Here is this quarter's column for China Economic Review. Spurred by the latest round of congressional hearings, on November 6th, I wrote about Yahoo. The monthly cycle means this is a bit behind the rest of the blogosphere. Also, this is written for people not necessarily following all the blog chatter about this, so there is some recap:

Judging Yahoo
December 2007

The US internet firm erred in its dealings over the Shi Tao case, but to what extent should it be damned?

On November 6, Congressman Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, looked down from the dais of a congressional hearing and pronounced judgment. “Technologically and financially you are giants,” he told Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and general counsel Michael Callahan. “Morally you are pygmies.”

Lantos’s fury was rooted in the fate of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist sentenced in 2005 to 10 years in prison for the catchall offense of “leaking state secrets.” Shi had used his Yahoo.cn e-mail account to send a copy of a Central Propaganda Department directive forbidding media coverage of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations to an overseas website.

While investigating the leak, the Chinese authorities asked Yahoo China for the identity of the user of the e-mail account that had forwarded the directive. Yahoo’s Chinese office was legally bound to comply, and Shi was arrested.

--more at China Economic Review--

 Previously for China Economic Review:

Previously on the Yahoo issue and related: