Yahoo! e-mail in China: must be evil to be legal

New developments in the furor over how Yahoo! helped convict a dissident Chinese journalist:

ESWN (scroll down to bottom) and Angry Chinese Blogger have both posted translations of the summary of an internal Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Department circular, e-mailed by Chinese journalist Shi Tao to a foreign website via his Yahoo! China email account. (Click here for the PDF of the full verdict text in both Chinese and English.) A lively discussion is going on in the comments section of my last post about Yahoo!'s role in Shi Tao's conviction.

According to Shi Tao's summary, the Propaganda Dept. circular includes the following instruction to Chinese editors and reporters: "pay attention to any liaison between overseas democratic elements and individual media editors and  reporters inside China.  If anything is discovered, it is must be   reported immediately"

For transmitting this, plus a very general list of measures the government was taking to crack down on dissident speech and prevent unrest, Shi Tao got 10 years in jail.

Yahoo! has now responded to Reporters Without Borders and other human rights groups who have strongly condemned Yahoo!'s role in handing over Shi Tao's e-mail logs to the Chinese police.

In an email to Reuters, a Yahoo! spokesperson wrote: "Just like any other global company, Yahoo! must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based."

In Shi Tao's case, Yahoo! had to be evil in order to be legal.

But as the discussion on my last post reveals, Yahoo! had a choice. It chose to provide an e-mail service hosted on servers based inside China, making itself subject to Chinese legal jurisdiction. It didn't have to do that. It could have provided a service hosted offshore only.  If Shi Tao's email account had been hosted on servers outside of China, Yahoo! wouldn't have been legally obligated to hand over his information. 

When providing information and communications services in countries where political dissent is illegal, companies like Yahoo! need to ask themselves tough questions about whether they can realistically operate "within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based" while still upholding their ethical values. Assuming they have some. Even if they don't, they must recognize that helping put dissidents in jail is pretty bad for the corporate image. Is the damage to Yahoo!'s reputation, credibility, and consumer trust really worth whatever money they're making on that Chinese-language e-mail service? 

I don't think so.

Comments

[ACB]

Shi didn't get 2 years, he got ten years. A much nastier verdict.

Speackig of verdicts. You can now download the Shi verdict in English and Chinese at http://angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com/download_the_shi_tao_verdict_in_englishchinese.htm

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

Thanks for pointing out that mistake. Corrected. Yes we have the verdict on Global Voices and linked from my last post also.

[quixote]

This is appalling. I've avoided Yahoo over the years because 1) I was one of the people jolted years ago by their attempt to claim copyright over anything remotely associated with their web services; 2) they had so many ads, their otherwise good news services were unreadable, and 3) if they ever got their grubby mitts on your email, you were spammed to death. But all that was merely nasty. This is Bad. Not On.

Unfortunately, the Flickr folks have put themselves under the umbrella of this dreadful company. I've found flickr a great resource, used it, and posted pictures. Now what? Do I take everything off and boycott them too? They would be a loss, but I don't see any alternative. What do you think? Total boycott? Exception for flickr?

[Brendon Carr]

It's not correct to simply state "If Yahoo had chosen to offer e-mail hosted on servers outside China, Yahoo wouldn't have been forced to hand over Shi Tao's private information in accordance with Chinese 'law'." Even if the servers are outside China, the service aimed at Chinese consumers exposes Yahoo to liabilities under Chinese laws -- and if there are any sales and marketing staff in China pushing those offshore services, those staff may be exposed to criminal liability for refusal to hand over the data.

Just ask all those Chinese porn website operators who are now in jail whether the offshore-server angle protected them.

[sun bin]

Did Shi Tao used a yahoo.com account or a yahoo.com.cn account?

I believe yahoo provides both types of accounts. However, as we know, it is extremely slow to access the .com account hosted overseas.

Shi Tao should have chosen the .com account, if that is the case, Yahoo is guilty.

[Hitomi281]

Hello!

As you can see, I have a yahoo! email address and I'm actually a member of academic mailing lists hosted by it. Now, I can't ignore this story you and others have reported about how Yahoo! helped the Chinese governments bring a dissenting journalist to a totally unfair trial that resulted in a 10-years of prison sentence for him! So, I'm probably going to terminate my account with Yahoo! and use another service provider. However, I wanted to ask you: why did Yahoo decide to have its Chinese server in China instead of abroad? What was the financial, marketing, technical or other benefit from this decision? Do you have more information on this issue? Also, do you know if there is any civil movement or organization pressuring Yahoo to move its server out of China?

Thanks a lot for keeping people informed about such shameful behaviors! It's not to be accepted no matter how much one otherwise appreciates the services provided by a company.

Hitomi-

P.S.: would you allow me to link to this blog from mine? You can check it using the link I have provided above.

[Nate]

China has executed people for stealing gas. Ten years in prison is bad enough, but next time it could be worse. Does Yahoo really want to be complicit?

[ACB]

Yahoo China is based in Hong Kong, it is not actually subject to the full force of Chinese law because Hong Kong has an 'independent' judiciary and works off of laws similar to those in Britain.

[Seb Lee]

Yahoo! has set a precedent for other such Internet service providers to follow. Is there any other e-mail or blog service that is safe to use?

[Dmitriy]

Yahoo is a Chiness site?