State Control

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...

AS BLOGS become big business, Internet giants have begun trying to profit from new forms of journalism, including war coverage. The results are not encouraging. Yahoo's latest experiment reveals that it considers war news just another form of entertainment. This from an online giant that has already shown it is cavalier about press freedom and a friend of oppression. Look back to 2004, when...

Mr. Yang, My name is Liu Xiaobo. I was born in Changchun, China, in 1955, and am now a freelance writer in Beijing. I can't address you as the "respectful Mr. Yang", because I write this letter for the sake of my friend Shi Tao, who is now in a Chinese prison. In preparation for writing this letter, I read your resume for the first time and learned that you co-created the Yahoo! Internet...

On the eve of the 56th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has released a report of an investigation into the role of the news agency Xinhua News Agency in the system of propaganda and censorship put in place by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). With less than three years to go before the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the worldwide press freedom...

China's new Internet rules China tightened its already stringent regulations on Internet content this week. A September 25 statement from the Ministry of Information Industry banned "subversive" material–including pornography, criticism of the government, and sensitive topics like Tibet and Taiwan independence–from the country's computer networks. Instead, only "healthy, civilized news and...

A statement this week from Reporters Without Borders will make unsettling reading for foreign companies eager to join China's internet boom. The press freedom watchdog accused the US internet portal Yahoo of helping Chinese authorities to identify and convict a local journalist of leaking state secrets. In April, Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison for sending foreigners an e-mail that...

The human-rights group is calling for action over claims Yahoo is 'cheerfully sacrificing human rights in return for a cut of the Chinese market'. Privacy International (PI) has called on Internet users to boycott Yahoo over allegations that the Web giant provided information that helped Chinese officials convict a journalist accused of leaking state secrets. Simon Davies, director of PI...

According to PPF, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), India's sole gateway to the Internet, has blocked the web site of Pakistan's leading English language daily newspaper, "Dawn". According to "The Times of India", Internet users in India have been unable to connect to the "Dawn" website for more than a week. A VSNL official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told "The Times of India" that the...