Yahoo Is Going To Stop Email Service In China

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.

A sensible move

[Das Auge]

You can't have it both way. We're (Americans) are constantly told that we shouldn't push our laws on other countries. That's correct, we should not. We should follow the laws of the land that we're operating in. This can result in following laws that would be looked down on, or even illegal, in our own country. Yahoo! tried to follow the laws of the land it was operating in and got burned for its efforts, and now it's pulling out.

You can't have it both way ways. Either you push your laws on another country or you follow the other country's laws. You can't pick and choose. The only other alternative is to leave. Yahoo! makes far more money in the US than in China, so it can't keep drawing bad publicity. They left. A sensible move.

Re:Dissidents

[poity]

A Chinese dissident imprisoned for 10 years for subversion, whose conviction was supported by evidence from Yahoo, was released early on Friday after completing his term, his wife said. [..] Wang was detained in September 2002 and later sentenced for "incitement to subvert state power", a vaguely defined charge used frequently to punish political critics. Wang distributed pro-democracy writings by email and through Yahoo groups.

Find a comparable case in the US.