journalist Shi Tao and Yahoo!: an example of how a company can operate in foreign countries
The
fact is well known: Shi Tao, 37, a journalist who worked for the
Contemporary Business News in Hunan province, was arrested and
sentenced in April to 10 years in prison. He was charged with
"divulgating State secrets abroad". At a meeting in April 2004, a local
communist party boss gave him and his colleagues instructions on how to
cover the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square's facts. Shi took notes
and, with his private e-mail account, sent off a desription of what
he'd been told to a pro-democracy website run by a Chinese emigre in
America. Two weeks ago, Shi Tao was arrested and sentenced for doing
so. You can find the original chinese-english verdict here.
His e-amil address was a Yahoo! account. When Chinese government asked
informations, Yahoo! complied with their request. So, practically,
Yahoo! helped to put in jail a Chinese citizen, violating his
privacy. Questioned about this decision at a conference in China,
Yahoo!'s co-founder, Jerry Yang, declared to the International Herald Tribune: "To be doing business in
China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local
laws".
Things are two: business are more important than civil rights and
privacy for an American company. Nothing strange. The other is that an
American company can operate abroad without respecting those rights it
must respect in America with American citizen, or in any other western
country.
Before complying with local laws, Yahoo! halped China to become more authoritarian.
I remind you that Yahoo! signed in 2002 the Public Pledge on
self-discipline in Internet industry (you can read the full text here):
according to aticle 3, "The basic principles of Self-regulation
and Professional Ethics for Internet the Industry are being patriotic
observance of law, equitableness, trustworthiness and honesty", and there's nothing wrong.
But read articles 8 and 10 and find out how they are each other in a somewhat contrast (is the 8 ever respected?):
8. We pledge to respect the lawful
rights and interests of consumers and we shall protect the
confidentiality of their information. We pledge not to use the
information provided by users for any activity other than those as
promised to users, and no technology or any other advantage may be used
to infringe upon the lawful rightsand interests of the consumers or
users.
10. Internet access service providers pledge
to inspect and monitor information on domestic and foreign websites
when it provides access to those sites and refuse access to those
websites that disseminate harmful information.
Yahoo!, on the other hand, agrees on censoring its Chinese search engine cn.yahoo.com.
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matteo mohorovicich
