In Tuesday’s episode, Will asks for Alicia’s assistance with their latest client, a Chinese dissident named Shen Yuan. Imprisoned and tortured for five years, Shen Yuan is suing an American search engine with the unfortunate name of “Chum Hum” for turning over his IP address to the Chinese government. Initially, Will just wants Alicia to sit in on the negotiations — “just look angry and intense” — but clearly, she believes in the cause and throws her best efforts into it. Apparently, Will does too. In a fiery deposition, he attacks Chum Hum’s bestubbled chief executive, Neil Gross.

The deposition as heated-forum-for-contemporary-debate has become a fixture on “The Good Wife,” and this scene is no exception. Neil maintains that, even if his company has to comply with oppressive laws, “American businesses in China help open the door just a little bit.” Will is more skeptical. “It also doesn’t hurt that we also owe them $843 billion.” He also makes fun of Neil for wearing a hoodie in a deposition, a tactic that seemed unnecessarily bullying and snide. The point, I think, was to show us a hint of Will’s dark side.

Given Will’s showy denunciation of Chum Hum, Alicia is especially dismayed to discover that his interest in the case is financial, not humanitarian. She catches Patric Edelstein, the Mark Zuckerberg-esque Internet billionaire we met a few weeks back, in a secretive meeting with Will. She correctly deduces that the goal of the suit is to get Chum Hum out of China, so that Sleuth.com can swoop in and monopolize the growing market. Alicia confronts Will with her suspicions. “I just for one minute wanted to think that we were doing the right thing,” she tells him. Will claims that they are doing the right thing, even if the underlying motive is venal and not altruistic. Alicia’s disappointment intensifies when she discovers that Edelstein also plans to comply with Chinese authorities. “It’s the law,” says Will, dousing Alicia’s crush like a bucket of ice-cold water.

In a remarkably similar real life plot line, Yahoo! settled a case with writer Shi Tao, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for “leaking state secrets” after Yahoo! provided his account details to the Chinese government.

The full episode of The Good Wife can be viewed here:


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Post tags: Googlecn, Great Firewall, Shi Tao
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In the letter to Rice, Yang wrote that the company “deeply regrets the circumstances” that led to the jailing of the two journalists. He said it runs counter to company values.

“We know we have an important role to play in advocating for the release of these political dissidents; we are also aware of the limits of private American companies engaging in foreign policy,” he wrote.

Yang called the State Department to take the lead and “actively pursue the release of Shi Tao, Wang Xiaoning and other Chinese dissidents who have been imprisoned for exercising internationally recognized rights of expression.”

In a separate report, AP says that in 2007, Yahoo! spent $1.6 million lobbying the U.S. government on issues relating to China and to foreign jurisdiction over U.S. companies.

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Post tags: political prisoners, Shi Tao, U.S. human rights, Wang Xiaoning, Yahoo
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Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed. But a source at Yahoo said the company has been “working with the families, and we’re working with them to provide them with financial, humanitarian and legal assistance.”

Yahoo has also agreed to establish a global human rights fund to provide “humanitarian relief” to support dissidents and their families. The source said that details still have to be worked out. [Full text]

Read interviews with Shi Tao’s mother and Wang Xiaoning’s wife, via RFA.

[Image: Wang Xiaoning's wife, Yu Ling, via Wired]

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Post tags: corporate responsibility, foreign IT companies, Shi Tao, Wang Xiaoning, Yahoo
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From RFA Unplugged blog:

Yahoo’s chief executive Jerry Yang and executive vice president Michael Callahan faced a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing in Washington yesterday over providing misleading information to Congress last year as part of an investigation into the company’s role in disclosing former journalist and cyberdissident Shi Tao’s identity to Chinese authorities.

Shi Tao was arrested in November 2004 after sending a government internal document delivered to his publication to several foreign websites. The document was issued as a warning to journalists of the possible social destabilisation and risks posed by returning dissidents on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and requested that they not report on the occasion. [Full Text]

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Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang testified to lawmakers on Tuesday that the company has been “open and forthcoming” about its role in a Chinese government investigation that led in 2005 to a journalist’s imprisonment.

“We have answered every question, provided every requested piece of information and worked with you in good faith,” he said in prepared testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Lawmakers have accused the company of holding back information in its role regarding the arrest of Chinese journalist Shi Tao. The Chinese government accused Shi of leaking state secrets and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. [Full Text]

Here is a video link for the hearing from LA Times.

Read also Yahoo executives grilled by Congress over China policies: Live-blogging by Declan McCullagh, Searching for an Explanation: No Results Found by Dana Milbankand and Statement of Chairman Lantos at hearing, Yahoo! Inc.’s Provision of False Information to Congress:

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Read the rest of Yahoo Criticized in Case of Jailed Dissident – Dibya Sarkar (1,774 words)

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Post tags: Jerry Yang, Lantos, Shi Tao, Yahoo
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A top Yahoo official who has come under fire for the company’s role in the 2004 imprisonment of a dissident in China apologised on Thursday for failing to tell US lawmakers that Yahoo knew more about the case than he initially acknowledged in testimony last year.

Michael Callahan, Yahoo’s executive vice president and general counsel, said in a statement ahead of a congressional hearing next week that he “realised” that Yahoo had additional information about the nature of the probe into one of its users, Shi Tao, a journalist now serving a 10-year prison sentence in China, months after he testified that Yahoo had “no information” about the investigation. [Full Text]

Read also Yahoo! apologizes ahead of Congressional grilling by Rebecca MacKinnon.

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Post tags: corporate responsibility, foreign IT companies, Shi Tao, Yahoo
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The chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee is summoning Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang to Washington to talk about “how the Internet company gave false information to Congress about its role in a human rights case in China that sent a journalist to jail for a decade,” according to a release from the committee chairman’s office.

Chairman Tom Lantos has asked Yang and Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan to appear at a hearing on November 6.

“Our committee has established that Yahoo provided false information to Congress in early 2006,” Lantos said in the statement. [Full Text]

Read also Committee Asks Yahoo! Executives to Testify About False Information Given to Congress in China Human Rights Case by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs:

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Read the rest of Yahoo Summoned To Washington Over Chinese Arrests – Elinor Mills (492 words)

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The brief was so long that to be able to upload it onto the blog, I had to delete the first ten pages, consisting mostly of its table of contents and its table of authorities.

To grossly simplify, Yahoo’s main defense seems to be that it was merely following a lawful Chineese governmental request. I am not expert on most of the legal issues involved in this case, nor do I even claim to have been following it at all closely. Nonetheless, after reading this brief, I am of the view this case may end up being very important to U.S. companies doing business internationally, and not just in China. [Full Text]

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Congressional investigators plan to look into whether Yahoo officials misrepresented the Internet company’s role in the arrest of a Chinese journalist sentenced to a decade in jail.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos ordered the investigation after a human rights group released a document that it said raised questions about what Yahoo knew when it shared information with authorities about Shi Tao. Beijing officials had sought Shi for sending an e-mail about Chinese media restrictions. [Full Text]

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Post tags: foreign IT companies, Lantos, Shi Tao, Yahoo
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I don’t think it is meaningless to push companies like Yahoo! to be more mindful of the human rights situations they will face before they decide whether or not to open a particular product or service in any given market. There is a reason Microsoft never introduced a localized Chinese Hotmail and why Google hasn’t introduced a local Chinese Gmail. Because they don’t want She Taos and Wang Xiaonings on their hands. Companies can make choices about how they engage in a market and what services are appropriate given the political situation.

Let me emphasize: this is not about foreigners changing China. Or it isn’t for me. This is about how companies interact with governments everywhere and how individual users lose out in the process. [Full text]

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Post tags: foreign IT companies, political prisoners, Shi Tao, Wang Xiaoning, Yahoo
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