Google Blogoscoped

Friday, August 11, 2006

Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship

Human Rights Watch has released an extensive report on corporate complicity in Chinese internet censorship. The analysis includes a comparison of how good or bad the different search engines far in China. In General, Baidu and Yahoo perform worst (meaning the most is censored), and MSN and Google fare best. Yahoo is also helping to jail Chinese writers, HRW says:

Shi Tao: The Chinese journalist was sentenced in April 2005 to ten years in prison for “divulging state secrets abroad.” According to court documents translated by the Dui Hua Foundation and released by Reporters Sans Frontières. Yahoo! complied with requests from the Chinese authorities for information regarding an IP address connected to a cn.mail.yahoo.com email account. The information provided by Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Holdings linked Shi Tao to materials posted on a U.S.-based dissident website. (...)

Li Zhi: The Internet writer was sentenced in December 2003 to eight years in prison for “inciting subversion of the state authority.” According to the court verdict originally posted on the Internet by the Chinese law firm that defended him, user account information provided by Yahoo! was used to build the prosecutors’ case. (...)

Jiang Lijun: The Internet writer and pro-democracy activist was sentenced in November 2003 to four years in prison for “subversion.” According to the court verdict obtained and translated by the Dui Hua Foundation, Yahoo! helped confirm that an anonymous email account used to transmit politically sensitive emails was used by Jiang. (...)

Wang Xiaoning: The Internet writer and dissident was sentenced in September 2003 to ten years in prison for “incitement to subvert state power,” on the basis of essays he distributed on the Internet via email and Yahoo! Groups. According to the court judgment obtained by Human Rights in China, Yahoo! provided information to investigators pertaining to the email address and Yahoo! group used by Wang.

[Thanks Pd.]

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