UK's Journalists Calling For Yahoo! Boycott 111
truthsearch writes "The UK's National Union of Journalists is calling for a boycott of Yahoo! because of its 'unethical behaviour' in China. Yahoo! has given details of at least three people to Chinese authorities who were subsequently imprisoned. 'The NUJ regards Yahoo!'s actions as a completely unacceptable endorsement of the Chinese authorities. As a result, the NUJ will be cancelling all Yahoo!-operated services and advising all members to boycott Yahoo! until the company changes its irresponsible and unethical policy.' Yahoo! sent a response to The Register."
Re:Yahoo is right (Score:3, Informative)
Or so the DOJ claims. The American Library Association disagrees [ala.org], and will advise any library recieving such a request to take it to court.
Until there's more case law established in this area (and note that at least one provision of the Patriot Act involved was found to be unconstitutional, as mentioned in the linked article), I'd say whether the library "has to" comply is unclear.
Re:Hit the Company by Hitting the Bottom Line (Score:3, Informative)
Where have you been for the past 6 months?
At any rate, I think the whole thing is being blown out of proportion. US ISPs are regularly compelled to provide information on customers regarding copyright violations. What's worse about China doing the same for activities which are just as illegal there? Yahoo has no responsibility to facilitate illegal activity, regardless of whether or not that activity should be illegal by our morals and values. Moreover, Yahoo's withdraw from China would not be detrimental in any way to the Chinese internet or government. What it would do is hurt American employees and investors. I believe the colloquial term for that is "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Additionally it seems you are missing a key underpinning of Asian societies, which is that the needs of the individual are almost always outweighed by the needs of the many. Is that wrong? Well, it's different, but it has its plusses and minuses, just like anything else. The majority of Chinese believe that dissent has a detrimental, destabilizing effect on their society. They believe that individual-oriented western values contribute to rampant crime and civil unrest, and it's difficult to argue with a straight face that they're wrong. Of course, we tend to believe that the price of liberty is well worth it, although that opinion is unfortunately becoming less and less popular. The bottom line is that a government cannot exist without the support -- either implicitly or explicitly -- of its people, therefore the Chinese government is, in fact, acting on behalf of its citizens. Unless, and until such time as, the members of a society itself decide to enact change, there's not much anyone else can do about it, short of war, but as we've seen in Iraq: You can lead a horse to water...