They are of like mind: www.BoycottYahoo.com

I wish there were a hundred such sites!

In the meantime, lots of news about Yahoo! has been circulating. They are in financial trouble, and will likely be purchased by one of the bigger players in an attempt to increase market share.

The boycott will be revisited if Yahoo! is purchased, depending on the stated policies of whoever buys them.

This article indicates that a groundswell of protests are starting to crop up in China. It is an encouraging article, but also enlightening as it indicates that many Chinese citizens were not aware of how much censorship they were suffering.

Perhaps if some other company buys Yahoo! (which now seems likely), the new owners will be aware of this trend in China and change Yahoo!'s policies.

They say in England that if you wait long enough for a train, two will come at once.

So it is with Yahoo! news.

First, Yahoo!'s stocks are falling to a point lowe than they have been in over four years, and they are laying off 1000 workers. Hopefully they will jettison the people who turn over the names of Yahoo! users to the Chinese government.

Second, the Full Transcript of Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on Yahoo! and China has been posted here. It is aptly titled "Yahoo! Inc.’s Provision of False Information to Congress," and includes testimony from Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan. The hearing was called following the committee’s conclusion that Yahoo! officials provided false information to Congress in early 2006 regarding its role in a human rights case in China that sent journalist Shi Tao to jail for a decade.

I'm sure these two events are unrelated, but there seems as if the universe is handing out its own justice.

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.

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.

Sorry for the interruption. We had some technical difficulties gave Booyahoo a new and very unwanted "look." Apologies to those of you who did not find what you expected.

This site has not been very active, but as news occurs regarding Yahoo! and it's unsavory international policies, you can read about it here.

The source article can be found here.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A human-rights group sued Yahoo Wednesday on grounds the U.S. search company assisted China's communist government with torture by revealing information that led to the arrest of dissidents.

The World Organization for Human Rights USA is seeking unspecified damages and wants Yahoo to actively secure the release of any detainees.

The group said businesses that operate abroad need to be more aware of their responsibilities.

"They should not be participating actively in promoting and encouraging major human-rights abuses," said Morton Sklar, executive director for the Washington, D.C.-based organization.

Yahoo has acknowledged turning over data on its users at the request of the Chinese government, saying company employees face civil and criminal sanctions if they ignore local laws.

Without commenting directly on the federal lawsuit the human-rights group filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Yahoo spokesman Jim Cullinan said such a matter is "better suited for diplomacy than it is in the legal forum."

He said that although company officials are "distressed that citizens in China have been imprisoned for expressing their political view on the Internet," Yahoo plans to keep offering services in China out of a belief the Internet can promote change and transform lives in that country.
Dissidents reluctant to join complaint

The lawsuit cites federal laws that govern torture and other violations of international law. Plaintiffs included jailed dissident Wang Xiaoning and his wife, Yu Ling, who was visiting San Francisco this week as part of the group's campaign.

Sklar said he knew of three other cases, but the dissidents were reluctant to join the complaint for fear of harm to their families living in China. Among those three dissidents is journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced in 2005 to 10 years in jail.

Part of the lawsuit's goal will be to determine how widespread Yahoo's assistance was, Sklar said, "and to stop this practice of U.S. corporations being complicit."

Yahoo rivals Microsoft and Google also have been accused of helping the Chinese government crush dissent in return for access to booming Internet markets, but only Yahoo has been accused of directly assisting in a dissident's arrest.

Google has offered a censored version of its popular search engine, while Microsoft shut down, at Beijing's request, a popular Chinese blog that touches on sensitive topics such as press freedoms.

Activists, meanwhile, have criticized Cisco Systems for selling computer-networking equipment that could potentially be used to monitor Internet use.