Yahoo under fire

Yahoo's been besieged since it coughed up the identity of an email user at the request of the Chinese government. The user was ID'd as journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in prision for emailing the government's plan to restrict media coverage around the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Last week a Chinese dissident in Beijing, Liu Xiaobo, blasted Yahoo in an open letter to Yahoo founder Jerry Yang. From the Taipei Times:

"I must tell you that my indignation at and contempt for you and your company are not a bit less than my indignation at and contempt for the Communist regime," Liu wrote, according to a translated version of the letter appearing on the Web site of the China Information Center (cicus.org), a news and research clearinghouse based in Fairfax, Virginia.

"Profit makes you dull in morality," Liu's lengthy and scathing message continued. "Did it ever occur to you that it is a shame for you to be considered a traitor to your customer Shi Tao?"

Yahoo, of course, says it's just abiding by the laws of the countries it operates in. But here's an interesting question.

"What if local law required Yahoo to cooperate in strictly separating the races?" asked Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a widely linked essay for the Los Angeles Times. "Or the rounding up and extermination of a certain race? Or the stoning of homosexuals?"