July 28, 2004

A press freedom group with international ramifications criticizes Yahoo and Google for allegedly cooperating with the Chinese government to crackdown on web access.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it, "deplores the irresponsible policies of United States Internet firms Yahoo! and Google in bowing directly and indirectly to Chinese government demands for censorship."

It called on the United States to apply the principles of its Global Internet Freedom Act on its private sector's activities in "some of the world's most repressive regimes."

The Global Internet Freedom Act, passed by the US House of Representatives in July 2003, aims to combat online censorship imposed by governments around the world.

RSF said it appealed to Yahoo chairman and chief executive Terry Semel last December but received no reply.

The rights watchdog claimed Yahoo had been censoring its Chinese-language search-engine for several years and rival firm Google, which recently took a share in Baidu, a Chinese search-engine that filters a user's findings, seemed ready to go the same way.

In their efforts to conquer the Chinese market, the two firms are "making compromises that directly threaten freedom of expression," it said in a statement.

A keyword search in Yahoo's Chinese language site on "Tibet independence" Tuesday did not display any result, while "Taiwan independence" produced only mainland Chinese websites which condemn the move.

The same search on Google returned no listing for "Tibet independence" but "Taiwan independence" displayed a listing which included Taiwanese sites. They were blocked however when accessed.

A search of the name of one of China's most high profile dissidents, Wei Jingsheng, on Yahoo returned only mainland sites critical of him. A similar search on Google returned with a screen saying the site cannot be displayed.

Neither Google nor Yahoo were immediately available for comment Tuesday. Other US high-tech firms such as Cisco Systems have also helped the Chinese government acquire sophisticated technical means to spy on the Internet, its users and the messages they send, RSF claimed.

It said Cisco had sold several thousand routers to enable the regime to build an online spying system to spot supposedly subversive keywords in messages.

Beijing has long censored hundreds of websites of Western media outlets, political and religious dissidents and others that are viewed as a threat to the Communist regime.

RSF has also written to Lorne Craner, US assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights and Earl Wayne, assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs.

Source: Servihoo.com

        

Read Serge Thibodeau's daily blogs on search engines at Serge Thibodeau Live. We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.