The head of the Chinese Internet company that has acquired Yahoo's China operations has defended the US portal's decision to help communist authorities track down and prosecute dissident journalist Shi Tao, the Financial Times has reported. Yahoo has been widely condemned for assisting the case against Shi Tao, who was jailed for 10 years in April this year for revealing information about...
The impressive growth of the Internet in China is matched by the authorities’ energetic attempts to monitor, censor and repress Internet activity, with tough laws, jailing cyber-dissidents, blocking access to websites, monitoring online forums and shutting down cybercafés, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). MONITORED: There are just five backbones or hubs through which all traffic must...
China now has more than 100 million Internet users. The number of netizens in China rose to 103 million by late June this year, according to official figures. Mao Qian, head of Optical Telecommunications Committee of China Telecommunications Society, said the statistitcs were from a report that was recently completed based on the 16th survey into the development of the Internet in China. NET...
Reporters Without Borders today condemned the censorship of pro-democracy writer Wang Yi’s blog ( http://zhivago.tianyablog.com), which was closed down just days after it was nominated for the "freedom of expression" category in a blog contest ( www.thebobs.de) being organised by the German radio station Deutsche Welle. "We call for the immediate reopening of this blog and we point out that the...
HONG KONG–The Chinese authorities have blocked access to a personal Web log, or blog, written by a prominent critic of the communist regime after it was nominated for a key award. Wang Yi’s Microphone, was nominated for two categories in the Best of Blog (BOB) Awards sponsored by German radio station Deutsche Welle. "Initially I set up my blog as a place to collect together all my writings so they...
One of the standard arguments for the superiority of "free enterprise" is that in the wake of economic freedom -- defined as the freedom of capital to enrich itself -- political and other freedoms follow in its wake. There are a few problems with this argument: first, it is often framed in the broad sweep of history, looking ahead at decades or even centuries. Most people don’t have centuries or...
IT'S bad enough when newspaper editorials, Western human rights groups and ordinary American customers condemn your company for bowing to the Chinese dictatorship and contributing to oppression. But when the outrage begins rising, at great personal risk, from dissident voices trapped inside that dictatorship, well, that has to hurt. Or not. Yahoo has suffered a good deal of opprobrium after it was...
Reporters Without Borders today called on the Chinese authorities to stop blocking accessing to the website of the independent online encyclopedia Wikipedia, whose popularity has been growing steadily in China. The site has been unavailable in several provinces including Shanghai since 18 October. This latest online censorship paradoxically comes at a moment when China is openly raising the issue...
Since the spread of the internet in the mid-nineties, privacy concerns have increased exponentially. Cyberspace has often been equated to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, or to a new, digital version of George Orwell’s Big Brother, capable of seeing and controlling everything and everyone. This rather dystopic vision has rightly generated fear and distrust of the web. Recently, the thickening bonds...
Yahoo's chairman and chief executive officer Terry Semel strongly defended the company's decision to turn over evidence to Chinese authorities that helped the government convict a local journalist and send him to jail for 10 years. Companies that do business internationally have to respect and abide by the laws of the countries in which they operate, whether that be China or any other country, he...
