Yahoo! Pays Up

A week after lawmakers shamed its executives as moral "pygmies," Yahoo Inc. on Tuesday reached an out-of-court settlement with the families of two Chinese journalists thrown into jail for dissidence after the company disclosed their identities to local police.

The LA Times' lead sentence does a good job of summing up the situation.

Calling them moral pygmies, however, is actually a disservice to pygmies.

On the Hotseat Again

In February of last year, Yahoo!'s General Counsel Michael Callahan told a government panel he didn't have any knowledge of the facts surrounding why Chinese authorities approached Yahoo China with a request for identifying information about Shi.

Turns out he did.

"... the legal order did, in fact, specify that Shi was suspected of leaking "state secrets."

"He added that he sincerely regretted not updating the committee with that information when, in October of last year, the details of the Chinese government order were finally brought to his attention."

I find it hard to believe he went before a government panel without fully investigating the facts he would be questioned on.

Just more evidence for why we should boycott Yahoo!

UPDATE: Thanks to Helge Kraak, who has assembled quite a bit of footage and research on this topic at his website here, you can view the footage of this hearing in Real Video format. Check out the November 8th update on his site.