Yahoo Is Going To Stop Email Service In China 70
An anonymous reader writes with news that Yahoo will be ending their email service in China on August 13th. A support post on the Yahoo China site tells users how to migrate their account to a different email service called Aliyun. If they do so, their data can be migrated and they will continue to receive emails to their Yahoo address until the end of 2014. From the article:
"The US Internet giant Yahoo! has come under criticism in the past over its business in China, with executives apologising in 2007 for providing evidence that Chinese authorities used to convict government critics. The company said it was legally obliged to divulge information about its users to the Chinese government but that it was unaware it would be used to convict dissidents. The end of the service will affect millions of users, the paper quoted Alibaba public relations official Zhang Jianhua as saying, though he did not have a total figure."
Yahoo also announced the closure of six other products today: Upcoming, Deals, SMS Alerts, Kids, Mail and Messenger feature phone apps, and older versions of Mail.
Dissidents (Score:2, Insightful)
Now Yahoo will be stuck giving information to the US government on US dissidents.
Re:Dissidents (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm no apologist for the government, but the US still has greater protection of free speech than any other country.
In these days of scummy behavior by the people who are supposed to work for us and defend our freedoms, this is one thing I'm truly proud of.
Where's Stalin when you need him :/ (Score:4, Insightful)
The company said [...] that it was unaware it would be used to convict dissidents.
I have some family members still alive who each spent at least a year in a work camp in Siberia courtesy of Stalin. I guess it'd do some good to get some corporate upper echelons to stay at a work camp in Siberia for a winter or two to get a message what totalitarian regimes are all about. If you read their PR and are all like "Don't know if trolling or just stupid", then a cold clue bat is perhaps the device of choice.
Re:A sensible move (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're not representing a government, then no matter what you do you can't push your laws on anyone because you don't have any. But you can push your principles on them, including through civil disobedience, which when it comes to Internet freedom is a good thing when companies do it in China, the U.S., or anywhere else.