Chris Morrison writes up some conclusions on a story suggesting that when Yahoo! told Congress last year that they didn’t know Shi Tao was a dissident and not really a spy, they might have been a bit disingenuous if not outright lying.

The truly exceptional part of his post is the knuckle-dragging moronic comments that Chris has been subjected to. Stuff like this:

“You spoiled brats need to understand that China is not USA. They don’t enjoy the freedoms and rights we do. The police/gov can arrest anyone at anytime with little or no evidence. Many are still wrongfully executed today.

So if you were Yahoo and the police and gov. agencies are knocking at your door what can you do? You either comply or you’re in violation of some bogus law.

As Ven stated, the Chinese Gov. is the problem here. You think any other company would have done something different/morally responsible?”

Superb proof that comments are completely futile if you needed it, but this content is just so astonishingly unintelligent I’m almost lost for words.

It seems to suggest that Yahoo! found themselves playing the part of victim here, that they were just ambling through China one day innocently scooping up buckets full of cash minding their own business and then found themselves being subject to an attack by the Government smashing batons over their heads.

We’re facing an uphill struggle against this kind of idiocy. People appear to have problems understanding that technology companies - the most globalised of all companies in today’s World - have moral responsibilities and instead prefer to blame it all on technocrats getting in the way of good ‘ole capitalist fun.

Yes, Yahoo! has to comply with local laws. That’s why they should be careful about which countries they decide to work in. If I throw an application out the door this afternoon, there is nothing stopping somebody in China using it until the Great Firewall team decide it’s “dangerous”. If I actively set up an office in Beijing and do the paperwork so that I have to comply with state police requests I’m agreeing to step over a line that has certain consequences.

My argument is that we should be careful about making that step with some countries.

Imagine if this were the 1980s and Yahoo! had been asked to help the South Africans track members of the ANC. Would we have said they were perfectly OK to comply with local laws, or would we be screaming that they should get the hell out of Dodge and just accept they aren’t going to make some money there whilst the people in charge are incapable of understanding human rights?

In the same way that IBM has been criticised for its role in 1930s Germany (it is alleged they helped the Nazis identify and round up Jews using their patented card index system) Yahoo! is going to find itself on the wrong side of history until they just accept that running a mail service in China is dangerous as hell. Google might censor search, but they don’t store anything of interest to the police because they tread that line carefully: Yahoo! just want market share no matter what.

It’s not just Yahoo! and Google who have to think about this: it’s something all software companies need to consider in the modern era. If we truly are the people responsible for this iteration of civilisation, do we not have a responsibility to have guide our decisions with a moral or political framework that guarantees certain basic rights to our users? And does running a service in China that requires personal information to be collected put that framework in jeopardy?

Now it looks like the morality at Yahoo! could be so warped that it might involve being less than honest with Congress. And don’t think this is all the fault of the management - they hired an ethics officer but at the last shareholder meeting, they were told by shareholders they couldn’t commit to not proactively censor content or create a committee on human rights in relation to their business: the shareholders are starting to look like the real scum bags here. Given that Yahoo! is having serious business problems with this strategy, perhaps it’s time for a change of direction. Interesting times indeed…