted notions like free markets and free enterprise and minimalized interference by governments in commerce, can wander off to foreign lands and make vast profits, while defending their co-operation with laws we find repugnant and immoral in the age-old rationalization of "we're just following orders".
If China wants to build vast firewalls to prevent their citizens from reading uncomfortable truths (and even blatant lies), then let them develop their own systems. Cisco ought not to be permitted to export equipment to do that. It grew up in a democratic climate, and it *owes* us that. Microsoft, Yahoo and Google should not be permitted to open their logs to Chinese officials hunting for dissidents. These companies grew up in a democratic and free part of the world, and they *owe* us that.
Re:IANAL... (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you were IBM [wikipedia.org], but that was a while ago. They're on our side now.